It will soon be possible for them to get a DNA sample from the soda can you just emptied
How many other hands has that can been in? There's no reliable chain of evidence for such a collection.
But, assuming a warrant and appropriate legal protections, that's not the issue. The issue is the collection of blood or tissue samples, as discussed in TFA.
After you get out of the hospital you will be tried for resisting arrest and assaulting an officer.
Standing up for liberty is dangerous sometimes, no question. I have no desire to be injured, imprisoned, or killed by government thugs; but I find the idea of being intimately assaulted, having the state claim sovereignty over my flesh and attempt to steal my blood or tissue (however little) forcibly taken, to be something worth fighting to stop - worth injuring or being injured, perhaps even killing or dying, to do so.
the search must still be ordered through a FISA court judge. It STILL goes through courts in other words.
The fact that the FBI gets an order rubber-stamped by a special secret court specifically set up to grant such stamping, does not change that the process is done without the Constitutionally-required warrants based on probable cause, in violation of state confidentiality laws, and using unconstitutional gag orders.
Rhetoric: Ms. Comstock noted the requirement for the FBI to receive "a court order," elaborating that FBI agents can obtain business records "only by appearing before the FISA court and convincing it that they need them."
Reality: When the Justice Department says that section 215 requires a "court order," many people assume that the FBI has to produce evidence for a court to weigh, that the FBI has to have probable cause of commission of a crime (past or present), or that the judge can refuse to issue the warrant if the judge doesn't think the evidence justifies issuing the order. None of those assumptions apply to a section 215 application. Normal judicial supervision of the search warrant process is reduced to a rubber stamp of the application's careful preparation by the FBI.
Applications for warrants under section 215 are made to a FISA court judge (a federal judge appointed by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court without confirmation by the Senate), or to a federal magistrate judge, also especially appointed by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The proceedings are ex parte, meaning that they are obtained without notice to the suspect. The order may not specify that it is issued for the purposes of the terrorism investigation. And, the individuals served with the order and responding to the order are prohibited from informing the suspect or any third party that the order has been served.
Section 215 allows the government to obtain records without probable cause of past or planned criminal conduct. The FBI's application must merely certify that the investigation is relevant to an ongoing investigation. Once this request is presented in the proper format, the FISA judge must then issue the warrant. The judge has no discretion to refuse the FBI's request for a section 215 business records search warrant unless the certification is incomplete.
In addition, the work of the FISA court is all conducted ex parte (without notice to or participation by the other party; only the FBI even knows the court is considering the application). Add to this secrecy the a gag order preventing the business served with the order from telling anyone about the order, and what results is that the people whose records are being searched have no way to defend themselves. For example, they have no way to present an argument to any court that there has been a mistake in identity, or that the search arises solely from protected First Amendment activity.
And further, many people assume that "court proceedings" are monitored by the press and through the press is available for public scrutiny. Again, these assumptions are not true when applied to the FISA court. The FISA "court" is a secret chamber with very different rules and procedures than those most people in the United States associate with a "court." The Justice Department is using familiar language, but with unstated definitions.
It is also important to note that under constitutionally sound procedures, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, courts and prosecutors have the ability to shield warrants from the view of the suspect in cases where evidence may be destroyed or other security needs are at risk. The Justice Department does not need this tool to safeguard sensitive searches.
Determining which teenager purchased The Anarchist Cookbook a week before the school blew up is a perfectly valid tool the police can use when tracking down who the bomber is.
Not if such a determination is done using warrantless searches, done without probably cause, in violation of state confidentiality laws, and using unconstitutional gag orders to quash discussion of abuses - i.e., the circumstances of the library records seizures mentioned by the GP.
If "they" come with a court order compelling you to give DNA, fighting back will just wind up with you in jail for contempt of court and/or resisting a police officer.
When the state exceeds its rightful authority, it is the right - the duty - of citizens to resist, non-violently if possible, violently if need be. An order requiring me, convicted of no crime, to yield a sliver to flesh to the government is inherently illegitimate. I repeat: the sovereignty of the state ends at my skin. It is a simple principle, for which I am prepared to fight very hard.
