Debate: Should students be allowed to choose to be taught creationism?
Side: No

The federal government had no jurisdiction, without MAJOR stretching of logic for the commerce clause to include ANYTHING that ANYONE does. He was not engaging in commerce, nor did he act across state lines.Again, playing devils advocate: - He was cheating the "intent" of the governmental efforts to raise wheat prices. - Technically, this was interstate commerce because it was all states where they were trying to get the price of wheat up.Here is what I think this is, a guy tries to cheat the system so the government pushed the boundaries of what the court would allow to shut him down. The government is allowed to push the boundaries as far as it can (just like any capitalist would in the free market). If the citizens don't like it, they will vote against it. If the interstate commerce laws were such a bad thing, Why doesn't a candidate run and win on a platform of changing those laws? I don't know enough details about the war on drugs. Again it's easy to say it did not work when we have no idea what would have happened if we did not wage that war. What if Crack usage would have been 10 times as high without the war? Personally, I think much of the war on drugs was a mistake (at least for things like pot), but again, I don't know enough on the subject to be sure. Even so, if it was a mistake, it was not a "fundamental problem" with government, it was a bad idea supported by voters at the time. Simply a mistake. Alcohol prohibition was a mistake that was fixed.Appeal to emotion. Irrelevant in a logical discussion.You might be able to have a logical debate about the size of the earth but how can you possibly not use emotions when trying to decide how civilization should work? The free market advocate must think about emotions very, very hard because it's not a "game". If you make a wrong choice when structuring civilization, you and your family can die.It's very easy to say "we must sacrifice" as long as you are never the one who has to sacrifice anything you value.But I am sacrificing. I give about 30% of all my earnings to the government each year. Its a huge sacrifice. I'm already on the loosing side of your equation and I still support it! Maybe someday the government (and the majority of people) will take away a right that I think I should have, but I can't think of a realistic case right now.Now back to my equation "It's very easy to have a steely, logical view on the world as long as you have convinced yourself that you won't end up on the wrong side of the equation." How sure are you your going to end up on the right side of it?Luck is the cop-out of the lazy and the rally-cry of the looter.I said "partially luck" which is absolutely true (when I say luck I mean chance). The only reason I'm not physically debilitated right now from disease, car crash, knife attack is "chance". I was born in to an upper middle class family through NO effort of my own. It was chance! I liked computers when a was young, and now it turns out computers are running the world. I do work hard, but the fact that I happen to like doing something that can earn a good living in today's market is pure chance!!Of course there are lazy people and we should fix all systems where lazy people take advantage, but to say everyone without resources or the means to collect them is lazy is absolutely not true. I think you said yourself your son is not a good test taker. Wouldn't it be a shame if he was labeled lazy when in fact he is just not good at tests?Using your premise, yes. But I disagree that we "build" society. Society grows from the actions of the individuals within that society.Yes. And what you see in the US, most of Europe and Asia is what those individuals built over time.True, which is why we should keep as much emotion as possible OUT of government.Not sure. Humans are emotional animals. To leave that out of the equation seems like a bad idea...(took <5 minutes on Google)Are you sure these prove anything? All you need is cost of living or medical expenses to rise at a faster rate. Were are in the middle of one of the worst recessions in history, you can't use today's number and say look, it's not working. What if nothing was done, how many would be dead? How much higher might poverty be?This assumes that people will just sit and starve, instead of attempting to find some productive activity to support their life.This theme is coming up a lot. We can argue at what level you should support people, but not everyone "fails" in life because they are lazy. The intervention is the problem.So you think that by definition, intervention makes things worse?This is the "scientism" of economics. It tries to apply only equations to economics, ignoring the incentives of the people acting within the economy, and the possible unintended consequences of interfering in the economy. I only included the analytic side of the argument, but yes, there is also a human side which should be factored in as well. The argument still stands: "If we did not get something right, lets figure out what went wrong and fix it"....aside from the fact that it violates the property rights of some, to fund a ponzi scheme that marginally benefits others, to a lesser degree than if the money had stayed in the economy, instead of going to the government.(rest of argument)I agree that you can look at almost any government program and make it better. But I reject the idea that it's impossible, using common sense, logic, sociology, empathy, etc to come up with a "good system". For many of your arguments to be right, there would have to be something fundamentally wrong with the operation of government that can't be fixed for some reason OR a theorem and proof that says "in case X its impossible to do better because of Y". Maybe you could turn me to the dark side if you could convince me of one or both of these.I don't reject the idea that there are other perhaps better ways we could run society, I simply have not heard convincing arguments that there is anything better.