It's natural for Republicans to dislike the Democratic agenda and vice versa. But check out these Republican quotes from a Wall Street Journal story today:
“It’s like half the country has lost their minds. People don’t even know what gender they are.”...If Republicans lose again, “it’s going to be the downfall of our society.”
“We have lost our K-12 schools to radical-left activists. We’ve certainly lost our universities to the same, and other institutions. Everyday Americans,” are being forced “to bend your knee to the rainbow flag.”
“Our base believes that we’re losing our country, and that the left has become radicalized to a point that they no longer believe in America and want to burn it all down and remake it in their image.”
About 80% of Republicans believe that the Democratic agenda, “if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it.”
"Downfall." "Bend your knee." "Burn it all down." "Destroy America." The apocalyptic language is what makes things so toxic these days. If you truly believe that Democrats deliberately want to destroy America, what wouldn't you do or believe to defeat them?
for starters, maybe question my belief system. seriously, because some of the stuff coming from the right is just plain nuts and defies common sense even if you dislike progressive policies.
Finally, my paycheck is $ 8,500 A working 10 hours per week online. My brother’s friend had an average of 12K for several months, he work about 22 hours a week. I can not believe how easy it is, once I try to do so. This is what I do
🙂 AND GOOD LUCK.:)
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HERE====)> https://iplogger.com/1rkjJ9
WHERE IS EVE AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HER?!?
That rich bi****? She retired!
Um... check this out.
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/v8g4whh85z/crosstabs_Americans%20Views%20on%20Patriotism.pdf
66% of Republicans say they are very patriotic. Only 37% of Democrats do. To me that is shocking. A majority of the members of one of our major parties do not consider themselves very patriotic.
So yes, I do see the Democratic Party as an existential threat to America. We can't have people who are not committed to our country running it.
Or another way of looking at those numbers: 74 pct of Dems are either very patriotic or somewhat patriotic. A higher number than for independants . Moreover, exactly what sort of patriot still follows Trump who tried to overthrow the results of our last Presidential election ? That speaks louder than a quick answer on a poll
You have made my point for me.
To you, presumably a Democrat, "somewhat patriotic" is good enough.
The men who fought in the Revolutionary War were not "somewhat patriotic". The men who mobbed recruiting offices after Park Harbour were not "somewhat" patriotic. The men who fought at Chosun Reservoir were not "somewhat patriotic".
For the first 180 years of this republic, the vast majority of Americans left and right would have looked at someone who said he was "somewhat patriotic" as if he were something to be scraped off the bottom of one's shoe. Read up on George Meany (definitely left) and his fights against communism.
Meanwhile, you impugn the patriotism people supporting a candidate who attempted to contest the result of an election through the courts and the political process in preference to the candidate of the party 73% of who's members are not very patriotic. No apologies.
Please don't feed the right-wing troll.
The people who voted for a liar are not patriotic. The people who deny democracy are not patriotic. The people who ban free speech are not patriotic. The people who deny science and loathe education are not patriotic.
The Republicans are destroying America and must be stopped at any cost by those of us who love her.
"The people who voted for a liar are not patriotic."
Do you believe in Corn Pop? Does Joe Biden come from a family of coal miners?
"The people who deny democracy are not patriotic."
You mean the ones who said "Not my president" in 2016 and urged Clinton to contest an election she had obviously and clearly lost? (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/11/activists-urge-hillary-clinton-to-challenge-election-results.html)
"The people who ban free speech are not patriotic."
You mean those in government who threatened social media companies to force them to ban right wing figures and delete their posts?
"The people who deny science and loathe education are not patriotic."c
You mean those who tried to suppress the lab leak theory and the Great Barrington Declaration and who insisted on shutting down schools for COVID long after it was obvious that COVID was minimally risky to children and healthy adults?
Please don't feed the right-wing troll.
Hey, you red-state folks were about to slaughter your residents with Covid at twice the rate of blue states.
Isn’t that enough for you? Or do you have the sadz that you couldn’t slaughter blue state residents, too?
Really? You still believe that? Read Kevin's post on Swedish excess mortality. Are you keeping you COVID vaccinations current? Do other people you know do so?
It was obvious three months in to anyone with a brain where was not politically blinded that COVID was just a new cold variant. It was going to go through the population fast and kill a lot of people, especially the old, immunocompromised, and those with comorbidities - people who were already likely to die soon. Second infections would be milder, third infections even milder, ACD soon just a cold.
That is exactly what happened. My first infection made me skip work for four days. My probable second infection (my wife tested positive, I didn't bother testing) didn't make me skip work at all. I don't know if I had a third infection - my wife also stopped testing every time she had a cold.
It made sense to try to flatten the peak. It made sense to try to protect old people so they could die of other causes (Andrew Cuomo killed tens of thousands of nursing home residents). Shutting down schools for more than a few months at the start was scientifically illiterate, educational malpractice, and a crime against students and their families.
You have lost this argument - go to the mall and see what percentage of people still wear masks.
I'm going to ignore Joel's advice .
I think you are wrong. Most people don't spend a lot of their time pondering their level of patriotism. When something dramatic happens, like Pearl Harbor, they are forced to make decisions about what matters most and what they do then is what matters.
Morevoer, lots of people who loudly proclaim their patriotism have not really been challenged on what that means. It's a glib observation, but nonetheless true, that Mao's army was made up of such people or that Hitler's SS also had lots of "patriots".
As for Trump and his "attempt to contest the results through the courts ..." what can I say ? He exhausted his legal challenges long before January 6th, 2021. His actions don't look those of a patriot and if a large chunk of the GOP are still following that liar then I question what kind of patriots they are no matter how they answered an anonymous poll.
FOAD you dim little troll.
"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."
On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made a famous statement: "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."[8] The line was not, as is widely believed, about patriotism in general but rather what Johnson saw as the false use of the term "patriotism" by William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (the patriot minister) and his supporters. Johnson opposed "self-professed patriots" in general but valued what he considered "true" self-professed patriotism.[9]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Samuel_Johnson#:~:text=On%20the%20evening%20of%207,the%20patriot%20minister)%20and%20his
But, of course, Democrats misuse this quote to excuse their lack of patriotism.
