I really don’t want to lock this thread. But I will if you make me.
SIATD - I think it is right that a government interprets its responsibility for education based on different principles than its responsibility for healthcare. Branding accessible healthcare as socialist is not helpful - socialism is much too worn down as a political term to really be of use in defining what Obama is doing here.
The way I see it is that Obama serves the US well as an image builder, both to the outside and inside. He looks at where the really painful flaws in the country are perceived, and addresses them. He does not have to be ideologically consistent for this to be an effective and politically legitimate strategy. In fact I think ideological consistency is a sure road to political ruin.
So while it may be true that he is also playing into the interests of the banking industry by increasing debts, it is not said that this particular investment is bad or even avoidable, if the US wants to remain a superpower. It can’t afford such a bad reputation, any given government after Bush and Michale Moore would have had to address this issue. Besides, if you’re going to get the country deeper into debt anyway, why not spend it on something that actually is needed?
Felix,
Oh how I enjoy completely avoiding the argumentation that has currently arisen in this thread. 
Of course, don’t engage into any type of individuality; refrain from thinking for yourself. <— That is exactly what this means.
Nope, I’m afraid that only means that you’re quitting on school. 
Not trying… to do what, exactly?
Ok, but make sure that what you are doing gives something back to you that is equal to what you’re putting into it.
Kind Regards,
~Moral Jeff
You seem to think that thinking is something which comes to a child by itself, or from watching America’s Next Whateverthefuck or from playing Xbox live. Listening to teachers and parents, or in other words, people who have learned or who have experience, is indispensable for most people to acquire the skills to think.
It means that you’ll probably end up useless and living off others, which makes you a burden to the country instead of an asset.
To get something off the ground for yourself, obviously. Not to be a slave.
That attitude might exactly be what causes the current state of economic paralysis. People are not willing to invest in the long term or work for the sake of doing something useful or productive, they are taught by Paris Hilton to believe in their own inherent self-worth, investing only in mind numbing luxury.
Moral_Jeff–I agree with Jacob’s responses to you.
Greetings, Straw-Man Repeat Offender,
You seem to have “read” my mind, as a notable fortune teller. Tell me… how do you take:
“Think for themselves.”
And turn it into:
“Watch America’s Next ‘Whateverthefuck’ or play Xbox Live in order to think.”
??? 
???
I’m puzzled.
I’ll ignore the fact that you have attacked your own “Xbox Live” straw-man, and proceed with my response…
Although I agree with “putting in the hard work it takes to succeed”, I don’t agree with: “Pay attention to those teachers, listen to your parents, grandparents, and other adults” …
And why not? Of course, because that leaves children wide open to be spoon-fed propaganda and lies. Our president should be advocating logical methods of thinking (e.g. by requiring a “Logic” course in schools) so that children can properly analyze propaganda and lies in order to discover what is and what isn’t true and/or logical. Information can be either distorted, logical, fabricated, or true, regardless of the source, and that is the major issue with Obama’s statement {of advice}.
Here, you’re being condescending to people who are of the lower and lower-middle class. Calling them “useless”, for example, achieves nothing. They are hard-working citizens who possess the right to choose their own quality of lie; some individuals are satisfied without obtaining optimum education levels. For these reasons, some people don’t attend college, because those people are either satisfied with being a part of the ‘working class’ or they have simply failed to obtain the means to attend college. As for your personal contention against these citizens as “burdens”, here are a few rhetorical questions for you to analyze and ponder:
Who is going to take out our garbage? Who is going to work in our factories? Who is going to take on the task of working in underground mining facilities? Who is going to clean our schools? Who is going to repair our buildings, bridges, and roads? Who is going to build our houses? Who is going to operate our trains? Who is going to drive our buses? Who is going to cook our food in restaurants? Who is going to be our secretaries? Who will drain our septic tanks? Who will be the consumers of generic products of small businesses? Who, Jakob… who? Would the fairies and ‘oompa-loompas’ take over?
