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When I was your age I was in a similar boat. I went to the Hillsdale Science Camp for two or three summers -- I loved it, and can speak very highly for it. Definitely worth checking out!

Every 3 decades or so they seem go through a small government revolution and basically completely reinvent the government. There is a really interesting article at http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2004&month=04, one point of note is that when they cute taxes in half they actually saw a rise in revenue of nearly 20% as it was easier for people to understand and there was less avoidance.

You started nicely but finished poorly. The problem is that people are not paying for their own healthcare. Since they aren't paying for it, they have no incentive to do their own checking or avoid needing the care to begin with. Our insurance model is broken. A bigger insurer (ie. Uncle Sam) won't fix it.

Here's a good article about it: http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2009&month=03

There is only one source that doesn't ultimately depend on the sun. Nuclear. It also happens to be the most efficient and safer than fossil fuels. Nuclear fuel is plentiful (there's some under my town), but unfortunately, the US government has caved in to the fearmongerers and tree-huggers.

There is so much regulation and red tape that is simply isn't practical to build a reactor. If some entrepreneuring college grad started now, his kids could be married before the first wall went up. It's pathetic.

And it IS practical for third-world countries. GE made a neighborhood years ago to prove a point where every single house had its own little reactor. Why not one for a cluster of towns? Reactors pay for themselves pretty quickly, IF you can get them built.

Some good reading on the subject.
http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2008&month=02

Well, isn't Canada already very U.S. dependent? As far as I know if the U.S. goes down or up...Canada goes with it. A good (rarely told) look at Canada can be found here: http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2008&month=01 Though I do have to say my favorite professor was Canadian. : )

This may be awesome, but government healthcare sure isn't. Can you imagine? There is a 10 month waiting list for maternity wards.
(Good essay on the subject http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2008&month=01)

Source: http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

Canada's main exports are raw materials (oil and lumber) and its main imports are knowledge and people (immigrants). It's a mix of Third World economy, state simulation of socialist delusion, progressive naiviety and increasing practical problems.

See nice comment here:

"In conclusion, I'm not optimistic about Canada for various reasons--from the recent Chinese enthusiasm for buying up the country's resources to the ongoing brain drain--but also for a reason more profound. The biggest difference between Canada and the U.S. is not that you crazy, violent, psycho Yanks have guns and we caring, progressive Canucks have socialized health care, but that America has a healthy fertility rate and we don't. Americans have 2.1 children per couple, which is enough to maintain a stable population, whereas according to the latest official figures, Canadian couples have only 1.5. This puts us on the brink of steep demographic decline. Consider the math: 10 million parents have 7.5 million children, 5.6 million grandchildren, and 4.2 million great-grandchildren. You can imagine what shape those lavish Canadian social programs will be in under that scenario, and that's before your average teenage burger-flipper gets tired of supporting entire gated communities and decides he'd rather head south than pay 70 percent tax rates.

So, to produce the children we couldn't be bothered having ourselves, we use the developing world as our maternity ward. Between 2001 and 2006, Canada's population increased by 1.6 million. 400,000 came from natural population growth kids, while 1.2 million came from immigration. Thus native Canadians--already only amounting to 25 percent of the country's population growth--will become an ever smaller minority in the Canada of the future. It's like a company in which you hold an ever diminishing percentage of the stock. It might still be a great, successful company in the years ahead, but if it is, it won't have much--if anything--to do with you.

In that most basic sense, American progressives who look to Canada are wrong. Not only is Canada's path not a model for America, it's not a viable model for Canada. As Canadians are about to discover, the future belongs to those who show up for it."

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

I don't think facism ended with Franco. The Baath party in Iraq was of indirect Nazi descent.

It was a Vichy-sponsored, Nazi-inspired national socialist party which was founded in Vichy-controlled Damascus and spread to oust the British colonial government in Baghdad. The party then dropped its anti-communist element and allied with the Soviets to prolong their rule. Like national socialism in Germany, the Baathists worked largely on the ideals of a racial struggle between their own pure race and those they considered defilers of that race. Its shift in Iraq to pro-Sunni and anti-Shiite came later, and probably out of convenience.

The Baath party of Iraq was founded as a single-party pro-Vichy, pro-Nazi ruling group for racial Arabs. The Bath Party of Syria used to be the same party, but important rifts had formed between the two parties long before Saddam Hussein's regime ended. Baghdad was the traditional capital of the ideal pan-Arab world many true believers in that movement envisioned, which is probably why the more radical portions of the party ended up there.

