While I'm at it, do you know the words to "Old MacDonald Had a Farm?"

Bet you do.  When's the last time you sat down to try to memorize the words?  When you were... what... five?  You've retained those memories for decades.

Now, what was the phone number at your house when you were five? 

Still think music is useless?

Same as it is now. I live in the same house.

focused by who???  that sounds like Kautskyist thinking to me.  the only way you're ever going to get a society where people can't just "study whatever they want" is through a planned economy, and the only way you're ever going to get a planned economy is if the "poor," i.e. proletariat, take matters into their own hands through revolution, not by waiting for some external force to "get them" into some different educational programs or anything else.

bourgeois capitalism doesn't want to eliminate poverty.  if you want to eliminate poverty, it's gonna take a helluva lot more than educational reform.  it's gonna take changing the whole system.  many have tried.  still, if you ever get into a position to give it a go, i'm up for it.

test

Whoa! I love the fact that you're going for this argument full-tilt, but jeez.

Holy shit. Do you drink scotch through a straw or something? C'mon, live a little. Are you telling me that anything that doesn't benefit the economy is immediately off the table? I mean, as I've said, I lean towards libertarianism, but I'd have a hard time arguing against music for children. Music. Children. Some of the shit they teach them in other classes isn't half as valuable as music is.

Hahaha! Oh man. I think you just credited music classes with the cycle of poverty. You're killing me. "Cultural problem ... not developing a good work ethic ..." Oh man are you ever wrong. Being poor in a society where money is absolutely everything - more important than culture, art, music, good food, or good taste - is depressing as hell. Being born into a familly that's poor isn't a kid's fault. Being born in a poor neighbourhood isn't a kid's fault. If the neighbourhood is really bad, then the environment isn't just depressing, it's dangerous. Music classes can give people hope. Maybe your high school was terrible, sure, but there are lots of people for whom the tiniest bit of hope or comfort is extremely valuable, and music can bring that.

Would you rather they found religion?

 The game is rigged .... EAT THE RICH ... they are the real robbers .....   

To live a little, you have to eat first. I am not anti-music or music education, if parents pay for it. I'm anti-poverty. You can only justify taking from one group to educate the poor if you can demonstrate a net economic benefit. Otherwise, why work? Just be poor and get the reward.

I'm not saying that culture, art, music, sports, etc.. are not wonderful things. But they are secondary needs. If you don't have money to eat, housing or get medical care they are meaningless. Until schools do a good job of teaching students to provide for their primary needs, it's ridiculous to teach them about secondary things.

Starvation and homelessnes is even more depressing than a world without music.

White Lion - When The Children Cry - STEREO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB3NsCQoBgY&feature=related

    Do you cry ? We just bombed Iraq  ......  

socialist countries don't just "go off" the world market.  even the stalinist soviet union never did that.  as for lenin, ever heard of the new economic policy?  it was basically socialism and a market economy living side by side within the soviet union. 

you mean "socialism."  "communism" has never been attained by any country.

oh boy, cuba.  well, first of all, find me any sustainable proof that cuba forced those people to become doctors (i'm not talking about propaganda from so-called "radio marti" out of miami nor the undocumented anecdotes of hyperconservative like humberto fontova).  cuba made a lot of incentives for students to study medicine, it's true, because the country was left with almost no doctors after the revolution.  the economy "doesn't produce much wealth" because of the unjust US embargo on cuban goods and the strong penalties for any US corporation, or even one of its overseas subsidiaries, that does business with cuba, not because of any educational choices.  hell, an american can't even go to cuba without a lot of red tape unless you go through canada first and even then, if the state department gets wind of it, you're liable to serve a prison sentence.  sort of like east and west germany, except this time it's the supposedly democratic side that doesn't want you crossing...

but who's going to enforce that?  the market might decide what's most useful but the market can't make people study anything.  and besides, the market is fickle.  what if a job becomes obsolete halfway through a student's studies?  you gonna forcibly move them to another area?  set them back 6 or 7 years?

