Jonathan Edwards was a preacher heavily involved in the First Great Awakening. His sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" summarizes accurately the feeling of the time: paranoid Calvinism. You should read it, though, it's pretty well-written, and quite terrifying, if you believe it.

Eventually, Jonathan Edwards died of smallpox after receiving a smallpox vaccination.

>> ^direpickle:
This is bewildering. So you believe that all children should be forced to put up with the exact same mediocre education until they all can have better education? You're against parents teaching their own kids because they'll be too good at it?


I'm not going to force anyone to do anything, it's a free country. Parents can homeschool their own kids if they want to. But homeschooling without any efforts to improve public education is not the solution for society. It will only lead to privileged kids abandoning failing public schools, while the less fortunate will be trapped in a dismal education system that squashes their best chance at achieving upward social mobility.

Basically, I think that good education is a right, and there's no way for homeschooling to provide that to everyone. It's a temporary solution, at best.

I second what radx is saying. Homeschooling is the ultimate way of abandoning the system entirely. I understand that often kids will receive a better (or phenomenally better) education if they leave the public schools, but this is an completely unsustainable societal trend. There really will be a permanent underclass. Even the charts at the top are really just a way of saying "Our kids are better than yours."

It puzzles me somewhat when liberals in favor of egalitarianism and public education simultaneously feel that their kids shouldn't even be in the public school system. Even if there really is an oppressive atmosphere and general failure, our goals should be to fix the system, not go Galt and leave the whole thing to collapse.

*promote

>> ^ponceleon:

Infantile.
Reprehensible.
Misogynistic.
Awesome.


Thought that was an acrostic at first, so I was wondering who "IRMA" was.

*british, *1sttube, a *vintage song.

You can vote for your own videos, you know .

>> ^lucky760:

I can't decide- Did Timothy McVeigh look more like the first terrorist or the second?


Well, there was the nutjob who killed the guard at the Holocaust museum. If not for the glasses, they'd look nearly identical.

*promote

Why on earth is this man not manning a weather station in Guam? I thought bureaucratic incompetence was dealt with that way.

I went to public school, but I learned about fruits and vegetables from home. In all fairness, the teacher probably expected her students to already know what tomatoes were.

I'm not ready to give up and go Galt just yet . Ask me in a week or so. Perhaps I'll be more cynical then.

>> ^rougy:
>> ^Fjnbk:
It might not work. But believe me, they truly have NO plans right now. Now looks to be the time when a phone call would be most effective. I'm not saying it will be, but at least the odds seem to be better... What does "steal their heart" mean?
>> ^rougy:
Oh, yeah!
That's always worked wonders.
"Hi, I'm the thousandth person whose name is nobody and who is worth nothing."
Neigh...
We must steal their heart.


You're a good guy.
But the right thing should have been done about nine months ago.
And, to do the right thing, a real leader doesn't have to depend on somebody bitching on the phone.

It might not work. But believe me, they truly have NO plans right now. Now looks to be the time when a phone call would be most effective. I'm not saying it will be, but at least the odds seem to be better... What does "steal their heart" mean?

>> ^rougy:
Oh, yeah!
That's always worked wonders.
"Hi, I'm the thousandth person whose name is nobody and who is worth nothing."
Neigh...
We must steal their heart.

The Democrats should calm down, have a nice drink, then either pass the Senate bill along with procedures for fixing it via reconciliation, or rapidly finish negotiations on the merged bill and pass that, all before Brown is in office.

By the way, if you're in the U.S., now would probably be a more effective time than ever to call your representative and encourage them to take one of those paths (the first one is probably more feasible). Right now, none of the Democrats have any idea what to do, and they could really use some guidance in a direction away from caving to the Republicans again.

>> ^longde:
Once again, Jon knocks it out of the park.
This a sure sign of America's decline, when our great minds find more profit and fulfillment in chicanery than in doing something that would add value to the nation. You know, Ann Coulter was the president of the Yale Law Review, so she knows better, too.
To some extent, I have empathy, because I have gotten quite cynical myself.


To be fair, Ann Coulter only got to sully the Michigan Law Review, and she was only an editor. Still pretty bad, but not nearly as prestigious.

And there are morons to be found at every elite university in the world. Example.

Thanks for your promote.

In reply to this comment by Deano:
*promote