Would resistance end me up in jail, or dead? Possibly; I don't like that idea, but I like the idea of the government claiming to own my body even less. Will the spectre of "DNA-troopers" reaping a reward of injury or death for their attempt to violate my person make them hesitant about violating the liberties of others? It is to be hoped.
You leave a litter trail of oils, dead skin, and hair where ever you go.
Proving that some bit of dead skin and hair amoung all those in some public place I've been belongs to me would be tricky to impossible without a prior DNA sample.
If a legitimate warrant is issued, I have no problem with a search of my home to pluck hairs from my brush, though those could be my girlfriend's, or maybe my housemate borrowed it. Attempting to extract any amount, however microscopic and miniscule, of my flesh
The sovereignty of the state ends at my skin. Anyone attempting to force a DNA sample out of me will be dealt with in the same manner I would deal with an attempted sexual assault.
I don't know if GW is really occurring or whether humanity is contributing to it if it is happening, and I recognise the obvious fact that outfits such as Bush Inc will lie and cheat to deny at all costs that it's happening, but I also note that GW-proponents are some of the least fucking tolerant of alternative possibilities.
That it's occuring is not in any significant doubt, and the strong scientific consensus is that humanity is contributing to it.
Are there alternative possibilities advocated by some? Yes. There are also those who argue for alternative possibilities to evolution by natural selection. Or to take examples where there has been actual controversy amoung learned and sane people in the past century, alternative possibilities to the inflationary Big Bang, the idea that tobacco smoke is carcinogenic, and the nebular theory of planetary fomation.
If you want to see real scientific "intolerance", try advocating the Steady State theory or the near-collision hypothesis, or try recommending cigarette smoking to people who want to lose weight.
"Aid and comfort" means more than stopping by to say hello to people your government is, for whatever reason, trying to kill - that is Constitutionally protected speech. It means giving material aid to an enemy.
It's also questionable whether the Viet Cong were, legally, the enemies of the United States - no state of war existed. The Viet Cong were the enemies of the puppet government the U.S. foolishly and illegally set up and back with our blood and treasure, yes; that doesn't necessarily make them enemies of the U.S.
Suddenly police officers and men in camouflage swarmed up the path, hoisting a battering ram. "Come out with your hands up immediately, Miss White!" one of them yelled through a megaphone, while another handcuffed the physicist in his underwear.
What's remarkable is that they produced the search warrant after all this. (Unfortunately, with the increasing militarization of policing since WWII - and especially since the "War on Drugs" - this sort of blitzkrieg raid is all too common.)
If a bunch of guys come running toward my door with a battering ram, they may be met with deadly force. I am within my legal and moral rights to shoot first - not only have they not identified themselves properly as police instead of garden-variety home invaders, but a cop without a warrant is a home invader. A cop who doesn't show me a warrant is a cop without a warrant, as far I can tell.
Without proper identification I cannot but assume such an attack the most grave of threats from persons unknown. (Attackers disguised as police are common enough that no one should assume, in a life-or-death situation, that someone in a uniform engaging in apparent criminal activity - such as a home invasion - is a genuine cop.)
If the local LEOs want to search my home, a polite knock and a display of proper identication and a warrant will gain them all legal access without any violent resistance. (I hope my fans in domestic surveillance will make a note of that.)
I more than half-suspect that often, these guys would like to provoke a shoot-out. Makes them feel like real heroes fighting real bad guys.
I've always said, "All civilized men are just two meals and a bath away from clawing each other to death with their bare hands".
Fortunately, the many examples of vituous and heroic behavior under duress - in concentration camps, in times of disaster and war - shows this incorrect. While certainly capable of great savagery towards groups considered "outsiders", towards recognized kindred or tribal "insiders" the naked ape often exhibits great tenderness and self-sacrifice.
It's a stupid, vicious world, and I don't know what to do about it
I suggest working to widen the notion of "tribe" past family and local community, past nation-state, to the whole human race (and indeed, beyond to all sentient beings).
"We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." -- Albert Einstein
As amazing as this sounds, it's actually cheaper to go to college - if you look at just tuition, the average cost of college is under 10K
If you just look at tuition, the averge cost of public school education is free. Colleges get significant government support, as well as private grants and endowments, that would have to be accounted for in a meaningful comparision.