Since you may find this as a shock, I ask you to brace yourself: People who don’t “finish” school aren’t “useless” or “burdens”, but hard-working citizens, just like people who did “finish” school. They wanted to get their lives started expeditiously at the expense of their probabilities to obtain a higher salary; that’s all.
Although I’m currently attending college, my grandfather, for example, didn’t even graduate from high school, and he was a Foreman in an underground mining facility, which is a position that receives a high salary, and he underwent a large deal of responsibility for other workers. In the midst of hard-working citizens, you remain skeptical of their abilities to become productive members of society… it is absurd for anyone to call those people “useless” and “burdens to the country”, because those very people have proven that “skepticism” to be unfounded all throughout US History. What would’ve happened to Henry Ford’s automobile company if all the workers had instead gone to college to study “Law”, for example? Well, you can obviously guarantee that his “business” wouldn’t have lasted for very long.
Ok… if that’s what it means, then I can agree, so long as individual people are defining what they want and not taking their society’s word for it.
I haven’t heard anything from Paris Hilton… remind me if I said something, because I’m pretty sure that I never mentioned anything about Paris Hilton. Please [size=150]leave that straw-man alone.[/size] What did he ever do to you? 
But I’ll proceed to respond, anyway…
“I’ve made all my money on my own without my family and I work very hard, … Just listening to my father . . . So just basically following that and following my heart.” --Paris Hilton
“I’m totally normal. I think it’s obnoxious when people demand limos or bodyguards. I eat at McDonald’s or Taco Bell. My parents always taught us to be humble. We’re not spoiled.” --Paris Hilton
“People can’t believe how hard I work… I love it. I think it just runs through my veins. My great-grandfather was a bellboy and had a dream to do a hotel chain, so I think I get it from him.” --Paris Hilton (apparently advocating hard-work and not just luxury)
So, let’s take a look at equal value benefits from working jobs… if you are working as a construction worker and receiving minimum wage (which does happen when the boss gets greedy enough), then you aren’t really getting back what you’re putting in. However, if you’re a construction worker who is receiving 10-13 dollars per hour, then you are really getting back what you’re putting in. Although you proceeded as if to pretend I stated this, I said nothing about “mind-numbing” wealth or people believing in “their own inherent self-worth”. What I was speaking about… was fairness. If you are figuratively {or literally} breaking your back on the job, yet you are being paid a grossly low salary, then it’s very safe to say that you aren’t being treated fairly by your employer.
Kind Regards,
~Moral Jeff
Watch out for straw men. 
~Jeff
Thankfully, those schoolchildren most likely listened politely and then got on with their lives.
Jeff - what I responded to is your objection of the idea Obama expressed, which was simply that people should study and work and not give up. Logical, clear advice, the only thing wrong with it might be that it will probably be ignored. You and others found some conspiracy behind it, which kind of baffled me. I was wondering how you think people learn to think if not by engaging in education. Is the educational system in the US so bad that it is better not to go to school? I find that hard to believe.
I did not refer to the working class with the word ‘useless’. I referred to people who give up on whatever it is they can accomplish. As for getting out of it what you put in, I have due respect for anyone who does physical labor, I think these are generally people who properly invest their powers, contrary to the various types of managers, consultants and advisors, who are investing their slyness in the market of dumb corporate waste and are draining the economy by rendering completely useless services for up to a thousandfold the wages manual workers make. If it was up to me, everyone who has the tag ‘consultant’ or ‘adviser’ on his job description would have his salary cut by 90%, and much of that 90% would go to schoolteachers wages.
I doubt it will be “ignored”.
Ok, this is it. I’m going to politely ask you to stop attacking straw men one last time. I pointed out that his advice was “flawed”, making [size=200]NO SUCH CLAIM[/size] of a “conspiracy”. These false accusations are getting old.
Now you’re misrepresenting what US schools are teaching. They aren’t teaching thought, but rather, memorization, since they’re functioning on an almost strictly academic criteria.