Why should the possibility that a scoundrel falsely claims to be patriotic prevent you from being patriotic?
"Patriot" and its various derivatives are among those terms that don't have clear definitions. The participants in the 1/6 insurrection proclaim themselves as patriots and I accept that in their own minds they are telling the truth. Further, large numbers of Republicans accept that the insurrectionists are true patriots. If that's your definition of "patriotic", count me OUT.
That's an extreme example but my observation has been that people who loudly proclaim themselves as patriots, truthfully in their own minds, are mostly quite undesirable people and I do not choose to be associated with them.
And how does that stop you from being very patriotic?
Patriotism only became associated with the right when the left began to abandon it.
https://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/item/75278455-berkeley-students-protest-chanting-ho-chi-minh-will-win-viet
Please don't feed the right-wing troll.
Let me translate: You are saying you have no rational response.
Please don't feed the right-wing troll.
Patriotism became associated with the right when they demanded that anyone who criticized our country must either “Love it or leave it.”
The right equates patriotism with mindless obedience, not with the values enshrined in the First Amendment.
Klanners genuinely believe themselves to be patriotic, as do Proud Boys, 3 percenters, Oath Keepers, Christian Dominionists, MAGAts, white supremacists, the Aryan nations, and many other similar groups. On their definition of "patriot", I most definitely am not one. The term has been irredeemably sullied.
Because Republicans use “patriotism” as a weapon, just as they use “Christian” as a weapon. They’ve distorted its meaning to such an extent that a significant number of people, in responding to a pollster, think “Well, I don’t drive a gas-guzzling truck with an enormous flag flapping in the back, so I guess that makes me somewhat patriotic, not very patriotic.”
It's mostly about gay, isn't it? I thought we'd gotten past that, but apparently not.
I think it's about the full loss of ability to groom their children in their image. It's well nigh impossible today as long as the kid has access to any type of media. The only route left is to home school them and give them flip phones (which some do) in order to keep the world from intruding. Modern culture has already chosen for them, they're just bystanders at this point. And they're not happy about it.
I think you might have nailed it. What you describe would definitely produce the extreme responses Kevin is noting. In other words, the 'apocalyptic' responses are not exaggerated - they're emotionally true for someone seeing their belief systems being swept away by the tide of history.
Are we still acting like Republican eliminationism is a relatively recent phenomenon in 2023?
This stuff was obvious in like **2005**. The only real differences between then and now are:
1) there were still a few non-insane Republicans left in Congress who had largely predated the 1994 wave.
2) Republican elected officials still had to dog-whistle this stuff rather than say it outright, and newspapers were somewhat more genteel about quoting raving wingnuts all the time. But it was still everywhere because it was coming from talk radio (ubiquitous) and internet sewers like Free Republic.
"Republican eliminationism" has a long and hallowed pedigree. No less than Rush Limbaugh was urging people to "hunt Democrats down like dogs" -- or maybe "with dogs"; the tape isn't all that clear -- as early as the Clinton era.
The fangs have been there a long time. The election of Obama tore off the cultured mask.
Every election is the "Flight 93" election.
They have to say that stuff because they suck so bad at the economy these days. Especially the comparison of Trump to Biden on jobs.
Their only hope is to yell and scream “they’re extreme! They’re not manly men!” And hope no one notices the economic numbers.
I am not sure whether it is yet widely understood, though the culture war is about to end. The school choice revolution has already largely swept the red states. Once parents have complete control over the future of their children, then why would the screaming continue? If other people want to live their lives in other ways, then so what? It only matters when you have a forced community in public schools. Everyone can be indifferent, when it makes no difference to them.
I noticed this profound shift myself once I moved from bricks and mortar school to online school. The social environment completely vanished online. I simply no longer cared about any feature of identity politics. In fact, identity politics was entirely invisible to me while online.
Uh ... this is satire? Yes?
On the off chance that it is not, the answer to "once parents have complete control over the future of their children, then why would the screaming continue" is that these people are relentless authoritarians who wish to control everything and everyone, starting with all women, plus anyone else who thinks of sex in any way they might find icky, and certainly extending to any non-White-native-born-Christianist people who don't know their place.
And like the Nazis, even if they managed that, they'd find new enemies within to pursue and assert control over. The screaming would never stop. It's what they do.
No.
Sorry, bbleh, not satire. I am too humorless to engage in satire, irony, sardony, witty word play or humor (please suggest others that might apply).
Notwithstanding my above comment I will note the supreme irony in your comment in that the Nazis were in fact profoundly aware of the power that the state exercised through government monopoly schools. They clearly saw the profound implications of physically possessing children throughout their development: The state could then own the children. I am unable to remember this precisely, though I believe that Adolf Hitler himself made especial note of this point.
In my personal experience, the idea that I would have some overreaching interest in how other people lived their lives was completely absent while I was a home schooler. It was a complete vacuum: Out of sight out of mind.
Yet, when I was in physical bricks and mortar school I did notice the social environment: I noticed that some people were of higher (and lower) social status, that some people were of higher (and lower intelligence), more (and less) attractive, more (and less) favored racial groups, different supposed orientation, etc. etc.. Bricks and mortar schools are constantly programming students to perceive social reality in some ways and not others. This clearly shaped my psychological world, while in the bricks and mortar world. At times it was very difficult to cope with all of this social complexity. I resented that I did not have the same level of socioeconomic advantage as others in my surrounding community; I resented that some students would gain privileges unavailable to others.