Even disregarding that substantial support, at four-year private institutions, tuition and fees averged $19,710 for 2003-2004, over twice the average per-student public school spending. At (heavily subsidized) four-year public institutions, it was $4,694, about half - but a full-time college student spends about half as much time in class as a primary or high school student, so in terms of student-hours it balances out. And we haven't yet accounted for state subsidies to public universities.
Yet somehow, the public school system can't seem to make that happen.
It is misleading to speak of "the" public school system. There are over 10,000 school districts in the U.S., with varying funding, administration, curricula, and levels of success.
I guess as the US is a democratic country, it's alright to do so. Democracy means, literally, rule by the people.
The U.S. is a constitutional democratic republic - it is an indirect democracy, yes, but one where the rightful powers of the government are limited by prior arangement, to prevent mob rule from trampling on citizen's rights.
I.e., even if in the grip of some mass hysteria, 90% of the population thinks it's ok to do something, that doesn't make it legal. If that 90% maintains that belief, then eventually the Constitution will be changed, but that process takes long enough for cooler heads to usually prevail.
Oh, and nerd *fighting*? Nerds are the last people who are going to want to blow off steam by real, painful, physical fighting...
Actually my sensei's dojo is full of geeks, nerds, and brainiacs. She's an EE, the senior student is a physician, and I'm one of several software guys.
Many techies are budoka. A former boss of mine was an aikido instructor; I worked with one guy who was an early student of Ed Parker, and another who was a Shotokan karate instructor. The famous ESR is a black belt in "Moo Do", "an eclectic martial art based on Tae Kwon Do". As he mentions in the Jargon File,
In 1997, for example, your humble editor recalls sitting down with five strangers at the first Perl conference and discovering that four of us were in active training in some sort of martial art -- and, what is more interesting, nobody at the table found this high perecentage at all odd.
Many others are involed in SCA or similar live HTH combat similuation.
I dunno, maybe you young'ns just aren't as tough as us older geeks who grew up before "frag-fests".
anyone know if there are Geek Fight Clubs in Chicago??
I don't know about "fight clubs", but if you want some good real martial arts training in Chicago, let me suggest Thousand Waves Seido Karate. Good for self-defense, stress relief, physical fitness, and personal development; safer, more educational, more useful, and more challenging than a "fight club". I know several of the instructors there and they are skilled, tough, and very nice people.
If states had more influence, the people would have more influence. You can change your state much easier than the federal government.
Not in my state, friend. The Democratic machine has a lock on the state legislature; if they chose the Senate, the Republicans (and Greens and Libertarians) probably wouldn't even bother running a candidate. (Not to say that a non-Democratic candidate has much chance in a direct election, but it would be even worse if selected by the legislature.)
I agree that the balance of state/federal power has swung to far in the federal direction. That doesn't mean indirect election of Senators would help. And it doesn't have any bearing on the original topic of pork-barrel spending.
I think the best way to get rid of pork is to go back to the state governments electing the members of Senate, instead of having the people elect them.
Yeah, that worked so well before...State governments are of course known for being free of corruption, cronyism, and polticial machines that block out any citizen involvment.
And of course State governments wouldn't have any motivation for sending Senators who would bring pork to their State. No sir-ee-bob.
BTW, I have this bridge for sale. E-mail me for details, you'll love it.:-)
The school requires absolute obiedience to dogmatic, rigid, and frequently bizzare and esoteric rules.
Which, sad to say, prepares them well for the modern American workplace and culture.
I believe it is in fact illegal to require anyone to work outside of company hours in the working world.
At previous employers I was only required to work overtime if I wanted to keep my job. Do you live somewhere where "professional" are not exempt from overtime provisions of labor law? Where?
Yet schools routinely require students to perform work outside of school hours, despite those hours being outside the schools remit.
They're only required to do it if they want to pass.
Now it may be, and certainly occasionally was in my experience in both high school and college, that the homework assignments did fsck-all to further mastery of the material, may be a waste of time required by a sub-par teacher with no concept of educational technique. may cause undue unhealthy stress. But to portray homework as some sort of forced labor is silly.
