..which suggests time and money has gone into domesticating them before the government
that reminds me of the quote from H. L. Menken way back:
The theory behind the public schools, which cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions every year, is that they manufacture hordes of enlightened and incorruptible voters, and so safeguard and mellow democracy. The fact is that they are mainly manned by half-wits and bossed by shysters, and that their actual tendency is to reduce all their pupils to the level of Kiwanis.
Mr. Sinclair proves all this by an immense accumulation of facts. He not only toured the country, inspecting innumerable schools himself; he also entered upon relations with many rebellious school-marms, male and female, and so heard the details of the sad story from the inside.
Furthermore, he threw himself into a scientific study of the inner operations of the National Education Association, the trades union of the higher pedagogical functionaries, and digested whole shelves of reports, statistical tables, volumes of graphs, and other such fearful documents.
The result is a tale that lacks nothing in the way of circumstantial corroboration. It is, in truth, overwhelming in its plausibility, and I doubt that anyone will ever challenge successfully any essential feature of it But under the telling of it, alas, there is erroneous assumption, and there springs therefrom a great deal of false reasoning and vain indignation.
That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and make them fit to discharge the duties citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be from the truth.
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever pretensions of politicians, pedagogues other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.
Funny how the socialists now use the very institution they decried long ago. The teachers unions, democrats, and liberals (same thing) have a stranglehold on public education. We are a species that forms social associations for survival, the liberal tribe has figured out that they can reproduce themselves in this manner and so the basic evolutionary urge is to fight for the institutions that propogate their own kind. Obama is a product of their thinking and will fight hard to keep the now unstoppable socialist train moving along.
The only reason that I have supported republicans over democrats is that I have no other real choice for liberty's sake. Liberals want an all powerful government owning us so that their definition of social justice is realized, mainly it's all about money and power. The dominant view now put forth, and enthusiastically supported by the masses, is that government will make sure everyone has a right to a middle class existence and will make sure nobody can get too rich. Shrewd politicians use it for power, they have created a voting majority of government educated and dependent jellyfish too stupid, greedy, and scared to do anything but support the recent lurch towards the left in what started some 75 years ago. It no longer matters that we still have a class of creative and hardworking people, they are being eating alive by the predatory haters in the left wing who now have set us on course for certain budget disaster.
In the longer time frame of 30 years, how could you be anything but bearish on the Unites States?