stalin put the brakes on the new economic policy after lenin's death by introducing peasant collectivization, i.e. forcing the peasants to combine their small landholdings into large state-run communes which were then mostly used to feed the urban workers, at the expense of the poor peasants' caloric intake.  in other words, planning for the "poor" (the "rich" peasants, or kulaks, ended up in the gulag) what they will do to benefit the economy.  what you plan is essentially stalinist collectivization on the educational level. 

stalinist collectivization didn't work precisely because of the fluctuating world market.  you can't hold students to an arbitrary standard.  the current education system clearly proves this.  you just have to give them the tools for critical thinking and hope they'll use them to be successful in life.  you can never guarantee success for them.  making a separate education system for "the poor" will only perpetuate "the poor."

and just how do you intend to define "the poor"?  "the poor" are no more stupid or incapable of making their own decisions than the rich, usually quite the opposite.  it seems to me that your system would crystallize the classes.  the aristocracy would continue to be impractical, bumbling, pleasure-seeking morons, whilst "the poor" would be tied to a cycle of vocational training and factory or farming jobs forever (because the only way you can guarantee a "poor" student will be "good for the economy" is by tying them to production, which is the only thing that is always needed).  let's say one of your "poor" students works his way up the factory ladder, strikes it rich, and buys the factory.  that excludes his children from his wonderful education.  they go off to study "whatever's fun" (because like it or not they came from a born "poor" man's loins and are inherently stupid) and in a couple generations they are resigned to being stupid, decadent aristocrats who are "free" to study "whatever's fun" because they live off the sweat of skilled factory workers trained by a benevolent state.  at the very least i hope those aristocrats will be raped up the ass with taxes in the new society.

neither does mr. bush.  nor mrs. clinton.  if there are nothing but skilled, educated workers, then (gasp) they might have to go trim the roses in the white house rose garden themselves.  either that or bring in more latinos, which wouldn't be good for the opinion polls.  the whole economic system is geared toward widening the gap between rich and poor.  state education will always be underfunded and your overhaul would take a helluva lot of funding.

I've actually had quite a few Socialist teachers. Socialism is quite common among the Mancunian middle class, and I guess in the North of England generally. Of course in High School we never really got the chance because there was a strict curriculum, I discovered Marx on my own. But in sixth form college (between high school and university) we had quite a few socialists who liked to talk about Marx and openly criticised capitalism. At University there are even more socialist doctors and professors among the humanities, there are even courses where neo-Marxist approaches are taken in the study of politics. Even in the management school here, which turns out so many of our young capitalists there are Marxists.

I never bought much of the crap we got told in school. That whole "socialism will never work in practice" and "people are naturally selfish" shite just gets on my nerves. People regurgitate it because they've heard someone say it. Having said this, I'm not a fan of communism, mostly because its varieties are either total anarchy or total state control, neither of which seems entirely desirable. This is neither the time or place to discuss this issue though.  

There are no communist countries - just totalitarian ones that use the title - and China is quite capitalist. I also call bullshit on people just not wanting to do math - there is a thing called dyscalcula - like dyslexia is to reading it is to math. I personally was always good at math - sometimes figuring out the answer in my head before the teacher could. I took an easy "basic" math in college just for the credits since it wasn't my major and wound up with a 110% (tests had bonus questions) and not having to take the final exam. Still, everything I have seen leads me to think that most of your life is determined by random luck, circumstances of birth and other such noncontrollable things.  Making the rich pay a good ammount of their fair share would help - especially if owners/CEO's etc weren't allowed to make more than say 11 times what the lowest paid worker made. And inheritance taxes should be at least like 75% if the ammount passed is more than $100,000.

There are people that have this and get more frustrated with math, sure. But just as dyslexic people can be taught to read with application of science to learning, so can science be applied to teach math to anyone with a learning disorder. But the current system with oh Johnny just can't read or do math is bullshit. Science works, apply it teaching.

You can be handicapped by it, sure. But it's irrational to think you can't get out of the situation. Aid to the poor needs to be all about ending they cycle of shitty circumstances.