I was just talking with my Primary Investigator (PI) about that, how in studies of bacteria and fruit flies and even worms (like c.elegans, my fave) we get away with stuff that people would be protesting about if we did it to monkeys, dogs, or cats, and even if it happened to mice.
...or to humans, for that matter. The relevant distinction between bacteria, fruit flies, and tiny nematodes on one hand, and monkeys, mice, dogs, cats, and naked apes on the other, being a complex nervous system leading to an experience, a subjectivity, a "subject-of-a-life" - to the ability to have subjective experiences, including suffering.
Considering that (even if most people haven't given it conscious analysis), it's not remarkable that creulty towards our fellow vertebrates elicits more protest than experiments on monera and primitive animals.
Economic control in socialism is done by the government. They tax the money and then provide it for something else.
Not all socialism is state socialism. Anarchy is a form of socialism - libertarian socialism, the original libertarianism before the right stole the term.
Capitalism is a much better example of distributed control of economic resources. No one forces you to purchase food from BiLo or Publix or (whetever your local grocer is)
You're confusing markets with capitalism. There are socialist market theories, and command-econmony capitalist systems (like the U.S. during WWII).
The capitalist/socialist question is "Who owns economic resources? Who profits from their exploitation?"; the socialist says it should be the guys actually doing the work, the capitalist says the owners and investors, even if they're "absentee stockholders" who do no work, should profit.
The market/command econmony question is "Who decides what end resources are directed to? Who decides what gets produced?"
Anarchists are opposed to centralization in either matter. (Zenarchists further realize that "Universal Enlightenment" - i.e., a society of informed, actualized human beings - is a prerequisite for radical decentralization to be stable.)
If you want real distributed control of economic resources, get rid of the government's ability to issue corporate charters, land and resource deeds, copyrights, patents...oh, and trash the reserve banking system.
[Public education is] it's paid for through taxes. It's regulated through a central, hierarchical authority.
Agreed. Neither of these facts makes public education socialist, however.
The people who receive the education services, get one and only one choice: attend or not. There are no alternatives.
There are in fact alternatives to public school: private schools and homeschooling. Do these not exist where you live, or what?
You can't even extract your tax money to fund home schooling, much less private schooling
No, you can't; why would you expect to? You can't extract your "defense" spending to pay for your own guns.
The objective of education spending with your tax dollars is not to educate you specifically, it's to have an educated society, just as the objective of defense spending with your tax dollars is not to educate you, it's to provide for the common defense. (Personally, I'm open to tax credits for charitable contributions, so maybe if you contribute X dollars to a charter school, X dollars should come off your tax bill.)
Yeah... so some guy runs into my back bumper. I tell him "The last time someone ran into my bumper and didn't have insurance, he ended up dead..."[...]Now what should a listener infer from that? It seems like a threat, even when I explicity tell the guy that it's not.
No, that is a threat; your implication is clearly threatening. However, it is a bad parallel to the case at hand.
A closer one would be: some guy runs into your my back bumper. He starts screaming and ranting and raving about how you cut him off, yadda yadda yadda. You stay cool, try to calm him down; and you tell him "Look, buddy, you have to be careful how you react to these situations; letting tempers flare up after a fender-bender is dangerous. A few years ago across town, there was a similar accidient, the drivers argued, and somebody got shot. So let's just be cool about this, huh?"
By making the reference to the kids at Columbine, he made the veiled threat.
No. He brought it to the school's attention that 1) students felt bullied, and 2) students feeling bullied can lead to Columbine-like situations. This is a concerned warning (though perhaps less that articulately expressed), not a threat.
It's crap like this that makes me want the public school system abolished and replaced with something more privately run, where competition can weed out this kind of stupid behavior.
Yes, privately run companies are famous for repsecting peoples rights.</sarcasm>
(Actually, I'm sympathetic to some parts of the charter school movement, and to school choice amoung public schools in a district. But let's not pretend that the same sorts of companies that routinely trample workers would treat students any better.)
Socialism doesn't work.
Socialism - the control of economic resources by workers, as opposed to capitalism's rather than by a government-backed minority of owners - can work, though of course every time it rears its head those in power do everything they can to quash it. It is a shame that so many people confuse socialism, Marxism, Stalinism, social democracy, and regulated capitalism.