And again, you’re making up weak arguments to fight against, rather than addressing real arguments. I certainly never said that it was better not to go to school. But simply, I said that people who quit school aren’t giving up on their country, but ONLY giving up on SCHOOL.
Of course you didn’t… why would I make such a claim?:
Quick! Go and edit your post! I won’t tell anybody! 
BUT you [size=150]originally[/size] referred to people who quit school.
I feel the same, here.
Well, I suppose that if teachers were being paid more, then they’d be less interested in abusing their authority. Having said that… yeah, teachers probably need to be paid a great deal more than they’re being paid presently.
Kind Regards
~~Moral Jeff
And you, Jeff, seem to be confounding the thinking with the subject matter of thought.
Certainly parents and grandparents can fill a child’s heads with propaganda, dogma, lies and Satan’s bidding (that last was not a strawman, but was sarcasm, to make a point). But Jake’s point is well-taken. My mother insisted that I go to church. This did not affect my ability for critical thinking, so far as any evidence shows, as it was my confirmation classes that made me realise that I was an atheist.
“Listen to your parents” is about the most innocuous advice I can think to give a child. It does not stifle individual thought. It provides the starting point for it. Whenever we first learn something, we should shut up and listen first, and critique later. Just try to teach anyone anything, and this is blatantly obvious, and hardly needs argument. If I were to teach someone how to safely handle a gun, I would insist on this. At least until I left the area.
With or without Obama’s advice, schools continue to teach critical thinking as well as memorisation. They did when I was in school, and they do now. But if you never hear a lie, never learn the difference between a lie and a “truth”, you will truly be unable to think well.
I cannot read your posts as anything but political rhetoric.
And yes, you do read as a conspiracy theorist, here.
And you, Faust, may be right.
So I may be mistaken, but not completely. Perhaps it is the “desire for social popularity” that causes some children, preteens, and teenagers to relinquish control over their own thought, conforming to ad populum in regular patterns? Anyway, to clear my statements up a little, I meant the forceful indoctrination of pseudo-logic material (e.g. propaganda, lies, domga, “Satan’s bidding”, etc.) as a critical antagonist to free thought. If a person has only a slim amount of freedom, then free thought becomes more difficult to achieve, as the restrictions imposed upon them by their parents, grandparents, and teachers cause immediate and elaborate distraction. Would you not agree?
I will agree that “listening to your parents” alone won’t stifle individual thought. However, it does not provide the starting point universally.
Would asking questions having debunking potential be considered {to you} as a form of “critique”? If so, then what if that question just saves the questioner a lot of potentially wasted time and grief? Obviously, if somebody asserts something to be “good” or “true”, then the provider of that assertion has the responsible burden of answer for those questions, as the teacher may also learn something.
This isn’t truly so. I mean, the standards of that so-called “critical thought” are so low that cliche answers become acceptable. Cliche answers stem from ad populum, which promotes fallible thinking. Schools aren’t “teaching” critical thought, but rather, asking for it and maintaining a grossly low standard for student responses. For example, “Drugs are bad for ya” is a typical, cliche response to the question “Why not use illegal drugs?”. If the students aren’t graded based on the quality and originality of their responses, then critical thought isn’t actually being promoted, but rather, an illusion of that promotion is happening.
Oh, you can still think well. However, distinguishing fact from fiction will become more difficult. Agreed.
Of course…
You’re making the bogus claim that my posts are “political rhetoric”, yet you read me as a conspiracy theorist? Anyway, regardless of the irony, you did provide a reasonable response, so thank you.
Kind Regards,
~~Moral Jeff
Well, I’m not sure how much critical thinking we can expect from your average secondgrader to begin with. But I think it’s generally better to teach some, any values than to teach none. Children generally rebel from the values they are taught, and then generally return to many of them. This is not a parental thing, or an education thing, it’s a growing up thing. The more important thing is that they understand the value of values, and that they’d do well, for themselves as well as for the group they live among, to get themselves some. Parents want their kids to listen to them, and taxpayers want the kids they are spending so much money educating to listen to their parents. I think any president is pretty much down the middle in offering this kind of advice.