Look what technology has brought us. It's economical to provide a laptop and internet access to nearly every child in the world. If this is done properly, the world could make sure every child has access to some educational opprotunity at a very low cost.

At best, this argument only applies in the industrialized world (and even then, it'sa stretch). Do tell: how are the many Africans dying of malnourishment every day suppoed to 'get out the situation'? Or those in any number of other less privileged countries in the world?

If you've got an answer, that's amazing, since it seems nobody else the planet over does.

I don't know enough about you're system to argue well, but based on what you have said it does sound pretty bad. There are a couple points I wanted to address.

This is something I disagree with. Admitting ignorance is by far preferable to assigning truth to a falsity. Clinging to ignorance and refusing to be persuaded by facts is not even as bad, when compared with clinging to falsity in the face of opposing facts. If you were to assign a weight to a multiple choice question, and the values were {3,1,0} I suggest that { 3 = Right, 1 = no answer, 0 = wrong } would be better than { 3 = Right, 1 = wrong, 0 = no answer }. I think the point you were trying to make is failure is a neccesary step on a path to success, this I agree to. Discouraging failure is wrong if it has the effect of prevent people from continuing to attempt whatever it is they failed at. Despite that failure must be acknowledged and recognized before it can be overcome. This is probably the most difficult aspect of teaching, the psychological and motivational aspect of recognizing failure while maintaining the drive to succeed. There are some children for whom I expect this to be impossible. Piss poor teachers who follow the "Mr/Mrs Garrison" school of thought that children should be mocked for failure should be removed, there are precious few for whom that would serve as motivation to succeed.

I srongly agree with this, but I wanted to point out that it's your unstated assumptions that make this a problem for you. I gather from your writing that you assume that a schools purpose is to encourage brilliance, rational thought, and instill knowledge in it's students. Why? After coming to this conclusion myself in elementary school, I developed the assumption that school was designed to prepare students to become productive members of society. Obedience and conformity are much easier to teach than applying critical thinking and synthesizing vast stores of knowledge into a cohesive world view. Its a poor substitute to be sure, but it can serve as a functional one for the most part, and with an ever tightening budget, there is eventually no choice.

I had the same conclusion when I was in school, but have since changed my mind. I stopped doing homework in the fourth grade. I did a few peices of homework every now and again, but 4th-12th and even college, I would go months without doing homework, do one or 2 pieces, and then again go months without. It didn't prevent me from learning the knowledge being taught.  I was a very, very smart kid. Presenting evidence on this would feel like bragging, so I prefer not to. Nevertheless, someone said something about homework that came back to haunt me later, as it was true, but I believed it to be false at the time. I was told there will be a point where things would not come intuitively to me, and learning would become a struggle. If I have not developed study habits by this time, a way to overcome difficulties with learning, it will be a brick wall for me. I hit that brick wall, and watched my classmates pass me by with study habits they had been practicing for years. No doubt I can develop study habits as they did, and resume where I left off, but they all had about 10 years of practice where I had none. I recognize the value of study habits now. I was smarter than them, now they are smarter than me, thanks to developing study habits as skills. I won't pretend homework is the only valid study habit, but seems to be the prevalent one, and therefore the one you will have the most support developing.

 Refer to my point 2 paragraphs ago. It's likely a resource issue. If it were an intentional policy thing, they wouldn't even be telling you the opposite of what they were doing.

This sounds like a false dichotomy. Either they care about kids and are passionate about teaching, or they care about thier wages and taking advantage of politics and public support. What if they need a few extra bucks because they are passionate about teaching and care about children. I have known teachers who spend thier discretionary income on enhancing thier teaching because they aren't given enough money by the schools. There are teachers who make the news because they get fired for taking on a second job that the school disagrees with because thier teaching income can't support thier family. Why should someone passionate about teaching have to choose between supporting a family and teaching? Why should a teacher who is investing thier earnings in doing a better job not be given more money, either purposed for teaching, or as an personal income boost

This I wholeheartedly agree with. It sounds like your issues are slightly different than the issues in the US. I think the problems here are even worse. Ask for X, pay for Y, you get Y. Schools are paid for thier scores on tests, so the schools teach to the tests. I am too disgusted to investigate too deeply, but I think something like 7 of every 8 hours is spent preparing for mandated tests instead of teaching subjects using methods better proven for knowledge retention. I'd be happy to learn I am wrong in this, but from what pyro wrote, I don't think I am too far off. If/When I have kids, they will be home schooled for the purposes of instruction of knowledge. After they have reached a high school graduate level of knowledge, perhaps when they are 12 or so, then they will be put in the public school system as a method of preparing them for the complexities of carving out a niche for themselves within a social structure.

