Okay, I have a question

[Larry Gude]

I know first hand...

I don't know when you attended high school, but I would challenge you to spend a day at Chopticon, or worse, Great Mills, and compare the conduct of the teachers and the students to when you went to school.

...about Great Mills circa 1999 or so, step son went there.

I graduated in 82.

Here in FredCo, I spend enough time in and around the school to get a sense of the place. I honestly don't feel it is much different and in some ways better than my days at Laurel High.

BUT Great Mills is a horse of a different color and I can't even begin to imagine having a kid in DC public schools.

 

[Larry Gude]

I'm with you there...

I do look at the laws of most religions being written by men who wanted the people to behave in a way that would benefit society.

Couldn't be clearer to me; "Don't behave because I said so, behave because GOD said so".

That's why I like the US. We have a document of that type without the reliance on faith; Do what you like but you WILL be held accountable. Or least that was the idea.

And there's the rub, more than anything else I have to admit that, to me, the ACLU has really diluted the sense of individual responsibility.

 

[SamSpade]

The '50s have been VERY romanticized because of the size and influence of the baby-boomer generation.

Well, THAT, and the fact that today we have the Columbine shootings, metal detectors in the front door of the school, kids on crack and teen pregnancies. Back in the "good ol' days" kids just got beat up - now they get dragged behind a car with a chain around their neck (actual occurence at *my* old school many years after I graduated).

While TV is certainly no barometer or gauge of society - I tend to laugh because on the set of the wholesome "Brady Bunch", reality was MUCH darker than the face it presented to the world - there's really little question in my mind that the world I grew up in was vastly different than the one we live in today.

 

[Larry Gude]

I think my Rose colored glasses...

Yes, in the Good 'Ole Days there people who thought the same way, but they were the very small minority. Now they are the majority.

...are a big issue in my opinions as well because where we live we don't face the crushing pressure of popualtion density where everthing is right here, right now, a constant sea of challenges. We can breathe.

But, conversely, NYC, a place I used to LOATH is now, Manhatten anyway, a place I enjoy and will let the girls jump on the subway and go shopping while we bar hop.

 

[Larry Gude]

What a great question...

My dad asked me when I was about ten years old that if I ever found definative evidence that Christ never existed, would I give it to the press or would I destroy it.

Of course, I'd joke :

give it to the press or would I destroy it

...what's the difference? LOL

Bit much for a 10 year old though?

 

[somdcrab]

 

[2ndAmendment]

And the biggest problem of all is that the ACLU is able to push their agenda through the judicial system and make it ALL of our problem because cities and towns don't have the resources to fight them. They literally can shape our whole society through the courts, and that's not right.

Even Jefferson saw the court system as being the eventual downfall of the United States.

"The Constitution... meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." --Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51

"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277

 

[Sparx]

Does the ACLU have a constitution? If so it may explain. Are they for the civil liberties of Americans or Americans for the civil liberties of anyone?
I don;t know the answer...anyone?

 

[vraiblonde]

Couldn't be clearer to me; "Don't behave because I said so, behave because GOD said so".

I am completely comfortable with "Behave because I said so."

 

[Larry Gude]

You kiss your mom...

I am completely comfortable with "Behave because I said so."

...with that mouth?

Your second favorite word after 'Larry' is 'why'?

 

[Ken King]

...with that mouth?

Your second favorite word after 'Larry' is 'why'?

 

[vraiblonde]

Your second favorite word after 'Larry' is 'why'?

*ahem* I didn't say I was comfortable with "because YOU said so".