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To: Steel Wolf
A more educated citizenry benefits society far beyond how much money you can make off of taxing them. This is especially true in light of how poorly our public schools perform at preparing kids to be adults (which is also taxpayer supported).

So you would agree with the Democrats that we ought to spend more to hire and train better teachers? You would agree with the democrats that we ought to spend more on better schools? After all, you are repeating the same logic they use to justify their education programs.

Bottom line, support for pell grants equals support for confiscating money from tax payers so that it can be given out to others rather than allowing it to be spent by those who earned it.

If you think that governmentt is better capable of spending your money then you are, then you aren't a Conservative.

Those that are defending the Pell Grant program are making the case that it is moral, and to our benefit to confiscate money from hard working americans so that it can be given to those who are unwilling to pay their own way through college. I don't see how you can justify your support for this on any ground.

75 posted on 07/12/2004 10:43:40 AM PDT by mastequilla
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To: mastequilla
If you think that governmentt is better capable of spending your money then you are, then you aren't a Conservative.

Were I to start eliminating every category of spending that the government is involved in, these would be the last two to go.

Education
National Defense

Why? The national defense column is self explanitory. We all pay in for the common defense, and we're all defended. Yes, this is a communal thing, and the same logic of paying for a common defense could be used to justify any number of socialist agendas, but we do it anyway.

We must be crazy.

The education one column is a little more obscure, but no less vital. Education is an investment in our society. People with education will generate more than just money for our society. They generate ideas. As cruicial as that is, they can also evaluate and debate ideas. Being able to do so, in the context of history and morality, is the cornerstone of our civilization.

Simply stated, our constitutional republic could not exist, and will not endure, without people of sufficient education to know what they're doing. Any 'democracy' formed of uninformed voters can be guarenteed to fail. Our world is far more complicated than when the Founding Fathers started this great experiment, and the we let a great collective ignorance run the show at our own peril.

So, paying for the education of my fellow American seems smart to me. Everything I enjoy and treasure in our society rests on free, informed people making adequate decisions. The military will guard our liberty, but to be informed enough to keep that liberty alive takes time, effort and resources.

If that means I have to contribute resources to provide for the common education, then I'm happy to do so. It provides tangible benefits to me, to my society, and my country. In an ideal world, everyone would pull themselves up by their bootstraps, everyday walk uphill 20 miles in the snow while wearing sandals to get to school, and not rely on anyone else. I have nothing but respect for people that struggled to educate themselves, but that's one thing that we shouldn't make people struggle to do.

If supporting Pell grants is cheating in education spending, than using JDAMs is cheating in defense spending. JDAMs cost more than rifles, and our granddaddies all won wars with rifles. And granddad didn't have no Pell grant, either! Right? Or is it not right at all? Maybe what has changed is that these days, to get the same results as before, we need to apply different methods?

86 posted on 07/12/2004 11:42:10 AM PDT by Steel Wolf (What? Bread AND circuses, ... for free?!?)
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