P.S.

There is hilarity is the lack of "republic" as an answer. I am supposing that the teacher chose democracy out of misplaced patriotism and not the desire to change political systems. I feel safe in assuming this.

If kids had the typical American attitude toward learning from the start:

It will take a while for them to catch up since they've kept out technology for so long.

I'm taking about publicly funded education, so the tax collectors are already the ones with a gun to someone's head. Parents should be free to hire whatever teachers they want. But, I think when you take wealth to educate the poor, it can only be justified if it is eventually paid back by the people receiving the benefit. So this would me the only classes that can be proven to provide a benefit in return.

It's not just disagreeing, these bleeding heart liberals are the one's putting a gun to my head to take tax money to take care of "the poor". At least let me say what I think should be done with the money. If they won't let me do that, why should I work? I'll just be poor and get the reward too.

The poor aren't the one's paying for it, so why should they be the one's deciding how others should have their money spent. They are asking for help, beggars can't be choosers. OK, give them help only if they will eventually pay it back to society. We have to go by what the best economist and educators believe, not an uneducated poor person.

Unfortunately, they are not in a position to negotiate or fight. All they can do is ask for charity or help. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm stating the reality.

I guess everyone should be so stupid. Why aren't the poor and middle class taught this then if it is so easy?

No, I wish everyone was smart. But, we're talking about public education. So when is it justifiable to forcibly take someone's wealth to pay for someone else's education? We know that wealth redistribution and just giving everyone the same benefits will destroy the work ethic. I could be a hard-ass libertarian and say only parents should pay for their own children's education.

Relationships need to be contracts, each party receives and then gives in return. You can't have one way relationships. In evolution, our organs evolved so the each one takes nutrients and each on returns something of benefit to the body. We don't have organs that just take nutrients and contribute nothing back(except when they have cancer). So, human social evolution must proceed the same way. Something is given to the poor, but then they must contribute something back. Organism and societies can not survive without this contract form of mutually beneficial relationships.

This falsehood has been around for a couple thousand years.  I have very little hope that it will ever go away.  However, if anyone wanted to learn something about what our society is really like -- not from pundits, but from a scientist -- they could read this book, which addresses family, poverty, race, and sex:

The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz (Paperback - Aug 2000)

This is only on the last page. You said and implied that numerous times in this thread.

Maybe they do have a good education? I know firsthand - you don't know the "right" people or have the right "personality" you're pretty much fucked. You know why a lot of companies use the Meyer-Briggs test? To weed out introverts. So if you're not a type-A go getter outgoing person you have less chance. You weren't born in the elite and know the right people you have less chance. Haven't you ever heard of the cycle of poverty? You know how rare it is to move from one class to another? The main reason the gap between rich and poor in this country continues to grow, while it doesn't in more civilized countries like Canada, Australia and those in Western Europe is the extreme form of unregulated capitalism in this country. It's ridiculous a CEO can make hundreds of times more money than the people in a company that actually work and then get a multi-million dollar bonus for fucking up while the people who actually work lose their jobs. We need laws forcing companies to pay a livable wage and limiting executive salaries.

