The problem as I see it for education is that both liberal and conservative oxes need goring in order to improve the system. Unfortunately, there's no constituency for damning parts of every political persuasion.

1) Cash. We won't fund education properly because we're too busy sending our tax dollars to feed the ever-hungry maw of the military-industrial complex. Spending a small fraction of the military budget on education? Why do you hate America?

2) Lack of discipline. In my rural Southern school district 25 years ago, corporal punishment was not only allowed, but practiced. For all the whining that typical liberals do about such "barbaric" practices as paddling kids, even those who engage in serious misbehavior, what these types tend not to address is whether or not it works. I'd wager that most people who went to either Catholic school or public school in the old days would acknowledge that most kids who got spanked richly deserved it.

Moreover, parents used to expect their kids to behave, and would enforce the school's disciplinary judgments at home. No longer.

3) American culture does not value independent thinking. Think of all the people you know who consider it vaguely seditious to criticize the economic or political system, unless you're taking a position that is already endorsed by some aspect of the establishment. The relative merit of an argument is practically irrelevant.

4) American culture is consumerist to its core, and values education only as a means to a bigger paycheck. Example: golf or sports-related hobbies are considered normal, but learning a language for the hell of it is always a little bit suspicious, isn't it? Is it any surprise that some kids just want to cut to the chase, eliminate all the folderol, and become an NBA star?

5) The absolute disrespect for, and trashy aversion to, learning that is found disproportionately in some minority groups. The well-known epithet among blacks (labeling those who read as "acting white") is a perfect example. I don't pretend to know the reasons why Asian Americans excel, while Hispanics and African Americans don't, but this is a plain fact that is always downplayed by my fellow liberals, as if merely pointing it out is like farting loudly in a room full of people.

...Kemp's political legacy will be dominated by his strident support of supply-side economics, which was and is one of the most idiotic ideas ever foisted on the American public. It's the source of much of our current economic dysfunction: the notion that we can have government services without paying for them.

Kemp, Reagan, and others of that 1980s contingent of Republicans are directly responsible for a whole host of self-inflicted social ills we suffer from today: an underfunded public sector, crumbling infrastructure and public schools, an increasingly unaffordable college education, and the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, due largely to the huge tax cuts the rich received under Reagan.

At best, Kemp was misguided. At worst, he was simply another charlatan seeking public acclaim for superficially attractive but substantively terrible ideas.

Whether you're on the left or right, it seems that no substantive discussion of population control can take place, even in an article like this - even on Salon, the so-called alternative media.

To Ms. Kissling - as several other posters have pointed out, poverty and excessive procreation are related. That's true in developed countries as well as poorer ones; it's just that everyone is worse off in the latter. Doesn't that rather significant point deserve some attention? It constantly amazes that, whether the discussion is about poverty or the environment, no mention can ever be made about population control, except perhaps in disparaging terms - calling people racists, cruel, etc. for the mere suggestion of a plain fact.

I don't know how or why it happened, but somewhere along the way the left jettisoned these discussions, probably because it appeared unseemly to preach to poor people about the number of children they should have. But here's what's more unseemly: bringing children into a life of great hardship and penury just because it might disrupt our delicate sensibilities to tell people the truth - that they'd be better off if they had fewer children.

I already make a donation every year to international refugee relief, and I'm happy to do it. (No, it's not 5% of my income.) I also make a donation to Planned Parenthood, but it's not clear to me how much, if any, work they do outside of the U.S. I would suggest everyone who is concerned about these issues should split their donations between relief and organizations that provide family planning or birth control in poor countries, assuming they can be found. (Personally, I don't know of the latter.)