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in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 3/23/05 7:21 PM:

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 3/22/05 11:57 PM:

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:

Ah. So you start holding a child accountable for their own future
starting
with infancy.

No, I hold the parents accountable.

But the child suffers.

Then perhaps the state should take custody of the child, award custody to
someone better able to raise the child, and garnish the parent's wages to
pay for the child's care...after eliminating any welfare payments to the
parents to stimulate them to get a job.

Wow, for a guy who seems so freaked out about freedom, you are a bit of a
control freak when it comes to other people!

Am I?

Ooo yes.

Or am I merely attempting to elicit some sort of reasoned argument out
of you?

That's just another way of saying that you are irritated that all your own
arguments are easily boiled down to extreme self-centered selfishness.

Born to parents who could not afford to send you to school?
Tough titties for you, this ain't the land of opportunity.

You confuse equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.

No, I don't, actually.

There is no equality of opportunity for a child born into a poor family who
cannot access education or health care.

Wrong.

You are hopeless if you really believe that.

In this country, opportunities are abundant. There are millions uponn
millions of success stories of poor people who have persevered and
succeeded. That's WHY a million people a month illegally enter this country.

In the Sudan, there are no opportunities for education or health care, but
in North America there are opportunities everywhere. All a parent has to do
is go and seek it out and resolve to be successful.

A child who grows up in poverty does not have equality of opportunity with a
child from a wealthy family. If you think otherwise, you are insane.

I'll grant you that a child of poverty may not have the same quality of
opportunities available to the children of the rich

Gee, welcome to reality.

but that does not mean
the opportunities do not nonetheless abound. No one has "equal opportunity"
with everyone else, rich or poor, because the major part of "opportunity" is
the individual's willingness to seize it and make it work, in spite of
obstacles. In fact, in most cases, it is the obstacles themselves that
stimulate the drive to succeed that results in success. Many's the rich
child who's failed in business because he hasn't learned how to overcome
adversity. And many's the poor child who has succeeded beyond everyone's
wildest expectations because of a resolve to overcome adversity.

It's all about levelling the playing field. That's a lot of what having a
society is all about Scotty. Making sure that every child - regardless of
family situation - can access education and healthcare is fundamental to
giving kids a chance at the type of life others are simply born into.

Understanding access to education and health care as fundamental human
rights helps to give those born into a poverty a chance.

But is "access" inevitably the same thing as "entitlement?"

I would be fine with the word entitlement. We are talking about children. A
society that does not believe children should be entitled to education and
health care is a society deserving of implosion.

America is indeed the "Land of
Opportunity,"
but the opportunities are not all positive opportunities. You have an
equal
opportunity to FAIL as well as succeed. That's what causes people to
strive
to excel and advance.

As Linda Seebach said once, "The only way to make everyone equal is to
squash everyone flat."

You can't have an equal opportunity to anything if you are hungry,
uneducated, and without access to health care.

Sure you can. Go to a shelter, get a meal, go find a Catholic hospital and
seek medical care and go find a job to pay for your education.

That gives you an equal opportunity to someone who is born into a wealthy
family, never has to know a hungry belly, has tutors, can afford any tuition
they require, and does not have to work while studying?

It gives you adequate opportunity to succeed if you're willing to fight for
it.

A child does not understand those grand concepts Scott, especially a child
that can't read or write and their goal is to not be hungry.

Getting everything as a gift is not, contrary to your assertion, a
guarantee of success. In fact, in many cases, it's a guarantee of failure.
Just look at Paris Hilton if you don't believe me. Most of the great
entrepeneurs of this country weren't rich to begin with, and many of them
started out as "poor children." The difference between them and a ghetto
child is primarily an unswerving resolve not to be bound to poverty.

Paris Hilton? Is she starving? What are you talking about?

Where does a child acquire an "unswerving resolve not to be bound to
poverty?" is all they know is poverty? Geez you are dense. If they are
illiterate and sickly, you really think they can just will themselves into
Harvard and onto the presidency?

FYI, not every
community has a Catholic hospital around the corner.

Almost every community has a federally-funded hospital at which even the
indigent can receive emergency care. If there's not one in that community,
then perhaps it's time to move to a community that has more charitable
resources available for the poor.

Yes, the infant should pack his or her bag and crawl to the next county.

You are living in a
dreamland of selfish ignorance.

Nope. I'm just not buying your "the poor are helpless victims" mentality.

That's not what I'm saying at all.

I believe in a hand up, not a handout.

Making sure that every child can go to school and get treatment if they are
sick is not about a "poor are helpless victims" mentality. It's about giving
a child a fighting chance at a better quality of life.

Parents are not stimulated to encourage, assist, stimulate, enlighten,
browbeat, badger, threaten and otherwise require scholarship on the part
of
their children if they see no future for them because the dole is all they
know. Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, and he
can feed the world.

How ironic, to use the "teach him to fish" analogy while saying that poor
people should not have access to education.

I didn't say they shouldn't have access to education, I said that public
education is a dismal failure and that nobody should *expect* a free public
education as a "right" to be paid for by somebody else.

If it's not a right, then it doesn't have to be provided, and selfish prigs
like yourself obviously aren't going to support it.

So what? If you think it's important, then YOU support it or provide it.

It's not possible for a society to provide education and health care to all
children if selfish prigs can opt out.

There are nearly unlimited educational opportunities out there, even for the
very poor, that either cost them nothing (charitable institutions) or merely
require some nominal input to qualify. There are vocational programs
sponsored by industry specifically targeted at the disadvantaged explicitly
to teach them a valuable skill that will be of use to the industry.

The opportunities are everywhere. All one needs to do is reach out and grab
one.

I don't think that I child born into poverty should have such vastly
different opportunities than those afforded children born into wealth.

Then adopt a poor child and give him better opportunities.

I'd rather keep the child with their parents, and give them access to
education and health care so they can have a chance to make their own
opportunities.

If you want to learn to fish, go to the dock and demonstrate to a ship
captain that you are eager and willing to work hard in exchange for his
teaching you how to fish. Quid pro quo. As simple as that.

LOL. You forget, the rich people have already overfished the stock and
there's no jobs.

Then take up another line of work and do the same thing. We need ditch
diggers, trash collectors and custodians too. Not everybody can be the CEO
of Ford.

Is there a shortage of ditch diggers, trash collectors, and custodians?

I'm not arguing that no one should do those jobs. I'm arguing that an infant
should not start out in life without access to the basic tools they will
need to have a chance at a quality of life that is easily available to those
born into wealth.

The worst thing about a liberal arts degree is that some of the graduates
might be capable of thinking.

True, but sadly, almost universally, they fail to realize that potential,
largely thanks to the pervasive leftist/liberal apologetics of failure and
muddled thinking taught to them on most of our college campuses.

Rare indeed is the student who is able to rise above the leftist
propaganda
and demagogary to reach a state of enlightenment and understanding, and
every one who does is universally a conservative thinker.

In your fantasy world.

Is George W. Bush one of your elightened right-wing graduates? LOL.

His college grades were much higher than Kerry's, and slightly more than
half the voting population of the country find him to be sufficiently
intelligent to be President of the United States.

You didn't really answer the question.

Sure I did. You just didn't understand the answer.

Sure I did. It was a dodge.

Is George W. Bush one of your elightened right-wing graduates?

Yes or no.

FYI, money and a name can buy a lot of things, including college grades.

Do you have any credible evidence that this is the case?

Every time he opens his mouth - even with countless expert advisors to write
his speeches and help him look less stupid - it's obvious he'd barely pass
grade eight on his own merits.