Letters to the Editor
tempus
Published Letters: 446 Editor's Choice: 7
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Poor states are screwed (as are their kids)
[Read the article: Ron Paul distortions and smears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn supports State-ONLY funded edumacation. Great. No Federal aid.
Poor states get to poorly edumacate their kids so they can supply the strawberry pickers and janitorial staff for rich strawberry farmers and the corporate elite lucky enough to have lived and gotten educated in RICH states. THAT'S a recipe for a booming, modern society ready to take on the challenges ahead.
And Paul's fantasy about homeschooling. Why yes, EVERYONE can afford to yank one parent (knowing Paul, that parent is to be the wife) out of the workforce so they can stay home and homeskoo their kids about Genesis and how there are no galaxies because them there scientists say they's millions of lightyears away when we's all knows that nothing can be more than 10,000 lightyears away and all.
Paul hasn't entered the 21st century. Hell, he never made it into the 20th. His fantasies all fall within the 19th (and earlier).
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@Getting old
[Read the article: Ron Paul distortions and smears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]oes not anyone else remember and credit the federal government's involvement in education during the early years of the "space race?"
Indeed. The anti-feds-in-education crowd studiously ignore the fact that public education put us on the moon. Not home skooing, public education.
Also, all the anti-trust law, environmental law, worker safety law, etc, came about for specific good reasons: because without them the system was going to hell and it needed fixing. Those laws and regulations didn't spring out of some dictator's ass, they were direct responses to excess (usually from corporations).
You want to fix public education, then you don't abolish it, you remove the influence of those that wish to destroy it by turning it into bible camp.
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non doctor interpretation of the Constitution
[Read the article: Ron Paul distortions and smears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Do you also have a pocket bible that you interpret? Perhaps without ANY idea as to historic context, cultural issues and currents? You take it precisely at its written word with all its self-contradictions and mistranslations (you DO realize that the original language of the texts ofL.W.M. said: "...the constitution needs to be interpreted by lawyers appointed to the highest court in the land, not doctors..." the current version of the bible have been translated multiple times? And often erroneously? And with NO concept of cultural forces and historical context?). So you think the Founder wrote things like the 9th Amendment into the Bill of Rights but intended no "moving interpretation"? That the word is the word and that context, historical forces, the actual thinking and writings of the various Founders (particularly those that actually wrote the Constitution that the rest simply signed off on)? A monolithic script like your bible perchance? No subtlety, no nuance (those Founders were unimaginative and very literal, no nuance there at all eh?)?
Sure, you and I can read our Constitution and Bill of Rights but you know who I trust on deeper interpretation based on historic context and cultural forces? Constitutional Scholars. If I have any interest in actually getting into the actual meaning and the hows and whys of the bible, I don't go to my neighbor biblethumper either. I would read the texts of biblical scholars.
Ron Paul is not the end-all, be-all interpreter of the Constitution. He obviously picks and chooses the parts he likes as well (he has particular ire for the well-thought-out part about treaties since he has sought to pass amendments and bills to gut what the Constitution actually says concerning treaties and how they are the Law of the Land. Period. Get over that. There is no room for a fortress USA anymore in any case. Like it or not, the world is global now with global forces, global pollution, global crises. Retreating back to our borders and hiding from any and all treaty obligations wont work and cannot work.
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@Glenn Greenwald
[Read the article: Ron Paul distortions and smears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The inestimable Dave Neiwert at Orcinus calls you out on your misrepresentation of both what he wrote about Paul yesterday (NOT a smear, fact) and your narrow, disingenuous defense of Paul. Give it a read.
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Some core from Orcinus vis a vis Paul
[Read the article: Ron Paul distortions and smears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is a small quote from the excellent rebuttle to Greenwald's failed attempt to rebuff Neiwert at Orcinus:
The problem with Ron Paul isn't that he has irrelevant associations with far-right extremists -- it's that he seeks out their support, openly advocates their agenda, and receives financial and ideological support from them. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I read somewhere awhile back -- though I can't find it now -- that Paul has historically received an unusually high percentage of his financial support for his congressional campaigns from outside his district.) Those grim realities make his associations all too relevant, especially for a public official in the position of a serving congressman, and now, presidential candidate.
He doesn't just happen to have these slackjaws as followers, like flies to dung. He actively seeks them out which absolutely is indicative of a fellow traveler. That and his desire to exclude citizenship rights to brown people's children if they are born here speaks volumes. I'm deaf now.