From: mike@inti.lbl.gov (Michael Helm)
Newsgroups: ba.politics,ca.politics
Subject: Re: School vouchers
Date: 5 Oct 92 22:30:03 GMT
Reply-To: mike@inti.lbl.gov (Michael Helm)
Organization: N.I.C.E.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.128.82

Phil Ronzone writes:
#>Well, then, I assume you are such an extremist as well. Or do you
#>take every single $$$ over bare subsistence level (of your income)
#>and send it to the truly starving children in Somolia/Ethiopa/...?

#>If you don't, then you are doing nothing. What an extremist.

I don't follow this at all -- it sounds like nonsense to me.
Anyway, I don't see how Somalia enters in to a discussion about
public schools & the voucher system.

>Exactly. What does any number of children needing anything have to
>do with me? Socialism is dead you know. Or, does it only count

Back in the real world, a large number of children exist who need to
get an education.  Some of them will be unable to get an education if
we implement your logic -- I'm not even sure you believe that children
need to get an education, what with all the throw-away unsupported
nostalgia for bygone low-literacy pioneer educational systems.
However, it is unlikely that the citizenry as a whole will cotton to
your suggestions, because of this obvious (to them) flaw of depriving
large numbers of people to access to any form of education, which you
are, so far, totally unwilling to address except by saying that it
doesn't have anything to do with you.  Perhaps not.  Others differ.
The folks in the real world want to know if the public school system
can be improved somehow by competition, replaced with something else,
& so forth, but it is not at all likely that they are going to junk
public education  because Phil Ronzone is feeling coerced today.  Big deal.
"Coercion" is part of life.

>If YOU are bothered, YOU do something about it.

I'm doing something about it rite now :-)

>So resisting the State coercion somehow steals from the children.

Yes, I would say that if you take a tax rebate or voucher from the
state, & spend it on yourself somehow, instead of on the children's
education fees, you have definitely stolen from them.  For some reason your
principle doesn't want to be applied here.  Apparently children are
responsible for going out & securing an education thru their own means?
And, of course, for those who are unable to pay at all,
you have absolutely nothing to offer those children.  For some
reason you are punishing them for the sins of their parents.
Strange, & perverse.

>    >Is yours, because SOME bad may occur, let's not DO ANYTHING?
>    >This is what you want me to believe? Sounds like a stupid
>    >principle to me.

>Really? Our legal system is based on it. rather than let some BAD

The American legal system is based on reasonable doubt, in criminal
cases, & preponderance of the evidence in civil cases.  Seems to me
there's plenty of activity in the police & courts -- I guess we
have managed to figure out how to do at least some work there, without
becoming totally perplexed by some bogus absolutism.

>Statists never like principles like that anyway. Gotta' control

Not many people like principles that leave you tied up in such
knots & unable to do anything.  Stupid AND useless, or grossly
misapplied in this case.
Newsgroups: ba.politics,ca.politics