So Merrikans jealous yet?

[Buzz]

Nuf really doesn't have e...nuf.

[Reservoir_Dog]

I guess most people with an above home schooled education understand that you can hardly reason with brainwashed, troglodyte, zombie, ultra right wing droids.

Fixed.

[nuf]

Well this thread is not about home schooling but with this:

According to the U.S. DOE's "Homeschooling in the United States: 2003", [...] 72 percent cited "to provide religious or moral instruction" as an important reason, [...]

... i see potential for a lot of problems because - unlike in subjects as mathematics or english - these are areas where conflicting and contradicting viewpoints by people from different backgrounds are essential for forming positions. But alright CUDA, imagine i said "decent education"

[CUDA]

But alright CUDA, imagine i said "decent education"

[Wullie]

give it up, Fatman.......you're trying to educate fools. Fools who wonder why their salaries don't increase more, why the economy doesn't improve and why the CEO's of the Insurance companies get $15 million dollar salaries and personal jets. Heck, Fatman, doesn't it just shock you that the rest of the world doesn't do it like the US does?? What fools you all are.....

Have you thought about relocating to your nearest socialist utopia of your choice?

The real 'Merrikans will along just fine without you.

[callmeslick]

nothing to do with socialism, we've had a socialist system in place for nearly one hundred years. It's all a matter of degree. The facts are the facts, the rest of the world pays far less for more dependable health care, freeing their employers to know exactly how much their healthcare will cost, allowing people to take healthcare coverage out of employment decisions, freeing a society from the pain of families starving or going bankrupt due to healthcare bills. As I said, why doesn't the world clamor for the paradise which is the American system of healthcare, Wullie?? They don't, because our system is a freaking joke. Period.

[callmeslick]

nuf, a priceless thread! My sides still hurt, although I take some umbrage at comments about the South. All of us who were raised below the Mason Dixon line are NOT uneducated morons, and on the whole, I find Virginia, for instance, a damned tolerant place to live. Pockets of the deep South are actually pretty damned decadent(NOLA, the Keys, Miami, Biloxi, etc).
I also have to defend home schooling to some degree. There are a lot of very serious home schoolers out there, many in rural areas, that provide a better basic education than otherwise could be gotten. I do think the technique forces a lot of creativity to be used if you want children that grow up well-adjusted and able to work and function socially, but it can be done. Yes, a certain higher percentage home school for purely religious reasons, and most of the products are handicapped for life with a narrow view of the world and will eventually fail to succeed, as well as they could, at both higher education and employment. In other words, their intellect peaks really early. That failure is on the parents and their motivations, not on the technique of home schooling.
Finally, for those who didn't want to muck through nuf's whole thread, this gem, quoted in entirety:

As a man who grew up in a rural American area and lived close enough to a fairly liberal city to counteract it, I think I can tell you why Americans are the way they are. And it's everything to do with a lack of serious education and a lot of delusions about American life that are never corrected.

The more rural an American, the more conservative and bigoted they eventually become. America is full of an amazing variety of people and a pretty rich history (steeped in blood, sadly), but a lot of conservatives still believe in the idea of Manifest Destiny. Or rather, the specific parts where it's God's will that America is a whites-only country and where they don't have to deal with differences. Most of their worldview comes from television (hence the idea that the '50s were perfect and such) that was never really corrected. When they have a chance to get to know people of different walks of life, they will accept them because they 'know' them. But as a whole, most American conservatives are always covering up the urine stains in their pants. They fear everything and use that fear to justify any actions they take. This fear leaks through everything they do and really limits them in life.
They act proud of this fact, but most rural Americans have a very serious problem regarding equality. They mistakenly believe that if you don't conform (they will never really call it this because it has Soviet overtones--the Cold War still exists to them because it formed the majority of manufacturing in their areas, ala warfare = employment), that you're putting on airs. But they don't have the vocabulary to really suggest this. They don't see it as putting on airs as much as it's being 'better' than them. They can't explain it, but it comes down to the mixed ideas of class warfare/racism/sexism that they can't figure out. Rural Americans are always trying to achieve a lifestyle that mimics '50s television and are constantly baffled when they can't. Not only do they want to enforce a certain reality, they aren't really sure how to, and this causes a lot of strange behaviors where they scream about American freedom over and over again but are more than willing to pass legislation that limits their own freedoms. It's possibly the strangest thing ever, but these people can't work it out. So they don't. But they back it regardless.

The anger that comes from the frustration of trying to change the world to their perceptions is what really fuels the Fox News nonsense. The only real term I can find for it is schizophrenia: political conservatives in America aren't playing with a full deck. They are decent people for the most part but their viewpoints are so full of soundbytes, misinformation, and outright lies that they wholeheartedly accept (because nobody they can trust can be wrong) that it's hard to take them seriously. This adds to the elitism they paint everybody else with. Anything that makes them feel dumb or is different is thrown into the same bin as everything else: if you are not them or even nice enough to listen to the stuff they have digested but not examined, you are a commo-socialist-Nazi-rapist-kung fu-master-UnAmerican. It's a nice way of saying 'THEM.' So that's the way we're at right now: a bunch of angry, insecure, delusional, misinformed bunch of people who never really gained the point of cynicism and learned how to educate themselves and figure out that maybe they're being lied to. You can tell them, but you have to 'convince' them. Sadly, convincing them doesn't work because they have their own rules and you have to pretend not to put on airs, and...well, you get what we have now. A bunch of sad, insecure assholes who would vote to exterminate their own children if you throw in enough code words that they have learned to inexplicably trust outright.

[Wullie]

nothing to do with socialism, we've had a socialist system in place for nearly one hundred years. It's all a matter of degree. The facts are the facts, the rest of the world pays far less for more dependable health care, freeing their employers to know exactly how much their healthcare will cost, allowing people to take healthcare coverage out of employment decisions, freeing a society from the pain of families starving or going bankrupt due to healthcare bills. As I said, why doesn't the world clamor for the paradise which is the American system of healthcare, Wullie?? They don't, because our system is a freaking joke. Period.

[Pudfark]

ROFLMAO.....times twenty..........

Hey Slick...you must be on the Pelosi Plan......

Check into them European Plans or Canadian....see whut ya get after age 59......
you're killing me thank goodness I have my own health care

[fatman]

No more than jealous of the f'erners and welfare-quality slugs in our country who get the same treatment - except in a much more timely manner than you do. Do you know how much of your taxes pays for what you imagine is free?

Timely manner it was fine for me i could have had the xray and second consult same day but my work ethic decided to go to work since we are a man down this week. And what do you guys get for spending about 6% more per gdp than us?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inter ... 25_GDP.png
i am at a loss there. And i will tell you one thing people dont really go bankrupt here because of medical bills
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-06-05/heal ... =PM:HEALTH and i will go out on a limb here without searching for figures but im sure you guys would have a substantial suicide rate from the effects of this.