In short, Saddam Hussein's government was not only eerily similar to Hitler's, but it was a family resemblance.

Eretzy Isroel
Weekly Standard
Paul Johnson, a historian at Hillsdale College
Dissent Magazine
Free Republic
Syrian Embassy
a well-bibiliographied attack on the Bush family as supporters of the Baath party
International Socialist Review article in support of Iraq vs. US invasion

These references run from very conservative to very liberal, and from very Arab to very Western. Although several of them probably show strong biases, they weave an interesting story when read together.

The problem is, in my mind, whether with road money or education money, the Fed makes us pay the money, and then makes us jusmp through hoops to get it back. And then the Fed acts like they are giving us a big gift when they give the money we pay (at the threat of jail), back to our states and institutions...
Schools could always be like Hillsdale....http://www.hillsdale.edu/
In 1979, this continuing battle with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) began to intensify. The College filed a petition for judicial review in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, asking the court to overturn a previous decision by the Reviewing Authority, Office of Civil Rights of HEW. This decision would have required Hillsdale to submit Assurance of Compliance forms mandated by Title IX as a condition of the continued receipt of federal financial assistance by two hundred Hillsdale students.

Hillsdale's petition was based in part upon tradition - the pioneering College had a tradition of graduating women, blacks, and other minorities since before the Civil War. In December 1982, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals vindicated Hillsdale's refusal to sign the compliance forms, but it also ruled that government aid to individual students could be terminated without a finding that a college actually discriminated. Hillsdale subsequently announced that it was carrying this battle for educational freedom to the highest American court. In February 1984 in a related case, Grove City College v. T.H. Bell, Secretary U.S. Department of Education, the U. S. Supreme Court made a decision regarding arguments first made by Hillsdale College. It required every college or university to fulfill federal requirements because its students received federal aid. Because Hillsdale under the Grove City College decision would have had to sign compliance forms to protect students formerly on government aid, the College instead successfully generated an additional $1,000,000 annually from private sources. Today, the college turns down federal taxpayer money to the tune of $5 million per year, which it replaces entirely with private contributions. Due in no small part to its courageous stand, the College raised enough extra revenue to pay the equivalent of the federal loans that it would now refuse. The Detroit Free Press on January 25, 1981 stated, "Hillsdale after all, is famous as the little college that fights for rightness and independence. From the unlikely location of south central Michigan, it gained its national recognition by drawing its sword against the federal government. No trespassing, it told HEW; we'll hire, promote, subsidize, educate and influence with no interference from you."

Who do you think does all that real work in business, industry, etc.? The true building of America is from the entrepreneurs, who happen to be mostly conservative.

private institutions? none of their damn business.

As far as I know there are only two or three private colleges that do not accept federal funding (Hillsdale College in Michigan, Grove City College in Pennsylvania, and Patrick Henry College in Virginia). I graduated from Hillsdale in 2002 and so this fact falls close to home, but you can see these other sources for verification.

This brings us back on topic, should the federal government be able to keep tabs on its investment? Maybe the better question is should the federal government be funding (read controlling) nearly all of the higher education in the nation? Seeing as only 3 colleges are run without federal money, which I would like to find anyone who gets funding without strings attached.

private institutions? none of their damn business.

As far as I know there are only two or three private colleges that do not accept federal funding (Hillsdale College in Michigan, Grove City College in Pennsylvania, and Patrick Henry College in Virginia). I graduated from Hillsdale in 2002 and so this fact falls close to home, but you can see these other sources for verification.

This brings us back on topic, should the federal government be able to keep tabs on its investment? Maybe the better question is should the federal government be funding (read controlling) nearly all of the higher education in the nation? Seeing as only 3 colleges are run without federal money, which I would like to find anyone who gets funding without strings attached.

But he has, he's waved a firearm around in a public place.

Your position is utterly perplexing. You say "waving a firearm around" like the mere action is causing horrific injuries and massive casualties.

Hello, nothing happened. If the gun accidentally discharged due to the owner's carelessness, he should be fully responsible for that. (This very risk is why responsible gun owners [which most are] that carry for self-defense [which not many do] usually take it upon themselves to get training.) But to leave him defenseless because of a maybe, a might-have-been, a potentiality - is ridiculous. I might slander or libel someone, and that's a crime too - should I be barred from speaking or writing??? Just like most people never slander or libel someone (to a criminal level anyway) most people never use a gun against another person. Most of the times when they are used against a person are in self-defense. And most defensive gun uses never even result in a bullet being fired - just "waving it around" (and often it doesn't even amount to that) is enough to make a criminal think twice and back off. However, these stories don't make headlines (Sep 2004 if the relevant story has been archived).