But there will always be any more followers than leaders, which is good, especially for the leaders. Most people, young and old, don’t much like critical thinking, or any hard thinking at all. They seem to like restrictions. In my careers in sales and food service, I can tell you that the ore choices people have, the less likely they are to come to a decision. The last thing you want to do, as a server, is to have fifteen dessert choices. If you do, you will lie, and tell the customer only three of four, maybe five of them. You will if you want to flip that table, anyway. Personally, I don’t blame the schools. I have been a student, and I have been a teacher, and I recognise that what goes on at home far, far outweighs what teachers or presidents say. Schools are a reflection of the people who pay for them. If they teach children to be part of the flock, it’s because we think the flock is good. Yet, leaders and original thinkers emerge.
Well, somehow, we have to learn language. We have to learn the values that we accept or reject. We have to learn morality - I never knew a parent who wasn’t at least somewhat a Utilitarian. We have to learn cause-and-effect. Even if we later reject it - it can keep us alive until our brains are developed enough to become solipsists.
Sure. But to the original point, this doesn’t happen very often in elementary school. Teaching kids how to think such questions up will waste even more time. There are few debunking questions for multiplication tables, spelling and the location of the Mississippi River.
I can hardly get my waitstaff of twenty-somethings to make nuanced judgment calls about when to take a cigarette break. Myself, I would teach my teenage kid that weed is okay, but that too much beer is dangerous, and that coke is downright deadly. But I would know my kid. Do I want teachers to be so nuanced with my kids? Do you? I use coke, when I can get decent stuff. But I would lie to my kid, and let him figure it out himself, and hope to hell he doesn’t do anything near as much as I have done, or get a gun pointed at him for it as I have done, or hang with the truly dangerous people that I did.
Yeah, I would lie through my fucking teeth to my kid about drugs. I probably wouldn’t even admit to the heroin. I would lie about a lot of stuff, and cross my fingers that while he was thinking about me as being the biggest dork he ever knew that he was somehow lucky enough to get through it all to a ripe old age.
And at some point I’d smoke a joint with him and maybe even do a line with him and so what? I have no problem lying to kids. Especially my own.
It was only a guess. I am guessing that you just don’t like Obama.
LOL! True. I was connoting middle school and high school students, there.
Ah, probably so. Some rebel, some don’t, though. People are different; nothing value-wise is universal. All of these things just demonstrate the variety of the human species… and, of course, we’re nothing like “baboons”.
Personally, I wouldn’t say “most people”; I’d, rather, say that it’s a 50/50 split {with adults, at least}. But, that’s only a matter of perceptual vantage point, right?
True. Nothing bugs me more than someone trying to sell something to me, offering a mass quantity of choices. At least, give people something to go on. Agreed. 
But there are so many flocks to choose from! 
<— This is where propaganda begins to offer its so-called “guidance”, which is what I’m disagreeing with, here.
True, but it’s what we base those values upon that truly dictates intelligence.
LOL!!! True. In deductive arguments, there’s nothing to debunk. But, I was insinuating values, principles, morals, codes, etc. At any rate, middle school and high school is where the teachers can learn things, too, because the students’ brains are then physically developed enough to comprehend complex and abstract ideas. Elementary school, as you said… not so much. Yet again: Agreed.
That is your choice as a parent; there’s nothing much that I can say to stop you. Anyway, I have no desire to dictate your choices as a parent. So, I suppose that we can agree to disagree, here.
Again, it’s your parental choice. Agree to disagree?
At least then, you’ll know that your child is in safe hands. I like that.
Actually, I don’t think that I could fairly ask for a more direct speaker who understands the public. Besides, I don’t look at the person when analyzing arguments, but the argument itself. This is me just making a conscious effort to avoid the ad hominem fallacy.