The only reason they don't contribute much to taxes, etc is the rich pieces of shit won't pay them enough. In a way they do, in that the rich motherfucker make so much off their backs that they pay the taxes (if they don't have lawyers and such to get deduction so the middle class who also actually work pay everything.) Don't make me laugh. The rich sit on their ass and make their money off the backs of others. They inherit the money/business or at least enoughto get an Ivy League education unaffordable to most people so they can continue to be on top. I honestly think the only way to make things fair would be to go to pure socialism or even a true proletariat revolution - including puting these exploitative cocksuckers against the wall. Shit, I'm pissed enough how the poor are treated in this country I wouldn't have a problem with them executing their kids and raping then executing the rich women that took part in exploiting. Exploiters are as bad as serial killers but get off with a slap on the wrist on the extremely rare instances they even get charged let alone convicted. Redistribution of wealth is so needed. There are some rich people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates (who happen to be near the top) that willingly use what they have for good, but a lot of the ones you never heard of only care about keeping more money than they'll ever need, treating their employees poorly and making the poor even poorer. Health care, a roof over your head, enough to eat and at least a relatively comfortable existance should be considered a right. The US is as bad as the 3rd world when it comes to the income gap.

so menial labor is superfluous?  it has to be done.  who's gonna do it under your new forced class-segregated education system?  who's gonna pave your sidewalks, mop your floors, scrub your restroom toilet bowls, trim your hedges, etc.?  why not pay them better, if you want to alleviate poverty?

my father was fortunate enough to go to a state vocational school when he was young.  he now has more practical skills than either you or i have, and i'd bet money on that.  if you drive down an interstate in eastern or central kentucky, he's worked on it.  if you live in a subdivision in mount sterling or winchester or lexington, chances are he's the one who laid the water line to the whole neighborhood.  he's worked on railroad bridges up near cincinnati.  he can fix almost any problem in the home.  while many licensed contractors will make estimates using computers and charge you up the ass just for that, my dad only needs to hear your project, look at the site, and he can tell you almost exactly what it will cost.

he's dirt poor.  he lives in a single-wide that my uncle actually owns.  if he weren't such a good gardner and a hunter, he might even struggle for food occassionally.  he's contributed nothing but useful things to the world around him.  because of guys like him, trucks can get where they need to go and keep the economy moving.  yet all the world around him has ever done is fuck him over, including with taxes paying for the education of a kid like me.  and rich kids.  and he's not bitter at all.  his only mistake was leaving the teamsters' union 20 years ago.

take anything from a rich motherfucker and he'll piss and moan about how you're "intruding on his rights," that it's "his money."  well guess what?  if it wasn't for my father, guys like him wouldn't have a road to drive on, nothing would come out when they turned their faucets, they would fucking freeze in the winter, etc., etc., ad infinitum.  so it's not just "his money."  how the fuck would he have made his money without my father?  matter of fact, how would most of those rich guys eat without the supermarkets (which my dad has also built)?  but dad, no problem.  he grew up farming and hunting.  not only did he build the rich person's world, but he can survive without it.  lincoln himself said that capital needs labor to live, but labor does not need capital.  i guarantee you that percentage-wise, my dad pays more taxes than most of those rich scumbags anyway, so they can all shut the fuck up.

as for redistribution of wealth destroying the work ethic, tell that to the soviet peasants who worked collective and personal plots, most of them provided by soviet agrarian reform, with wooden plows and mules after the germans fucked their world up, including most of the farm machinery, just to have something to eat.  you mentioned you've been to cuba, but have you ever lived in a country where redistribution had taken place and really gotten to know the people?  i've lived in slovakia for 4 years now.  my wife is slovak and her parents lived through most of czechoslovakia's socialist period, including land and wealth redistribution.  older slovaks are the hardest working group of people i've ever seen, period.  her father throws nothing away.  he made a lawnmower out of an old washing machine motor.  he fixed a couple plastic lawnchairs that his (rich) neighbor threw out.  he made his work bench out of old sheets of steel.  what education did he have?  memorizing facts: names and dates, with little or no context.  that's what most of the slovak education system was and still is.  totally useless.  yet my father-in-law can work 10 hours and not eat.  he's not atypical among his generation.

oh, and he's poor.  not as poor as my father, but still pretty poor.  he works as an electrician at a railroad power station.  without him, trains wouldn't run, and most of southeastern slovakia would grind to a halt.  yet i make twice as much as an english teacher.  without me, well...fuck...