However, when I was a home schooler, I never had any of these feelings. Honestly, it never occurred to me that a social world even continued to exist. I never actually interacted with any of the other students who were scattered all across the world in any way. These students would have been truly culturally, socioeconomically etc. diverse in ways that students living in the same suburb never could be. Yet, I have no sentiment either way about any of those that I shared the virtual void with. Basically, as a home online schooler, I never left my house psychologically. My psychic world reduced to my immediate neighborhood where I was unable to discern any social, economic, racial, or other differences. Such differences only manifest when one enters into the mass bricks and mortar school world. This experience has largely deprogrammed me from thinking in terms of social differences. I no longer have the mindset that is taught in mass institutions that people are somehow merely representatives of an identity group and not individuals.
As an online learner I never dealt with the social complexities of the physical world. It was fantastic! I resented no one! If someone belonged to [fill in the blank] identity subgroup .... whatever. I truly was entirely indifferent; my involvement with them was ZERO: It was non-existent.
I loved this so much! I have a very complex personal life myself. I have had intensive family commitments to manage even in primary and high school and the bricks and mortar world was too much for me to cope with. I do not need or want to cope with other people's issues. In the online environment I never had to cope with any of that. I would never go back to the bricks and mortars world. There is just too much dysfunction to cope with when I already had enough dysfunction of my own as it is. As soon as I jetsonned the toxic real world social environment my academic performance skyrocketed!
The reasoning above leads me to believe that the culture war could end once school choice is enacted. Once parents and students have choice then they will make the choice that is best for them. For me this meant I was much happier and actually much friendlier to others.
I don't think school choice will make a difference. Culture is a function of the media now, parents have a hell of a time keeping kids off their phones and other media. Eventually, the kids find the real world and then it's all over.
School choice made an overwhelming difference in my personal experience. When given the choice between bricks and mortar and online, I chose online. The difference was night and day and was felt immediately.
I did not need to be constantly worried about my personal security -- therefore armed security was not needed to protect me from the potential lethal violence of other students. While I was in a bricks and mortar environment, a potential shooter risk was widely known by other students, though nothing was ever done about it. Why bother? Identifying the known risk would only activate the sleeper risk.
I did not need to cope with the massive psychological trauma that was ubiquitous in bricks and mortar reality. Any help given would merely encourage parents to externalize yet more of the child-rearing burden onto the community. Even in kindergarten the teachers mentioned to the class that they felt completely overwhelmed by the social dysfunction that they were expected to cope with. Such dysfunction only intensified after we graduated kindergarten and advanced to grade 1 and beyond.
etc. etc.
With the social dysfunction removed my academic performance skyrocketed. I took a much broader range of courses and was able to find success across the board.
Insight into the benefits of virtual life is no longer a fringe perception. During COVID when workers and students experienced remote work/school for themselves, an overwhelming number of them reported a much higher quality of life. Some recent surveys found upwards of 95% of workers who prefer remote work. Ironically, it has been noted that the mental health of high school students actually improved when they were NOT in class. The Remote Revolution now seems irreversible.
I think that "I think" type thinking is highly problematic. I have had my full genome sequenced with hundreds of polygenic scores. I will never think in terms of a collective "we" ever again. I will never presume to speak for others again and what reality for them might be like. Making normalizing assumptions about human psychology now seems absurd to me.
The level of cognitive/psychological diversity is much greater than I would have believed possible before my scan. The idea that there could be a big tent public school no longer is plausible to me nor is a big tent society. We need to actually accept the diversity that everyone claims they believe in and move away from mass institutions.
TLDR. Just kidding. I actually read the whole thing." I think" "I" deserve a reward of some kind. "I" haven't had my genome sequenced, so the word "we" is still in my vocabulary.
You must have an exceptionally interesting life.
Thank you for commenting CAbornandbred. Also thank you explicitly demarcating the joke. It is good to know when it is human appropriate to laugh.
My full genome clearly showed me how assuming normality is simply not a good idea. I was dealt with a one in a billion genetic royal flush. I could stare down anyone who started talking "we this" and "we that" to me.
I would just toss down my cards one by one and watch them squirm. When you have the cards in my hand you do not have to bluff. Just watch them-- squirm. Keep watching them squirm and then let them squirm more. Ask them if they will stop saying "We". No? Here's some more cards. If they didn't squirm enough, I could keep throwing down more cards until they did.
I think that would pretty much be the last of "Oh, I think kids should do this", or "People are like this" from them. "So, you mean people like me?" Then just watch them stare silently into space as they realized that this logical contradiction was unresolvable.
The great part is that people like that never would be curious enough to want to peer deeply into their own genetic soul. They can talk endlessly about "We" without in any way exploring what this "We" might be other than a cloning of themself. They would have no inkling of the vocabulary of polygenics. I would throw down cards and they would not enough know that such traits even existed; they did not have that dictionary. It is simply an overwhelming advantage to have over others.
Strangely, I doubt if I am really all that unusual. If any one were to roll the roulette wheel 200 times I am sure a great many seemingly unlikely results would occur. I suppose that people really would no longer have any idea how to frame things if they couldn't talk about "We", "Us", "Them", "People", "Kids", etc. : The mass institution effect. It would be so much more cumbersome to talk to others as unique individuals.
No irony at all; indeed the Nazis knew very well the power of indoctrinating children. Look at the Hitler Youth, for example.
The point is, like the Nazis, these people won't stop there. They'll continue to scream about anyone or anything that is in any way "other," because their agenda is first to control and ultimately to eliminate people and things -- and even thoughts! -- that are different (or ambiguous or complex). They seek uniformity, certainty and simplicity, and, like the Nazis, they are prepared to enforce them violently.
It is happening in the schools now, although it didn't start there. But very much contra your original comment, it certainly will not end there unless they are stopped.
Yes, this is what happens when there is monopoly government education. That is why school choice is such a powerful innovation.
In my personal experience, there was no totalizing impulse once I entered into a home school environment. In the online context there was no "other". People can only enter into frenzied obsession with "the other" when they are able to experience this "other" in a visceral way such as in a bricks and mortar context. This is what mass social institutions have encouraged for over a century.
I now find it truly bizarre that there can be mass anti-racism rallies and parades. How does one even form such representations? It is an entirely foreign concept to me. Yet, I suppose it is nearly an inevitable feature when placed into the context of a mass educational environment.