Public schools have fsck-all to do with socialism.
And what if the new person happens to like his/her existence?
So what? I don't have any ethical obligation to suffer pain in order to create a new person, regardless of how much that new person may happen to like his existence. Given the option of painful death + creation of new person (a person who, being an infantile mind in an adult body, would be a burden on others for many years) versus painless death, I'll take the painless death, thanks.
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How many other hands has that can been in? There's no reliable chain of evidence for such a collection.
But, assuming a warrant and appropriate legal protections, that's not the issue. The issue is the collection of blood or tissue samples, as discussed in TFA.
Standing up for liberty is dangerous sometimes, no question. I have no desire to be injured, imprisoned, or killed by government thugs; but I find the idea of being intimately assaulted, having the state claim sovereignty over my flesh and attempt to steal my blood or tissue (however little) forcibly taken, to be something worth fighting to stop - worth injuring or being injured, perhaps even killing or dying, to do so.
The fact that the FBI gets an order rubber-stamped by a special secret court specifically set up to grant such stamping, does not change that the process is done without the Constitutionally-required warrants based on probable cause, in violation of state confidentiality laws, and using unconstitutional gag orders.
See this analysis by the FCNL:
Not if such a determination is done using warrantless searches, done without probably cause, in violation of state confidentiality laws, and using unconstitutional gag orders to quash discussion of abuses - i.e., the circumstances of the library records seizures mentioned by the GP.
When the state exceeds its rightful authority, it is the right - the duty - of citizens to resist, non-violently if possible, violently if need be. An order requiring me, convicted of no crime, to yield a sliver to flesh to the government is inherently illegitimate. I repeat: the sovereignty of the state ends at my skin. It is a simple principle, for which I am prepared to fight very hard.
Would resistance end me up in jail, or dead? Possibly; I don't like that idea, but I like the idea of the government claiming to own my body even less. Will the spectre of "DNA-troopers" reaping a reward of injury or death for their attempt to violate my person make them hesitant about violating the liberties of others? It is to be hoped.
Proving that some bit of dead skin and hair amoung all those in some public place I've been belongs to me would be tricky to impossible without a prior DNA sample.
If a legitimate warrant is issued, I have no problem with a search of my home to pluck hairs from my brush, though those could be my girlfriend's, or maybe my housemate borrowed it. Attempting to extract any amount, however microscopic and miniscule, of my flesh
...when you pry it from my cold dead cells.
The sovereignty of the state ends at my skin. Anyone attempting to force a DNA sample out of me will be dealt with in the same manner I would deal with an attempted sexual assault.
That it's occuring is not in any significant doubt, and the strong scientific consensus is that humanity is contributing to it.
Are there alternative possibilities advocated by some? Yes. There are also those who argue for alternative possibilities to evolution by natural selection. Or to take examples where there has been actual controversy amoung learned and sane people in the past century, alternative possibilities to the inflationary Big Bang, the idea that tobacco smoke is carcinogenic, and the nebular theory of planetary fomation.
If you want to see real scientific "intolerance", try advocating the Steady State theory or the near-collision hypothesis, or try recommending cigarette smoking to people who want to lose weight.
"Aid and comfort" means more than stopping by to say hello to people your government is, for whatever reason, trying to kill - that is Constitutionally protected speech. It means giving material aid to an enemy.
It's also questionable whether the Viet Cong were, legally, the enemies of the United States - no state of war existed. The Viet Cong were the enemies of the puppet government the U.S. foolishly and illegally set up and back with our blood and treasure, yes; that doesn't necessarily make them enemies of the U.S.
What's remarkable is that they produced the search warrant after all this. (Unfortunately, with the increasing militarization of policing since WWII - and especially since the "War on Drugs" - this sort of blitzkrieg raid is all too common.)
If a bunch of guys come running toward my door with a battering ram, they may be met with deadly force. I am within my legal and moral rights to shoot first - not only have they not identified themselves properly as police instead of garden-variety home invaders, but a cop without a warrant is a home invader. A cop who doesn't show me a warrant is a cop without a warrant, as far I can tell.
