"I thought I was clear. You missed my point entirely. That's from your statist training."
And that's your rhetorical bullshit. Jesus, man, you get worse and worse. All you have, or all you display here, is rhetoric and now (new in your conversations with me, or mostly new) personal attacks. My statist training? That's just weird. But you know, obviously you have all the answers and we know nothing.
"I doubt you ever heard of Afred Korbyzinski (sp?) and his followers who publish under that title."
You'd be right. His "followers"? Hm. Are they "programmed"? It wasn't clear in your original post that you were naming the title of a book. I know what semantics are, and semiotics. I've studied literary theory, pal, and other linguistics. Not knowing one particular author (?) is hardly indicative of ignorance or statist training (whatever the hell that might be).
"Mises, Rand, Rothbard, Hayek, Hazlitt, Korbyzinski lead the pack."
Okay, well, thank you. Of course, without context the names mean nothing. I should have asked for full names and some sense of what they write/think about. Selma Hayek? (Sorry, bad joke.) Ayn Rand? The _novelist_? Hazlitt I've heard of, but I'm not sure why at this point.
"[me]But if you're not aware of what is going on--and if your belief about what is missing is wrong--then where are you on the awareness scale?
[Ray]That'a a big if."
Not really, Ray. You've shown me in more than this exchange that you know almost exactly zero about what goes on in schools today, about what today's teens can and cannot do.
Again, I repeat, when was the last time you were in a school? How many recent graduates do you know or have you talked to? What do you know about current pedagogical practice or theory? What about brain research? What about societal impacts on education? You're great at philosophizing about moral decline etc. (though your worldview in re morality is still unclear to me, other than "statism is bad"), but you have shown no evidence of knowing anything about schools in this country, beyond some common anti-school rhetoric and a finely developed sense of personal propaganda.
"America is in a cultural, moral and financial decline. You might give it more thought why that is so. I gave you my opinion."
I've given it a great deal of thought. I don't share your sense of that decline or your belief in its reasons. You often sound like the crotchety old man who sits on his porch going, "These kids todaaaaay... When I was a lad, let me tell youuuu..." But you couch it in high vocabulary and now references to some set of important thinkers. If you didn't come off as believing your opinion is the only right one, I might actually find some of what you say interesting. I might even be inclined to look up some of these thinkers. (Hell, if you gave me some links or synopses, I would still be interested--just to know a little more. If I have time between my bouts of encouraging the moral decline of today's children. No, seriously. I would read a little, at least enough to see where I might go. Can't afford to buy books, but I can be intrigued by criticism and philosophizing.)
Sometimes you seem to bemoan the end of civilization as we know it, but at other times you seem to chortle. If you have something to offer, great. But mostly, "Buy gold! The world is ending! I'm old and I've studied and I know!" So is your goal to sit back and watch it all happen, or do you give a shit?