As can be inferred from above, my perspective is that government is the main source of the formation of the perception of "otherness". The Nazis then were able to leverage this psychological fault line for their policies.
With school choice such a fault line would not exist. From my personal experience as an online student I can clearly state that "the other" was completely absent from my experience in a way that it never was as a bricks and mortar student. I think that those who might think that school choice will be some sort of direct path to social division will be shown to be entirely wrong. School choice will likely lead more to a greatly relaxed psychological outlook and to a more distanced interaction with others. In such a life, one would no longer have control over the life of others so one could then simply live their own life.
"You can fence yourself in, but you cannot fence the world out."
Why not fence the world out? That is the very problem that we are constantly confronted with-- there are no boundaries. There is a formless universal global sameness that is accepted as some sort of objective reality. Why criticize something that could lead us to a better place? Why not have a bunch of different baskets with eggs than putting all of our eggs into only one basket and then watch everything be destroyed?
In such a uniformity, infant blood lead levels of 20 micrograms are no longer high nor low, but merely average. The profound social crisis as happened in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s can be largely ignored (as it was) and thought of as merely a passing phase.
The recent massive mental health crisis in teens is then also as to be expected. No fences means that there can be an abysmally low standard and no one is any the wiser. There is no possible way to sort out causes and effects. From the outsider perspective I find it highly surprising that such a crisis could emerge. What new social toxin is causing this yet another social disaster?
No one would then have to struggle with the truth that it is the mass institutions and "normal" background itself that is causing one crisis after another.
In the home learning environment I experienced the sense of timelessness. It really did not seem to make any difference if it were this year, next year, a decade from now or even a century from now (or before). There was no time. With the bricks and mortar world, though, one needs up to the minute news to be aware of whatever new catastrophe has arisen.
Why not fence the world out?
Okay, this IS satire. And very well done!
No.
Sorry, bbleh, not satire.
I am too humorless to engage in satire, irony, sardony, witty word play or humor (please suggest others that might apply).
(as above).
I can only observe the parody that exists beyond the fence line with disdain.
What is it now? Another teenage mental health crisis?
Why not accept that those inside the fence can act as an eternal metronome? Each time the modern world creates yet another disaster, you then at least have a reference point to know that it is not innate to humans, but only a result of meddling with the olden ways that should not be meddled with.
"Yes, this is what happens when there is monopoly government education."
Except that there isn't a monopoly in government education in the US. There have always been private and parochial schools, K-12 and some of the oldest colleges and universities are private. There has always been home-schooling, although it is a bit of a luxury when both parents work full-time.
The cultural challenges of non-home-schooling mirror real life. Exposing your child to the rich variety of people in their community is part of their education and a feature, not a bug, of public education. Why run away from your fellow citizens? What are you afraid of?
Thank you for your comment Joel.
When I was in primary school, I knew of only one primary school in my neighborhood: It was a government run public school. This was the only primary school that was reasonably within walking distance from my house. For all intents and purposes, this was a government monopoly public school.
When I went to middle school, there was only one middle school in my neighborhood: It was a government run public school. This was the only middle school that was reasonably within walking distance from my house. Most of my friends from primary school also went to this school. For all intents and purposes, this was a government monopoly public school.
When I went to high school, there were two high schools in my neighborhood: They were both government run public schools. However, only one of these high schools was in my school district. I was able to go to the school outside of my school district, though this bent the school attendance rules. For most other students, the in district high school would have been a government monopoly public school. For all intents and purposes, this was a government monopoly public school.
In high school my parents offered to send me to a private school. This would have cost us a lot of money and it would have meant that I would need to travel on buses for hours every day. I chose not to attend this private school.
For all intents and purposes, my only valid choice was to attend the single government monopoly public school assigned to me by virtue of my home address. This was not some fluke. Public schools were laid out in grids so that they would be within walking distances of students. This created a near complete natural monopoly for public schools.
Of course the irony is that "the rich variety of people" that you refer to were notably absent from the private school that I potentially could have attended. Notably, drug culture was essentially absent from the school because any confirmed drug use at any time before graduation (on or off school property) voided the possibility to graduate. I find it truly remarkable how absent "the rich variety of people" actually was from this school. The students were highly selected and screened psychometrically and psychologically. Every single one of these students went on to ivy league educations. I found it all truly startling. The level of achievement was off scale. My impression was that they fully realized the overwhelming life advantage that they had in not having to cope with the cultural sewer that is the modern public school system.
Your question: Why run away from your fellow citizens? then has an obvious retort: because that is what the most successful people do! Modern urban communities have overwhelming mental health needs that are externalized into the public school system and then make public school students largely uncompetitive with private school students. Interestingly, one of the students from the private school that I could have attended was expelled due to mental health problems. This student was then sent to my public high school. I am unaware of the transfer of any of our students with mental health problems to the private school.
Of course, with my full genome in hand I have much much more specific reasons from my polygenic scores as to why a bricks and mortar school environment would not be optimal for me. Such an answer extends across multiple dimensions of factor scores and is more involved than that offered in your question "What are you afraid of?". With the hundreds of polygenic scores to choose from that precisely define my unique view of reality the catch phrase "What are you afraid of?" seems entirely out of place.
Wow, narcissistic much? It's ALL about you, isn't it? The whole effyouseeking enchilada is about YOU, you, you. Good to know.
Actually.
No.
We were the ones that cared for others.
We were the ones who gave back when others would only take.
We were the bedrock of our community when it was in crisis.
It's the opposite of what you stated.
It's ALL about THEM.
It's ALWAYS about THEM.
When we were in crisis, it is interesting to note that the takers never bothered to give back.
The people who do the heavy lifting of helping others never have the energy to be part of the cool scene. I suppose that with today's internet technology it would not be that difficult to clarify who's who and what's what. Perhaps this would be a useful exercise so that we had a better idea of the moral character of others in our community.