This is actually one point I disagree with Marx on: that is, the inevitability of social progress by way of dialectical materialism. I think that actually the process of societal and cultural change is more akin to natural selection. I think that while materialism can shape culture, and is a major environmental factor in the evolution of memes, that culture can hit right back and change economic evolution. The problem with Marx is that he's only looking at the world from a macro level. If you're looking down on a forest from a great height, and trying to analyse it you might come to certain conclusions about how it grew, but what you won't see from that height is the role that insects play in the reproductive cycles of the trees. With Marx, he looks at big economic factors: bourgeois exploiting proletarian, constant need for expanding markets etc. What he ignores is the importance of individuals in shaping history, in national and international economic policies, in cultural nuances and in the plurality of belief and value. While material factors can give some cultural views better survival value than others it does not mean that communism is any kind of inevitability. If we look at those who've been hit hardest by the Western economic empire, how strong is communism/ socialism in those groups? In Central and South America, socialism seems to be pretty strong, but in the Middle East and the USA religious fundamentalism is stronger, as people turn to tradition rather than progressive thinking in order to change things for what they deem to be better.

As for the growing class consciousness. Why should this actually happen? Indeed people were probably more aware of how capitalism was exploiting them in the early twentieth century than they are now. But then again, the Western proletariat has mostly diminished, or has better quality living (in general), and has become largely a consumer class. I can't pretend to know the mind of the Asian sweatshop worker, and whether they have developed class consciousness.

I wrote my dissertation on this, and I promise I will post it up here when I graduate in a couple of months time. 

Speak for yourself!! I'm a memetic materialist. I think I come under the term good Marxist. I'm just not a classical Marxist. I guess it would come to similar conclusions here. However, I think on a purely utilitarian basis that civil liberties ought to exist. There is no point having a revolution if it makes it worse for people.

I went to China back in 2001, and I could tell from just those few days we spent on the mainland that China is not by any stretch of the imagination a communist country. In fact there is less equality there than there is in Britain. There were McDondalds restaurants on every corner, masses of people riding rusty old bicycles while a priveliged few drove round in Lexus cars. There is also a huge gap between white western tourists and the Chinese population. Other tourists usually went on designated coach trips, and never set foot in the street, we did it differently, but I must admit its pretty scary when everyone on the street is staring at you like you're some kind of alien.

I'm not familiar with Zizek's arguments althoughI have come across him before.

you and i are in agreement on this.  i think that it's something marx didn't look into because he was writing on the macro level, but in a way he wasn't.  most of his diagnoses and prognoses concern europe and, to a lesser degree, the US.  marx of course saw that the revolution must be international in nature, otherwise it would never survive, but it's always important to bear in mind that marx took it for granted that the revolution would begin in developed western europe, and so he never took into account the social impact of islam, for example.  these questions became a reality for lenin as he faced the problem of multiple nationalities and cultures within the russian empire.  i think he tackled the question as well as he could.  for example, in central asia there was a very strong muslim communist party, until stalin started closing down mosques.  then the fundamentalists really started appearing, since the religion and cultural identity of the central asian muslims were being threatened.

as for religious fundamentalism in america, i think trotsky would say, and i would agree with him, that it's just a means of the big bourgeoisie to pull the petty bourgeoisie into their camp because the proletariat in the early 20th century, when the labor unions were at their most powerful and most militant, had their chance at revolution and blew it.  the last hopes of american socialism were destroyed by roosevelt and the new deal, which granted enough concessions to win the last of the petty bourgeoisie and rural proletariat to the capitalist agenda.  this has been cemented over time by religious fundamentalism and neo-fascist patriotism.  now the animosities of petty bourgeoisie and proletariat are constantly directed at "unamerican" enemies or even at times at each other, but never at the big bourgeoisie.

