I thought I'd join the Oregon Tea Party group on Facebook so I could see what they are up to. It's been less than a week and I'm already regretting it. I try to keep in mind that they are as sure of their world view as I am of mine and to seek to find common ground. No such luck!
They publish MANY posts per day. Really messes up my Facebook page. Here is a sample from yesterday.
We Don't Need No (Public) Education: Sheldon Richman on the Separation of School and State
This is a libertarian kook hating on public schools.
Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty as We Know It
"Urban poverty as we know it is, in fact, exclusively a creature of state intervention in consensual economic dealings." Really? I guess there wasn't any urban poverty until LBJ created the Great Society. Haven't they ever heard of Debtor's Prison?
Hey Media, How About a Prime Time Obama Investigation?
They think Obama is a dunce who cheated his way to being the president of the Harvard Law Review. Show us the report cards! Where are his college essays?
Gasoline Taxes Vs. Exxon Profit, Per Gallon Average Exxon profit per gallon: 2 cents. Average state tax per gallon: 48.1 cents. Who are the greedy price gougers, again?
Poor Exxon! How can they get by? Let's keep giving them subsidies so they can struggle along on their 2 cents a gallon. I tried responding to the Public School post about the fact that home schooling doesn't work for everybody. This is the reply I got:
Getting the state out of the education industry doesn't automatically mean the default would become homeschooling. It simply means an open market would develop where different products and services - including brick-and-mortar schools - would compete for customers (parents and students) and go out of business quickly if they failed to produce promised results. That's how the free market works, and we haven't had one in education for over a century.
How can anybody think that a free market is any way to educate kids? How much would the average family have to pay to send their kids to school? How in the hell is that supposed to work? What if the school "goes out of business" halfway through the school year?
So I don't know guys. Some brave Kos souls cruise Stormfront and World Net Daily, which are way too crazy for me. I'll do this as long as I can bear it and report back to you as often as I can. Is this a fool's errand or am I doing something worthwhile?