It's all about THEM, THEM, THEM.
Cool story bro.
Right. Abortion is about school choice, not controlling other people's lives. Got it.
Skeptic
There seems to me at lest to be a general feeling that online learning is only PART of the school choice revolution. Most school choice advocates seem to want to STILL send their kids to indoctrination centers but they want them to be indoctrinated in a way THEY Choose - not "the state".
I am a huge supporter of online learning but I have to be reminded that online learning courses CAN be constructed by people who have their own agenda's.
But I think it's wise to differentiate between online/at home learning with and private schooling.
Vog46, thank you very much for replying! The education and development of youth is such a tremendously important topic and yet surprisingly for decade after decade it has avoided careful examination. Students spend many many years in the system and it is very important that the system be optimized. To date, it largely has not been.
Yes, absolutely online learning is only a PART of the school choice revolution. Notably online learning and homeschooling are the least capital intensive competitors to bricks and mortar (B&M). A physical high school will cost you $ 25 M; an online school ~$0. B&M does not have any obvious comparative advantages over online learning or homeschooling. In fact, in many respects B&M has inherent disadvantages that strongly favors online learning etc.. The school choice debate would be very very different if this were not so. This feature of homeschooling has allowed various educational experiments to be conducted at small scale over the last many decades. These experiments have already well established that non-B&M learning is highly effective for some learners.
Further, beyond online learning and homeschooling there are a near endless number of choices. Such choices include pod schooling, mini-retail schooling, complete to task schooling (work book, flash cards, computer tasks), etc. etc. etc. . It is extremely exciting that the passage of school choice law in several states will now allow parents to make choices that best match the needs of their children. School choice offers essentially unlimited choice. One might homeschool in the morning and then pod school in the afternoon. If an adjustment were needed, then one could rapidly choose another form of educational delivery. One would then no longer be trapped in an educational system that was not suitable. It will be a powerful behavior modification tool.
I am so jealous of these kids! They can have the life that they choose. This truly is a revolution! The potential is limitless! Students could choose to study subjects that they had a passion for. For me, this possibly might have meant specializing in a favorite subject as early as 4th grade. I would no longer be studying material that I had little to no interest in.
Kindergarten teachers often joke that some of their students are square pegs in round holes. Even they can see how absurd it is to try and pretend that a one size fits all monopoly system somehow makes sense for every child. This mismatch obviously does not magically change for many of these children as they progress through primary, middle, secondary and university. They basically spend their entire educational lives in learning environments that are not suited to them. The school choice revolution will change all of that!
Of course, the current factory inspired school model then prepares students for a future that largely no longer exists. It creates patterns of behavior that are no longer socially adaptive. My perspective is that foremost amongst these anachronisms is an excessively social-centric view of life. The typical high school was designed for life in 1900. It is startling to see how universally social such a world was. For a typical student who spends upwards of 20 years in the educational system, almost the entirety of their educational career will involve almost constant social bricks and mortar contact with others. It is a mystery to me why such a social design was thought appropriate. In my online learning experience, I have spent thousands and thousands of hours by myself reading in my home learning office. I have not had any bricks and mortar or only minimal virtual contact with my university as an online learner.
Intensively studying a textbook is a much more effective learning approach than attending class lectures.
In another sense online learning is also only PART of the school choice revolution as I see the school choice revolution to be only a PART of the educational revolution. Originally what is now called school choice was framed in terms of a private school voucher or simply a school voucher. This framing of school choice was not overly compelling to me. All this would have done is replace a bricks and mortar public school with a bricks and mortar private school. This did not seem radical enough. The conceptual breakthrough arrived when the idea was packaged as an educational savings account. You have a child? Educate your child -- here's a check. That was the magic idea! All of a sudden the entire playing field opened up. Parents could make the educational dollars stretch far. For example, paying $100 for a SAT subject test than offers truly compelling value. You can demonstrate subject competency through simple testing. Clearly it will be very interesting to see how parents spend actual savings account dollars in comparison to how the educational bureaucracy spent this same money. We can also extend out the educational revolution to the remote revolution. The effects of students choosing the type of educations that they want is cascading outwards to workers wanting to make similar choices. It is a lifestyle revolution!
It is disappointing that when the public school system was first introduced in the late 19th Century that more free market choice was not included right from the start. Instead they chose to standardize a model for the school system that had never been optimized. We really do not know (even now) where the educational revolution will take us. We are exploring new territory.
"This feature of homeschooling has allowed various educational experiments to be conducted at SMALL SCALE over the last many decades. These experiments have already well established that non-B&M learning is highly effective for SOME learners."
THIS is a problem. It is the same problem that B&M schools face the only difference is that ONLINE learning offers a wider variety
"Students could choose to study subjects that they had a passion for. For me, this possibly might have meant specializing in a favorite subject as early as 4th grade. I would no longer be studying material that I had little to no interest in."
A 4th grader? Sorry but the parents would be making that choice, NOT the student. Extra curricular studying? Sure any subject you want but a 4th grader in a B&M school, a home school or any other type of school is not the least qualified to "choose".
"The effects of students choosing the type of educations that they want is cascading outwards to workers wanting to make similar choices. It is a lifestyle revolution!"
EXACTLY! And exactly the problem. Interaction with others is extremely important. ANY job involving sales REQUIRES an interaction with others in person, online or remote contact. Have the interpersonal relationaship skills is a necessary component of those jobs (as well as management positions). Just how would a 22 year old who had spent MOST of his/her life alone interact with a skyscraper full of similarly educated people? Would they have no pre-conceived notions about social status of their co-workers or would they become mass murders because they couldn't handle the diversity of human kind?
While I am glad that you could do what you wanted you are the exception to the rule. Allowing at home schooling, entirely online or done alone or in small groups means that parents will have an outsized influence on their childrens education. Children will rise to their parents level of education
I think that B&M education as its currently constructed is about to become obsolete at the upper levels. I have no problem with that. Even at my age I would love to be able to learn at home about subjects I wish to learn more about. But I would NEVER think that I could choose courses for someone else, through their formative years the course selections I would make would be subjected to my level of education, and my level of social skills.
