Controversial Political Opinions

[David Horn]

(03-22-2022, 02:40 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:The other alternative was vastly worse: people trapped in marriages they couldn't escape.  Some of those lead to suicide; others to homicide.

at the very least, we need standards that do much more to favor the father. current divorce laws screw them over royally

This is based on a conservative principle that mothers raise the children at home and the fathers, continue to work to pay the bills. To be totally frank, this is more in your wheelhouse than mine

JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:The purpose of education is not to train you for a job.  It's to make you a well-rounded individual and good citizen.  

If they want to make you a well-rounded individual after they prepare you for a job, that's well and good if it can be done at low cost, but until then, this is a somewhat aristocratic take on what an education is supposed to be. Black children growing up in the ghetto, redneck children in Appalachia and poor children everywhere don't need to read The Iliad or listen to Verdi's Rigoletto. They need employable skills and skills that will help them survive and manage their lives and finances. In the case of millennials, where standards of living were dropping like a rock, this was pertinent for all of us except the most privileged (we can argue about what exactly to do about those dropping standards of living, but in either event, they were there, and education should have adapted).

Plenty of those children would probably be much more curious under better life circumstances, but it's just basic Maslow's Hierarchy of needs: "should I read Shakespeare or should I learn a skill that can help me get a job so I can eat?" Having some English major lecture them on the importance of Catcher in the Rye when they are worried if they are gonna get shot that night is incredibly condescending and, when combined with other factors like police brutality, contributes to higher crime rates and contempt for authority among black (specifically ghetto black) culture and various redneck cultures. When you are powerless and someone is forcing you to spend the equivalent of a full time job on activities that will do little to help you materially advance...you should feel contemptuous. No wonder so many of them wander around without direction. 

My other argument is that....it's much easier to acquire culture and erudition on your own time. It makes zero sense to take $1000 courses in history which can be had for $15 by purchasing a course from The Teaching Company on audible (they have entire curriculum lectures from renowned professors for pennies on the dollar). It's much more difficult to study by yourself to gain job skills without a teacher present. I've listened through well over a dozen of them.

Lots of words to counter my one sentence, but I'll stand on that sentence. We aren't machines awaiting programming. We're breathing thinking (for the most part) human beings who first and foremost must function within society. The model you suggest has been more common in the last few decades than it was in the past, and the degraded social and cultural milieu is the direct result.

JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:OK, but that seems to disagree with you item #2.

Not really. I would still oppose if America wanted to go in and purge a bunch of human-sacrificing head-hunting tribes somewhere off in Asia (or, for that matter, white European tribes doing the same thing), but I would not be particularly upset by it. 

My point about civil society stands. Look at Ukraine: being decimated by a tyrant with that power to do it, and unrestrained by social stigma or counter force. In the end, we may end up being the counter force out of necessity.

JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:Nothing exceeds like excess.  Going after the Nazis was bound to ensnare the innocent few.  That doesn't make it right, just inevitable.[/color]

it's true. there is never an exactly 100% chance that someone is innocent, but in this instance, it was like 70-80 years after the fact. you don't revive an entire witch hunt in order to purge a...baggage carrier for the enemy army.

Are you arguing that stupidity is common or rare? I think it's actually relatively common but should be opposed when that is feasible.