Without proper identification I cannot but assume such an attack the most grave of threats from persons unknown. (Attackers disguised as police are common enough that no one should assume, in a life-or-death situation, that someone in a uniform engaging in apparent criminal activity - such as a home invasion - is a genuine cop.)
If the local LEOs want to search my home, a polite knock and a display of proper identication and a warrant will gain them all legal access without any violent resistance. (I hope my fans in domestic surveillance will make a note of that.)
I more than half-suspect that often, these guys would like to provoke a shoot-out. Makes them feel like real heroes fighting real bad guys.
Fortunately, the many examples of vituous and heroic behavior under duress - in concentration camps, in times of disaster and war - shows this incorrect. While certainly capable of great savagery towards groups considered "outsiders", towards recognized kindred or tribal "insiders" the naked ape often exhibits great tenderness and self-sacrifice.
I suggest working to widen the notion of "tribe" past family and local community, past nation-state, to the whole human race (and indeed, beyond to all sentient beings).
"We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." -- Albert Einstein
Not quite: according to a recent release from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. public school districts spent an average of $8,287 per student in 2004, ranging from $12,981 in New Jersey to $5,008 in Utah.
If you just look at tuition, the averge cost of public school education is free. Colleges get significant government support, as well as private grants and endowments, that would have to be accounted for in a meaningful comparision.
Even disregarding that substantial support, at four-year private institutions, tuition and fees averged $19,710 for 2003-2004, over twice the average per-student public school spending. At (heavily subsidized) four-year public institutions, it was $4,694, about half - but a full-time college student spends about half as much time in class as a primary or high school student, so in terms of student-hours it balances out. And we haven't yet accounted for state subsidies to public universities.
It is misleading to speak of "the" public school system. There are over 10,000 school districts in the U.S., with varying funding, administration, curricula, and levels of success.
The U.S. is a constitutional democratic republic - it is an indirect democracy, yes, but one where the rightful powers of the government are limited by prior arangement, to prevent mob rule from trampling on citizen's rights.
I.e., even if in the grip of some mass hysteria, 90% of the population thinks it's ok to do something, that doesn't make it legal. If that 90% maintains that belief, then eventually the Constitution will be changed, but that process takes long enough for cooler heads to usually prevail.
Actually my sensei's dojo is full of geeks, nerds, and brainiacs. She's an EE, the senior student is a physician, and I'm one of several software guys.
Many techies are budoka. A former boss of mine was an aikido instructor; I worked with one guy who was an early student of Ed Parker, and another who was a Shotokan karate instructor. The famous ESR is a black belt in "Moo Do", "an eclectic martial art based on Tae Kwon Do". As he mentions in the Jargon File,
Many others are involed in SCA or similar live HTH combat similuation.
I dunno, maybe you young'ns just aren't as tough as us older geeks who grew up before "frag-fests".
I don't know about "fight clubs", but if you want some good real martial arts training in Chicago, let me suggest Thousand Waves Seido Karate. Good for self-defense, stress relief, physical fitness, and personal development; safer, more educational, more useful, and more challenging than a "fight club". I know several of the instructors there and they are skilled, tough, and very nice people.
Not in my state, friend. The Democratic machine has a lock on the state legislature; if they chose the Senate, the Republicans (and Greens and Libertarians) probably wouldn't even bother running a candidate. (Not to say that a non-Democratic candidate has much chance in a direct election, but it would be even worse if selected by the legislature.)
I agree that the balance of state/federal power has swung to far in the federal direction. That doesn't mean indirect election of Senators would help. And it doesn't have any bearing on the original topic of pork-barrel spending.
Yeah, that worked so well before...State governments are of course known for being free of corruption, cronyism, and polticial machines that block out any citizen involvment.
And of course State governments wouldn't have any motivation for sending Senators who would bring pork to their State. No sir-ee-bob.
BTW, I have this bridge for sale. E-mail me for details, you'll love it. :-)
Which, sad to say, prepares them well for the modern American workplace and culture.
At previous employers I was only required to work overtime if I wanted to keep my job. Do you live somewhere where "professional" are not exempt from overtime provisions of labor law? Where?
They're only required to do it if they want to pass.