Nobody in the US makes it a habit to walk around like Rambo, dozens of guns and live ammo strapped on, casually sticking them under people's noses with the safeties off. The fact that you have that perception just shows how ignorant you, and most people that haven't grown up around guns, are of them in particular and America in general. The media plays on your ignorance, showing the very thing you fear as the only possible outcome. Try a different picture.

"Your defense against aggression might have a remote possibility of harming a third party. Therefore you shall forever be relegated to victimhood." Silly Brits.

I dont understand Americans obbsession with the freedom to use items designed urely to injure and kill in anyway they please without restriction.

I don't understand the British obsession with bending over and taking it up the rear.

It is precisely because there are people who will use (potentially lethal) force against me and my family, whose lives I value very much, that we fiercely protect the freedom to use similar force in defense. If my right to life means anything at all, my right to defend it (with force if necessary - maybe you get by with biting witticisms?) is a natural consequence.

If your life isn't worth protecting, fine, don't buy a gun. If your neighbors' aren't worth it, disband your police. If your countrymens' aren't worth it either, disband your military. If you can claim a collective right to protect your collective lives, then how can you deny an individual right to protect your individual life? In a country of one, you'd be your own military. No one cedes that right just because there are other people around.

Government (people as a collective) has no right to do what individual people have no right to do. Invalidating self-defense invalidates national defense. Just because you want to be peaceful doesn't mean everyone else does, and occasionally you may have to use violence to defend the peace. Sounds paradoxical, but true.

I look forward to Reason magazine every month. They even had a /. article about them a few months back when they produced a personalized version of their magazine for every subscriber.

I also like Imprimis. It's a little strong in it's opinions but I enjoy the quality of the articles.

Keynesian economics requires none of the hand-waving you need to make Reaganomics seem sensible.

That has to be the most laughable statement about economics I've heard all year. You want hand-waving? How about the idea that the government spending money it doesn't have can magically make us all better off? Yes, it may increase GDP in the short run, but I have never heard a believable explanation about why we are actually better off because of it (and no, the "money multiplier" argument is not believable).

Make Reaganomics seem sensible? Look at New Zealand around 1984, when it elected a reform government. The reform government cut taxes by about half -- and ended up with about 20% more revenue. (You can read about it in an Imprimis article by Maurice P. McTigue, former New Zealand Parliament member.) Part of this was due to simplification of the tax code, which provided less incentive for individuals and businesses to search out "loopholes" in the tax law; but I doubt that would account for all of the increase. In any case, as far as I know most economists don't argue that the Laffer curve is in itself incorrect; it's a debate over what exactly the curve looks like and where we are on it.

Mike

I have attended both small, unknown and big, prestigious universities, and the quality and quantity of teaching is certainly better at the bigger schools.

While that may be your individual case I also have attended a small, relatively unkown school (Hillsdale College in Michigan) and then a big, prestigious university (UofM Ann Arbor). While I am receiving a much deeper (though narrow, biological chemistry specifically) education now than my small college could ever hope to offer, the quality of my undergrad education was top notch. Definitely exceeding the education 98% of UofM undergrads receive. I don't think you can compare undergraduate and graduate value in specific regards to size / prestige.

Also coming from a true liberal arts college I particularily appreciate this quote:

In the complexities of contemporary existence
the specialist who is trained but uneducated,
technically skilled but culturally incompetent,
is a menace.
-David B. Truman, Dean of Columbia College

Anyways, just a controlled rant because I truly believe the value of small liberal arts colleges are severely under-appreciated.

~Dan
http://www.pbase.com/efatapo

Yeah, packetshitter can suck my butt. I went to Hillsdale College. We had nothing but problems. They just grouped all FTP/Gaming ports into one. So, our Ping would be 60 for a minute and then spike to 10,000. Oh, and it didn't stop people from transferring files. People found out AIMster wasn't "shapped" as well as a couple other programs. Oh, and it just decided to crap out every 18 hours or so. IOW, at 10pm every night it would die and then the lazy admin wouldn't make it back in until 8am. What a jerk. So, me and my suitemates shared a Cable Modem which was insanely faster. Well, that's my rant for the evening. In summary, packetshitter made it just as unpleasant for the users if not more so than the Kazaa users. Oh, and the kazaa users pay and didn't cost friggin' $10,000. BLAH!!!! Morons