let me recap your argument: "yeah, ron paul wants to abolish public education, but he is such an extremist that he would be completely ineffectual at implementing his goals, as they go directly against the will of the american people, so no worries, bro."
that's a great quality to have in a leader, an ineffectual extremist whose ideas are widely hated by americans everywhere
Well, the vouchers idea helped get George Bush elected (with a little help from some election fraud and the Supreme Court). His ideas are not extreme, they are simply ideas. And he genuinely believes in his ideas, no doubt, but he's not dogmatic about them and he's willing to listen to all ideas and isn't going to ignore his constituents. To me, these are strong qualities for a leader.
yes, you've argued this before.
if you don't like the fact that your children are being taught that all humans originated 6,000 years ago from two people in a garden eating an apple offered to them by a talking snake, they can just uproot their whole existence and move elsewhere.
awesome
It is unlikely this is what ends up in public schools if he's elected. I realize your fear that people with different ideas, and can even appreciate it on some level as all of us probably can, but they are people with rights too. Ron Paul's primary focus (and what he wants the governments focus to be on) is protecting the rights of all people. It's a factor as to why he's not in favor of a lot of socialist programs, because not everyone supports them and so you end up taxing people to support things they don't really. As we should all realize, this tends to create resentment amongst people. See: The world of politics today as an example. There's also other reasons for not supporting socialist programs, and we could have a debate about that, but that isn't really the important issue anyway. I'm not sold either way on socialism or the market economy being the savior of anything. No, what I am in favor of is the abolition of the system that is truly the source of most of our problems today and increasing personal liberties (something that also frequently come into conflict with socialist programs). Basically banking reform is my top priority and Ron Paul is the only serious candidate talking sensibly about it, as well as being the only candidate in favor of limited government (meaning they can't do whatever the hell they want, ie: he wants to get rid of the Patriot Act et al, not just limited in the sense of having less functions) and personal freedom of choice that is up to my standards (You wanna kill yourself? Go nuts. Get high? Go for it. Hurt someone else? The line gets drawn.).
perhaps instead of rolling the dice with something so important as the education of our populace by throwing out the baby with the bathwater (i.e., abolishing public education), we can take cues from countries with a better model in place, like scandinavia.
what a novel fucking concept
He specifically states in that interview that he was not in favor of throwing the baby out with the bathwater but instead was for an incremental approach to what he believes will result in great improvement in education (of which standards have been steadily declining for decades with the public system, despite having gone through MANY changes, all of them in the name of improvement, almost none of them actually resulting in it). By the way, I don't think there's anyone in their right mind who would doubt that the best private schools in the world far exceed the education standards of the best public. The only immediate change he would (or could) make is the elimination of the Dept of Education which only came into existence in 1979. The States would still have their own school systems and tax base.
By the way, I'm not personally against public schools either. In fact I think they're a good thing to have. But I also prefer a regional approach to them. Fortunately in Canada the Federal government is constitutionally not allowed to run the education system. Unfortunately they have other powers they can use to get provinces to bend to their will (notably transfer payments, but I'm sure you don't know anything about this and you probably don't care so
).
here comes the kitchen table again.
You really are a disrespectful guy. .
he is on record stating that he wants to abolish all public schools.
ron paul's utopia is one where you go to "subway U" for your education.
jesus fucking christ. you have to be kidding me. do you suppose this is why the 2008 version of the "ron paul revolution" garnered about 40,000 votes, a whopping 0.0003% or so of people who voted?
i mean, for fuck sake, ALAN KEYES got more votes than ron paul.
your "revolution" sucks
His utopia would involve kids going to schools like Trinity and then graduating to places like Harvard or Yale where they go on to get a PhD in whatever field they love. Or alternately, to go a great school like trinity and then head to a trade school or just out into the work force because there are plenty of reasonably paying jobs available to everyone in the country because the monetary system has been revamped and people are amazed at the transformation in the economy (which would happen quite fast actually). You would be happily cultivating your fields of herb while your kids are off in their classes (no more than 6 or 7 kids a class!) and your wife or partner is doing whatever it is they enjoy doing/working.
Ron Paul finished 2nd in Iowa straw poll voting last I saw. I have no idea where he's polling at in some of the early primary states currently, but I do know he's been pretty consistently in the top 2 or 3 candidates in polls. So, way to go in your attempts to diminish him? Honestly, I'm not sure what your problem is. What are you scared of?