Wednesday, Aug 20, 2008
Say what? Horowitz thinks Republicans are too NICE?! Plus: Grateful Dead producer defends cut-and-paste editing; marriage-savers are wrong about monogamy.
Dec 3, 1999 | Republicans lost in space
BY DAVID HOROWITZ
(11/29/99)
According to David Horowitz, the problem with the Republicans is that they need to take their gloves off and attack the Democrats. This is of course utter nonsense. We have lived through the hyper-partisanship of the "gays in the military" debate, the Republicans' (skewed and unfair) attacks on the Clintons' health-care proposals, the demagoguery surrounding every Clinton proposal, climaxing with the trumped-up impeachment of our president.
Horowitz is wrong. What the Republicans need to do is prove they can govern sensibly. If Social Security, education and welfare are a mess, remember that the GOP has been in charge of the White House for 12 of the last 19 years, and of Congress for the last five (not to mention control of the Senate during the Reagan administration). The Republicans lose in issues that matter to voters because voters are wise enough to know the Republicans would rather work themselves into an angry froth than solve problems.
-- Ken Schellenberg
Republican education programs are patently not about support for public education and public schools. Instead, they're politically loaded packages designed to cater to the various right-wing constituencies that wish to balkanize American education and culture.
Fundamentalist Christian Republicans, alarmed that their ideas (particularly those about race and religion) are not given primacy in public schools, demand something called "school choice." School choice is expressed in publicly funded vouchers used to pay for the education of one's children. The fact that vouchers are expressly a means to fund private religious schools, and that such conduct means violation of the establishment clause, is conveniently sidestepped.
This "choice" is less about overall quality of education than about educational content. It is clear that some devoutly religious parents find the teaching of evolution (for instance) in the public schools upsetting, as it conflicts with their beliefs. This is fine -- it's their right to disagree.
If the Republicans are as fond of the marketplace of ideas as they consistently claim, they should fight for a truly public education -- a standards-based, competency-based public school curriculum that ensures that each child has a base of reading, writing, arithmetic and reasoning skills that will enable him/her to function in the world. Then they can tell their children that what they have learned in school is incorrect, if they so wish, based on their religious beliefs -- and they can accept the results when their children use their beliefs in the classroom and are given lower grades because of it. The common educational base -- a common history, a common science, a common skill set, a common ability to reason -- is critical if we as a society are not to splinter into tiny groups fearful of each others' ideas.
If Republicans do otherwise -- that is, restrict their children's access to ideas that don't square with their doctrine, and so demand public funding for those ideas -- they tacitly admit that their ideas have failed in the marketplace and that the only means to promulgate them is to deny children access to the greater world of ideas. When Republicans admit that the goal of a quality free public education, in public schools, is what they're after, then the public will take their ideas seriously.
-- Matt Hayden
This piece states that 90 percent of funding for education originates at the local level, then in the next paragraph blames a Democrat-controlled Congress (which hasn't existed for several years) for the sorry state of education. I think the inadequate education given to most Americans has to have come from the same place it have always come: the local controlling authorities.
-- John Bonanno
David Horowitz's characterization of the test ban treaty issue and debate is ludicrous. The notion that the country with the best verification and simulation technology and the world's largest nuclear weapons stockpile would be put at a disadvantage with respect to North Korea or Iraq by this treaty can only come from the mendacious or stupid.
Even the argument over whether our verification technology is good enough misses the point. We are far ahead in nuclear weapons technology. We are even further ahead in the technology needed to build and maintain bombs in the absence of testing -- even if the other side is conducting ultra-low-yield tests. We have not only thousands of working warheads, but many fully tested designs. The treaty would not affect our ability to build more bombs. It is a much greater handicap to those trying to build their first bomb than it is to us.
Without the treaty, Iraq and their ilk get to take the easier road (of larger tests) to bomb development. The treaty is not about an Iraq vs. U.S. nuclear arms race -- it's about slowing down Iraq and convincing Iran to back off. The treaty is in our national interest.
-- Russell Williams
As a former student of a poor inner-city school, I find it galling that Horowitz blames Democratic policies for the plight of public schools. While perhaps the Democrats have not done enough to help, the real culprit lies in the white (and largely Republican) flight from our cities. This flight has been abetted by Republican policies which shunt social problems (and their costs) on urban residents. I remember the first time I visited a suburban (and overwhelmingly Republican) public school ... the roof didn't leak, they had a real playground, they even had art classes. Why should their schools, only 10 miles away, be so much better? The Republican plan for school vouchers would simply aggravate the problem by fostering further flight and punishing already suffering urban schools
-- Greg Stroud
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