Kind Regards,
~Moral Jeff
Faust:
or instead of lying to your kid - which in and of itself isn’t right or wrong - you might tell him the truth at some point about your using the drug[s] which you have used. your having used some drugs isn’t going to send him off on the deepend to using drugs. your giving him your trust can open the doors to a “real” conversation about drugs. what if at some point he finds out that you lied to him - you don’t want him/her using but it’s okay for you to have used and lie about it. most kids i think would rather an honest, caring parent who they feel can treat them like someone who is intelligent and can make their own minds up about things. gee, dad, why did you lie to me, why were you such a hypocrit? and all this time i just thought you were a dork?
you are admitting to your kid that you are a human being capable of making mistakes and you are admitting to him how much you do care about his welfare that you would indeed be so honest with him about it.
how is he to truly understand that you know about such things…just by telling him that they are dangerous and that you don’t want him to do it? a shared experience as far as i am concerned will go so much farther in keeping him safe - in teaching him and giving him the entire picture so that he can make up his own mind. i don’t believe a kid is in any more danger of using drugs knowing that the father did but he will trust his father more over his peers when that time comes to make that decision for himself.
a parent who can show his weaknesses and admitted mistakes to his children will have children who are more individualistic than those who will simply follow the herd.
arcturus - yeah, what I am saying is that I would lie more the younger the kid. Even at that, I don’t necessarily mean what I say too strictly. My point is that when you teach values, you teach them “strong”, expecting that the kid will stray from them, rebel against them, adapt them, discard them, etc.
But I wouldn’t worry about being caught in a lie. I would say something like - “You were too young and stupid to handle the truth. Now don’t bogart that joint.”
I couldn’t be a New Age parent. I wouldn’t be one, anyway.
But you don’t give a kid the entire picture right away. First, you make damn sure he doesn’t fall off the cliff. As he or she gets older, you can tell her more about mountain climbing.
Look - there’s no such thing as “the entire picture”. You could go on forever about the “entire picture”. And I think the gun thing is a good example. You don’t teach safe gun handling to a toddler. You scare the living shit out of him about even going near one first. Later, you explain how to handle one. He may feel burned that he was first taught to fear them at all costs. If he tells you of this trauma, you slap him in the head and tell him not to be such a wuss.
No, I am not entirely serious. I am burlesquing my point in order to more clearly make it.
I don’t see ‘accessible healthcare’ as what is being provided for by the healthcare legislation. I see it as a kind of socialism. That has some obstructive connotations as a label, sure, but I see it as more accurate than your choice of words.
Obama is almost the ideal image builder, which is precisely why I’m so suspicious of this administration. My country spent most of the last 12 years being led by Blair, very much our equivalent of Obama (we’re still too racist to elect a black guy). Obama has a lot of the same sorts of connections and his speeches are reminiscent of Blair’s circa 1997-01. ‘Ethical’ foreign policy. Healing the perceived wounds. Reassuring words that assert the importance of individual responsibility and at the same time the necessity of constant intervention by the state. They called it the ‘third way’. Obama calls it ‘the change we need’.
Partly because it makes a continuation of the policy by successive governments less likely. In 7 years time the Republicans will get back in, probably on a platform of cutting down the expenditure of a government which will by then be seen as bloated, outmoded and inefficient. It’ll be an easy target for cuts, and just as it might have been starting to make a real difference the rug will be pulled out and as per usual the people at the bottom of the pile will have to eat the shit.
Besides which, as it stands the proposals constitute little more than a massive subsidy to the already immensely profitable private medical insurance industry. The poor people Obama’s supposedly trying to help will end up paying for that subsidy, and won’t get anything like a fair exchange in terms of healthcare provision.
For these reasons and more, I just don’t buy it. And I’m someone who essentially agrees with the principle of ‘socialised’ healthcare, from a country which has something approximating that. One would need all the hands across America to count the number of policies that appear under beneficient labels but end up achieving the opposite. I don’t think Obama is personally or politically in a position to effect real change, so what he says and does is mostly symbolic at best. Given who he was up against, he was the preferable candidate to me. However, leaders who don’t inspire as much confidence face less slack when things go wrong, and the US economy is the biggest and most precarious house of cards you’ll come across.