I could however, every easily see a college student taking courses online in a variety of subjects and being able to choose those courses
"This feature of homeschooling has allowed various educational experiments to be conducted at SMALL SCALE over the last many decades. These experiments have already well established that non-B&M learning is highly effective for SOME learners."
In terms of SMALL SCALE versus LARGE SCALE, we need to differentiate between research and market focus. In a national election, a random sample of 2,000 voters can determine the popular vote of 200 million within 1% 19 times out of 20. In a clinical trial of an antibiotic, my guess would be that a randomized trial of 100 patients in the treatment and placebo arms would give highly statistically significant results in favor of treatment.
It is not necessary to have population scale educational research experiments to learn about the nature of reality. Often, large studies can be conducted carelessly without considering various controls, so that a massive study can turn out to be less informative than a carefully conducted smaller study.
SMALL SCALE then can answer research questions such as: How effective is homeschooling?, What are the challenges involved?, etc.. In fact, when you move down to the level of an individual home school, the number of variables dramatically decreases (in comparison to a large public school). The millions of home schooled children should provide an overabundance of research evidence.
Of course, the large scale research that we have for schools is all based upon the public school model. We all have our own mental model of what a "real" school should be which typically would be very much like a public school; we all know the cardboard cutout expectations of mass institutional life that assigns rigid social roles to fit into the factory environment that students find themselves. Through time, people have largely forgotten that this mental model of schooling is based upon the assumption of a mass monopoly public school system. There is certain resignation that school violence is essentially inevitable based upon the large scale research conducted within the context of only one monopoly structure. In my home learning environment, my assessment of personal security risk would likely be close to 0.0.
The fundamental and inherent problem of the public school system is that it never went through an innovation cycle. It never started small and then gradually grew as it outcompeted all others. It merely started out large and then stumbled forward for a century until people started asking questions -- It rolled out right from the beginning at population scale and then we waited to see what could possibly go wrong. We now know what can go wrong-- a lot. It is another catastrophic example of central planning.
Home school and other innovative learning models did not have the advantage of being the incumbent system. They have had to organically grow over decades as the word of their success has gradually spread. They had to have a comparative advantage for some niche of students.
Only high order government has the authority to fail so spectacularly at such a massive scale. Public education never was rigorously tested against all possible competitors. That is the error that is now being undone over one century into the public school experiment.
They simply designed the system based exclusively upon a mass factory model that minimized the number of schools in an area (and minimized the cost) with the constraint that the children would be able to walk to the nearest school. With this design, modern urban high schools usually have 1,000 - 2,000 students. A triumph of financial cost minimization over the uneven contours of child psychology! Celebrating the public school system is nothing more than admiring a lunar socio-psychological terrain that is entirely devoid of any topographical recognition of individual difference. Contented bureaucrats over the needs of the students who they serve.
Remarkably, that square peg was supposedly meant to fit into the round hole peg of the now prominent individual differences in our culture. Government constantly creates population scale institutions that then through time prove to be extremely unstable because they were never tested at the start with intense free market competition.
Interestingly, IQ was "discovered" soon after the public education began in France in the early 20th century by Binet. Without a mass factory system, it had never been overly obvious that children were more or less intelligent than other children. This only became self-apparent when some children simply did not fit into their school factory. The mass institution has simply created all of these definitions of types and it largely defines how people in the system understand themselves.
From an online learning perspective it is very difficult to fathom. So black people, athletic people, attractive people, smart people, rich people ... they all have their own unique categories? You really need to work at the factory for your perception to be so formed. Good to know. I suppose that when you are inside of the machine there is not even a contradiction to consider.
In terms of LARGE SCALE, that is more in tune with marketing or government planning. How many tens of millions of students are in this system?, How can we allocate hundreds of billions of dollars across this system?: The central planning model. A system that starts with such a warped macro-level thinking process lacking any free market feedback is then locked into a structure that is almost incapable of adaptive change.
The SMALL SCALE & SOME learners (of home schoolers) from my quote has a parallel LARGE SCALE & ALL learners from big government. In fact, this contrast has driven the emergence of the underground alternative learning model. The government visionaries saw the potential to create a public school system at national scale. They imagined building thousands of largely standardized schools across the nation (and around the world) and saw this as a triumph of modernity. This mass formula at population scale became their guiding light of efficiency.
The flaw in such thinking is exactly that individual differences cannot be accommodated be ignored. The trans movement (and many others) if nothing else explicitly illustrates how when everyone compromises it does not lead us to a world where everyone is satisfied.
4th grader? For me it was actually 7th grade. My school gave me access to a programmed learning computer and that was largely my end of contact with humanity. I went to the computer room before school, during lunch after school ... In some of these computer rooms I stayed all night until morning. I blew up the printer paper budget so they had to turn off the printer.
That is pretty much the way things happen in life. You give children opportunities and before you know it they are off. I doubt whether my parents were even that aware of my computer activities. When I thought about I realized that I did not need to wait until 7th grade to make such a choice -- I was the same person in 4th grade and I know that I would have behaved in the same way even at this earlier point. Of course, it then becomes so important to make sure that certain opportunities (e.g., cell phones) are not given to young people because they might make the wrong choice as judged by the community -- it is constantly necessary to constrict how people choose to live (e.g., remote work).
Some people will take the opportunities-- others will not. Typically the broad community is very wary of such experiments because it rapidly divides the community. It is then typically framed as an injustice that some have access to these choices and others do not. And yet when others are given access they are not that interested. Government enterprises are then constantly driven towards extreme levels of uniformity in order that inherent individual differences never become overly conspicuous. Yet, from a purely economic perspective I am sure a large amount of money could be saved in education if it were to go all computer instruction (with higher achievement). Clearly, the community would prefer to spend vast sums of money to maintain highly social environments instead of spending vastly smaller sums to allow for low social high achievement environments.