Now it may be, and certainly occasionally was in my experience in both high school and college, that the homework assignments did fsck-all to further mastery of the material, may be a waste of time required by a sub-par teacher with no concept of educational technique. may cause undue unhealthy stress. But to portray homework as some sort of forced labor is silly.
...or to humans, for that matter. The relevant distinction between bacteria, fruit flies, and tiny nematodes on one hand, and monkeys, mice, dogs, cats, and naked apes on the other, being a complex nervous system leading to an experience, a subjectivity, a "subject-of-a-life" - to the ability to have subjective experiences, including suffering.
Considering that (even if most people haven't given it conscious analysis), it's not remarkable that creulty towards our fellow vertebrates elicits more protest than experiments on monera and primitive animals.
Except they're not reading "brainwaves", i.e. EEG, but MRI. MRI readings lags brain activity.
Not all socialism is state socialism. Anarchy is a form of socialism - libertarian socialism, the original libertarianism before the right stole the term.
You're confusing markets with capitalism. There are socialist market theories, and command-econmony capitalist systems (like the U.S. during WWII).
The capitalist/socialist question is "Who owns economic resources? Who profits from their exploitation?"; the socialist says it should be the guys actually doing the work, the capitalist says the owners and investors, even if they're "absentee stockholders" who do no work, should profit.
The market/command econmony question is "Who decides what end resources are directed to? Who decides what gets produced?"
Anarchists are opposed to centralization in either matter. (Zenarchists further realize that "Universal Enlightenment" - i.e., a society of informed, actualized human beings - is a prerequisite for radical decentralization to be stable.)
If you want real distributed control of economic resources, get rid of the government's ability to issue corporate charters, land and resource deeds, copyrights, patents...oh, and trash the reserve banking system.
Agreed. Neither of these facts makes public education socialist, however.
There are in fact alternatives to public school: private schools and homeschooling. Do these not exist where you live, or what?
No, you can't; why would you expect to? You can't extract your "defense" spending to pay for your own guns.
The objective of education spending with your tax dollars is not to educate you specifically, it's to have an educated society, just as the objective of defense spending with your tax dollars is not to educate you, it's to provide for the common defense. (Personally, I'm open to tax credits for charitable contributions, so maybe if you contribute X dollars to a charter school, X dollars should come off your tax bill.)
No, that is a threat; your implication is clearly threatening. However, it is a bad parallel to the case at hand.
A closer one would be: some guy runs into your my back bumper. He starts screaming and ranting and raving about how you cut him off, yadda yadda yadda. You stay cool, try to calm him down; and you tell him "Look, buddy, you have to be careful how you react to these situations; letting tempers flare up after a fender-bender is dangerous. A few years ago across town, there was a similar accidient, the drivers argued, and somebody got shot. So let's just be cool about this, huh?"
No. He brought it to the school's attention that 1) students felt bullied, and 2) students feeling bullied can lead to Columbine-like situations. This is a concerned warning (though perhaps less that articulately expressed), not a threat.
Yes, privately run companies are famous for repsecting peoples rights.</sarcasm>
(Actually, I'm sympathetic to some parts of the charter school movement, and to school choice amoung public schools in a district. But let's not pretend that the same sorts of companies that routinely trample workers would treat students any better.)
Socialism - the control of economic resources by workers, as opposed to capitalism's rather than by a government-backed minority of owners - can work, though of course every time it rears its head those in power do everything they can to quash it. It is a shame that so many people confuse socialism, Marxism, Stalinism, social democracy, and regulated capitalism.
Public schools have fsck-all to do with socialism.
Er, no, it's not. The infinitive form is the "to X" form; "to boldly split infinitives that no man has split before."
And there's really nothing wrong with splitting infinitives in English, that's a rule from Latin mistakenly carried over.
I love irony.
So what? I don't have any ethical obligation to suffer pain in order to create a new person, regardless of how much that new person may happen to like his existence. Given the option of painful death + creation of new person (a person who, being an infantile mind in an adult body, would be a burden on others for many years) versus painless death, I'll take the painless death, thanks.
"Starting over with a blank slate" is just a quick death, followed by the creation of a new person who happens to look like the old one.
Indeed, if this "mindwipe" were painful, versus a well-anaethetised starvation, starving to death might be preferable.