why should it happen?  in america, this is a very good question.  allow me to say something very controversial.  in theory (let me emphasize in THEORY, not practice), i am somewhat of a maoist.  i know mao did horrible, inexcusable things, but these things many times were in complete contradiction to his theoretical writings.  now i'm not 100% sold on mao's version of marx, but one thing he did was start to draw the contradiction between bourgeoisie and proletariat along international lines.  in mao's thinking, there are bourgeois (imperialist) nations and proletarian nations.  the US is an imperialist nation, and i don't mean that in the same way as fucking hemp-wearing greenpeace douchebags who are just as much stooges of capitalism as any corporate douchebag.  i mean that the US is a nation with an almost nonexistant NATIVE proletariat which exploits other nations.  the proletariat in the US is quickly becoming the illegal alien population and sooner or later they will either be tamed or this contradiction will come to an explosive head.  bush is actually not serving the cause of the big bourgeoisie by making aggressive immigration policies against mexicans, which is why i think he'll eventually be reined in.

i'd also like to point out that while mexicans have to crawl through sewer pipes and dodge USCIS all their lives to get a taste of the "american dream," all a cuban has to do is set foot on the beach, proclaim himself a "political fugitive," and he's free to live and work and join the miami anti-castro lobby almost that day.

i wasn't exactly speaking for myself but following a train of reasoning as to why the old "communist" countries never tried to masquerade as democratic.

i'm not sold on dialectical materialism, but i also agree with civil liberties as utilitarian, not inalienable.  "better" or "worse" is relative and i think, for example, the decision of lenin to suspend certain civil liberties during the russian civil war were pragmatic and reasonable.  i also agree with similar decisions lincoln made during the american civil war.  i really don't even blame bush for the surveillance measures he undertook: it's only the big bourgeoisie trying to protect their agenda, how can you expect them to do otherwise?  i do, however, blame those pundits and fucking patriotic stooges who somehow argue it was "democratic" as well as those left-wing, hippie, petition-circulating, petty bourgeois, rich white kid fucktards who think they can end this by beating on drums in front of the capitol and working within the system.  if you want it to be different, if it sticks in your craw so much, fucking revolt!

if you've never read trotsky's "terrorism and communism," i would suggest getting it.  he has some interesting views on civil liberties.

In Tsarist Russia, all they had to do was kill the Royal family to take of the government. If Bush was killed, we'd end up with Cheney. Plus the weapons to put down riots are much more sophisticated.

The best the poor can do is demand a good education and for the rich to stop confiscation of all the natural resources and polluting them. This would work because the middle class and many rich would be on their side.

The revolution needs to be one of rational thinking and proper application of science, not violence. Marx got some things right and some things wrong. So these revolutionary ideas need to be looked and rationally and objectively, otherwise you turn Marxism into just another religion.

OK, why can't science and education be applied to fix your problems and make you a success? Why can't a good education include teaching you how to interview and behave in meetings? Maybe you need acting lessons and positive thinking training. Can't science help you overcome your introvertness and Asperger's? Maybe you can be trained to be and entrepreneur or given loans to start your own business.

Can't science, education and rational thinking be applied to solve every problem including the cycle of poverty? But your anger, jealousy and resentment is keeping you from seeing things this way, so you go with this "fuck the rich" dogma, which is like a religion for you. You don't look for rational solutions and explanations for the problems of poverty.

If a theist reads your rants about the hopelessness of the poor against the rich, aren't they going to think "these atheists don't have any answers, science and rational thinking doesn't have the answers to the human condition, atheisms is hopelessness, I need to turn to Jesus for hope of a better life in the next world."

Wish thinking. The rich investors will just pull their money out of these companies and hire no one. They'll put their money in Swiss bank accounts and buy gold bars to hide before they'll pay high wages to low level workers. If they do stay in business, they just pass the higher wage costs on to the consumer. The only rational solution is to traiin the next generation to own the means of production.

 Unfortunately the only soloution to poverty is teaching all children to think and act like the rich fucks you despise so much.

a skill, yes.  the work ethic he already had.  you can't teach that in a classroom.  and my father doesn't have much time for reading.  he's too busy either working a job or looking for one.

and i never said everybody needs an armed "rebellion" of "the poor."  not everybody needs it.  i'm sure the stock brokers need it like they need a hole in the head.  which they might get.