"Interaction with others is extremely important." I am largely opposed to this conception of life. My lifelong impression is life is too social. The socialization in school environments of 8 hours per day is highly counterproductive to full cognitive development. Carefully studying a textbook will yield academic achievement an order of magnitude above that of sitting in a classroom for the same length of time. The pedagogical research has been clear on this question for years.
I have been reading recently comments by teachers online who are describing some horrific aspects of the hypersocial reality that we live in. They are reporting that in the current context that school discipline has of late almost ceased to exist. One teacher reported being sexually assaulted by a student and the administrators did not pursue criminal charges against the student. In fact, this student had previously sexually assaulted 4 students and was likewise not held criminally liable. This response apparently is now becoming routine.
The public school environment has simply continued to degrade to the point that crime is no longer punished. It is no mystery then why public school teachers are so much more likely not to send their children to public schools -- they know the truth.
The civil and criminal liability of the public school system in not communicating the risk environment to the public must be overwhelming. How isn't not holding criminals to account and then not being transparent about this policy not conspiracy to commit child endangerment? It is only when consequences can be applied that you have a society that you want to be a part of. There would seem to be an extremely powerful strategy of simply permanently denying social contact to those students who are first offenders. Their school years can be spent in solitary confinement. There are very very powerful behavior modification techniques that are never used; the approaching learning revolution will finally allow various free market responses to occur that will greatly improve school society.
In terms of the work world and remote work, I have actually been surprised how many workers want to go remote. In some organizations there was a 95% vote in favor. There is surprisingly little reason for most workers to commute for hours every day to an office only to spend their day on a computer doing emails and zoom calls. COVID has opened up the potential for a much more livable life for workers and students.
Yes, I agree with you that B&M is entirely uncompetitive. The $15,000 in student funding that goes to this system simply cannot compete with the available online resources. Given a choice between the $15K and a free ChatGPT account, I would go with GPT. The value for the dollar is simply not there in the B&M world.
This is an enormously exciting time! The entire playing field is in motion and vast learning markets are about to open up. This will finally allow learning to pleasant (away from the endless social dysfunction that currently exists) and much more efficient. I was complete shocked on my first day as an online learner that the B&M social catastrophe was completely absent. The next generation of learners will also have this sense of tremendous relief.
"Once parents have complete control over the future of their children, then why would the screaming continue?"
Because conservatives don't give a rat's ass about their children or any of the issues they scream about. The point of the outrage is to feel good about themselves. Outrage at anything they hate is like a drug to them, and even when they get what they want that doesn't stop the outrage and screaming, they just move the goalposts.
For the best example just look at abortion. After decades of trying they finally got Roe reversed, did that finally made them say "mission accomplished, we don't need to continue screaming about this"? No, they've kept dialing up the abortion outrage. Same with guns. Over the past 20 or so years gun laws have been becoming more and more permissive, yet they still scream. Same story with taxes, and on and on.
The screaming is for the sake of screaming and the euphoria it triggers in them, which then translates to electoral votes and dollars, which is why both politicians and right wing media darlings keep ramping up the screaming to 100.
Solar, from what I can see there is a great deal to be outraged about with the government monopoly school system. This outrage now crosses partisan boundaries.
Problem: Children need an education.
Solution: Governments appropriate wealth from taxpayers and create a monopoly public school system.
If parents do not support this system?
They can pay from their own pocket. They have already paid!
Outrage follows.
Updated Solution: Governments appropriate wealth from taxpayers; parents given funding to figure it out for their children.
Seems reasonable. Muted (or no) outrage follows.
I was completely amazed how much power I acquired when I, as a student, wrote the check to the school instead of this funding being financed behind the scenes. It made all the difference -- it was going from being a victim to being a customer. The Customer is King!
My sense of outrage of being part of an educational system that had no interest in me stopped immediately when my voice was heard. Outrage is a response to an unfair situation -- outrage does not spontaneously emerge out of the ether. Oftentimes, it is government with its vast monopoly powers that is at the center of outrage.
The two most obvious sources of such outrage would be education and taxes. Education now seems to be undergoing a substantial reinvention. Perhaps some sort of rethink on taxes could also be considered.
For other outrage provoking items such as abortion and guns, I understand them in relation to the lead hypothesis. The lead crisis of the 20th Century caused a social catastrophe that continues to unwind. The overturning of Roe v. Wade can then be understood as a rewind to the Supreme Court's response to the lead crisis of the 1960s. Gun law is also largely a consequence of the social collapse caused by lead of the mid-1990s. From the perspective of lead, the social friction points of abortion and guns should, through time, resolve as the neuropathology of the 20th century continues to heal. Eventually, my impression is that the screaming will not continue.
... the Democratic agenda, “if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it.”
Well, under a reasonable interpretation of "as we know it," that's probably true.
That in reality it's more like "as we imagine it to be" is almost certainly a distinction that wouldn't register for them.
But whatever the interpretation, I'm FOR destroying it. Bend that knee! Aux barricades!
These are commonplace talk-back radio rants and have been for many years. Despite Kevin's conviction that Fox News is the source of right-wing lunacy, the shock jocks have been mainly responsible for the infantilisation of Republican politics.
Yes, I can remember Limbaugh saying things very much like this in the mid-1980s when he was starting out. And I think cephalopod's observation about the "flight 93 election" trope is spot on.
But something *is* different now, and it may be the reach and depth of that attitude, which have both expanded. Local gop institutions used to be mostly relatively sane, focused on responsible local government (by their lights). I think the Tea Party era changed them into local outposts of the national-level crazy, so the pitch of almost any local gop-affiliated group has become full-on fulmination all the time.
Fox and its ilk are responsible for a lot of this. So are right-wing fundraisers, who bombard in-boxes with fear-mongering begging. And there's a whole hidden infrastructure of fear induction and fear maintenance that outsiders don't have any contact with. A lot of it undoubtedly is connected with church groups.
In the context of modern communications, fear has proven the best consistent motivator of turnout by rightist voters since at least the Jesse Helms-Harvey Gantt senate race. And stoking fear has been a central gop effort ever since, through all means available. And in order to keep the fear level ramped up, the bogeyman has to be more dire with every election cycle. There always has to be something new to be afraid of, a new set of outrages to protect civilization from.
Sheer nihilism, and general fear of death.
Most people who vote for conservatives know they'll never amount to anything and then they'll horribly, worthlessly and uselessly croak, so they're out for revenge, take as many with them as they can and cripple those they can't, and make it easier for any conservatives left to injure them further.
"...apocalyptic language ..."
It is easy enough to find apocalyptic language on the left.
Exactly. The only difference is whether your bubble considers it apocalyptic or "common sense".
Plenty of people said equivalent things would be the consequence of Trump coming to power. They say similar crazy things ("defund the police!", "America today is the most racist society in human history!") and expect no pushback, as though those are "sky is blue" uncontroversial statements of truth.
The difference is that you tune out the crazy on your side as "oh well, some people are just over enthusiastic, what can you do" while being minutely sensitive to even the slightest crazy on the other side...
I came on to say the same thing. While there is more crazy on the Right I think, the Left is not immune to it. And we on the Left are kidding ourselves if we think that the crazy on the Left is not hurting us at the polls.
For example....
Attempts to regulate speech, like Stanford's IT Department list last year. @name99's items above. About half the Green New Deal. AOC calls for proposal for a 70 percent marginal tax rate on incomes over $10 million. Latinx. Hounding Al Franken out of the Senate.
Storming the Capitol, smashing in the heads of cops, attempting to lynch the Vice President to effect a coup . . .
versus the Stanford speech code.
Oh, my.
From Pew:
So in your mind, the majorty of the population is leftist? You really should think before you post.
Bothsiderist nonsense.
"The left" has no equivalent to Fox, talk radio, Qanon, or any of the other propaganda outlets or cults that routinely spew torrents of apocalyptic right-wing idiocy, along with generous doses of intolerance and even outright hatred. Watch a day of Fox and tell me where there is anything remotely equivalent on "the left." Look at the outright ravings of the Qanon cult and show me anything from "the left" that looks like it, much less anything that has a national following and tacit or outright endorsement by a party's leaders.
And of course, show me any action by national political leaders and affiliated organized groups on "the left" that in any way approaches the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Anyone who thinks "both sides are the same" is dangerously ignorant.
👍👍👍👍👍
Absolutely true - & the sheer number of loud. aggressive & violent individuals on the right has never been equaled by those on the left making equally outrageous claims-. Most Democrats aren't so far to the left as to want to defund lhe police or fail to realize how many of our country's failures have existed elsewhere, and still do.
True. Because the last time a Republican was president he tried to and very nearly succeeded in destroying our system of government. If he is elected again he will succeed.
So the difference is our apocalyptic language is accurate.
Exactly.
There is similar levels of rhetorical apocalypticism. Where the sides differ is in the actions you are called to take.
On the left you are supposed to mix fatalistic depression with buying yard signs and flags. On the right you are supposed to buy guns, guns, and more guns.
While I don't think see similar levels on both sidss, I have to say that your assessment of the different action plans made me laugh - something that today's political scene normally can't elicit. But the way that those on the right both carry & wear flags, I don't think that we'll ever catch up on their massive displays.
I don't think the puppet masters defining the narrative believe any of these things, but they do believe that the only legitimate function of government is to increase the wealth and power of the currently wealthy and powerful. That isn't exactly a winning message come election time so they spin it around and it is the relatively weak and powerless minorities that are the "real" threat. Works pretty much every time.
I have no problem with increasing the wealth and power of the wealthy and powerful, but they aren't being efficient. Wealth derives from the work of the masses, so policy should be to make it easier for the masses to generate wealth for the wealthy. I.e. free health care, free college education, housing, great public transit, ...
Good point, and one that a lot of commentators on the left seem to overlook. I don't know to what extent people on the right believe their own rhetoric, but it has become clear over the years that tax cuts for the rich are the issue they are most willing to fight for. For example, the one major piece of legislation that Trump got through Congress was the corporate tax cut bill, which mainly amounted to tax cuts for the wealthy. In contrast, when Senators started negotiating on a bill that would build Trump's wall in exchange for writing DACA into law, Trump's negotiator, Steve Miller kept asking for more. These included changes to family reunification, the diversity lottery, and reductions in quotas for legal immigration. When Democrats balked at that last of these, Trump walked away from the negotiations, killing the bill.
Trump ran on “Build the Wall,” but once he got into office and had the opportunity to actually build the wall, he didn't take it. In contrast, I can't think of a case where Republicans passed on an opportunity to cut taxes on the wealthy.
All the great photos of Ron DeSantis, camera magnet,
https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1680344015286181888
Well, it sure would be fun to see all Republicans rounded up and, you know, destroyed. But imagining a bunch of squishy liberals could accomplish anything like that is pretty silly.
"...But imagining a bunch of squishy liberals could accomplish anything like that is pretty silly."
Squishy liberals are just useful idiots.
against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain?
They've been peddling this crap for over 50 years.
Reactionaries are sick, sick people who get a psychosexual thrill out of thinking the world is ending. Also too: they believe that anything less than absolute control of everything is the same as controlling nothing.
Not Democrats. The danger is radical leftists. And I hope Republicans and Democrats wake up to this problem. Bill Maher has. I have no illusions, Bill Maher is a Democrat libertine, and his views on most issues have not changed. But he understands that radical leftism has power and is dangerous to the classical liberalism on which Western Civilization is based. He will never give credit to the fact that Western Civilization is also based on Judeo-Christian principles. But no matter. He does understand that the woke agenda is toxic.
Kant's categorical imperative morally compels me to respond to this comment with a firmly rigorous intellectual grounding in the Great Books of the western canon: sir, this is an Arby's
Please don't feed the right-wing troll.