Beck freaks out over the idea that "education is a right"
March 05, 2010 6:12 pm ET
From the March 5 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck:
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Greatest country in the world my boll!x
(I mean that to the Beck supporters who keep acting patriotic and shout how much America is great, not to sane, rational people)
Greatest country in the world my boll!x
(I mean that to the Beck supporters who keep acting patriotic and shout how much America is great, not to sane, rational people)
. . . until they commit a serious crime, or join the military -- then the right expires.
A right is something you're born with and doesn't place an obligation on anyone else. Your rights can never conflict with a right someone else has, it's impossible. These properties are the same thing that make rights inalienable. You cannot give away, sell, or have rights taken from you. You can however be denied the opportunity to exercise your rights.
So yes, you have a right to education. As soon as you demand that other people give up their right to own property to support your education you have transitioned from the right to education to the privilege of being provided with an education.
This (I believe) is the point he was trying to make but just didn't clearly express. Whether the privilege of a publicly provided education was good for the nation or not is a separate issue.
People who watch Beck might try to justify his words with the reasons you provided, but I think it still comes down to the fact that we state what the rights are of our citizens from the time of birth or naturalization, so why isn't education a right? By law don't kids have to go to school in one form or another? If there is a law that states that, then isn't it essentially been stated as a right through the courts?
You seem to think your rights are granted to you by our government. Really? The government gave you the right to life? Somehow through government edict you were granted that right? Of course the answer is no, you were granted the right to life by birth. The founding document of our government (The Constitution) simply recognizes those inherent rights and passes the ability to exercise specific rights held by the people to the government. These are called privileges. Every "right" held by the government is a privilege granted to it by the people. The government neither gives you your rights, nor can they take them away.
Rights depend on property. The first thing you own is yourself, so all your inherent rights follow from there. You have the right to free speech because you can speak. You have the right to life because you live. You have the right to education because you can learn. You have a right to health care because you can take care of your health. You have a right to own property because you already own your body. These are inherent rights, the rights talked about in the Declaration of Independence and recognized in the Constitution.
When you ask others to let you exercise their rights (as if they were your own) you're asking to be granted a privilege. Public education is a privilege. People grant the government the ability to exercise their right to property in order to pay for public education. Unlike an inherent right that you're born with, this privilege can be taken away. You're born with the ability to own property, you're not born with the ability to own other people's property. There is no way the government (or anyone else) can convert this privilege into an inherent right. It can't be done. Laws won't do it, force won't do it. If the teachers refuse to teach you, where has your supposed inherent right to a public education gone? If people destroy the money rather than pay the school tax where has your "right" gone? In both those cases no one prevented you from exercising your right to an education, they simply exercised their own rights and denied you the use of them.
It troubles me that people think their rights come from the government. Where's your self worth? If you feel the need for government to grant you your rights what you're really saying is that you have no rights. The government has all the rights and you have to be granted the privilege of life itself. Doesn't that seem even a bit wrong to you?
I have plenty of self worth and but I do understand that if I was born in a different country, I would have to fight a lot harder to have my rights. I some places I wouldn't be allowed to show my arms or legs in public, in some places I would not have the right to choose my partner, in some places I would not have any rights to my body, or the right to travel with out a male relative. I believe that there are some rights which every one should have, but don't. Why don't they, because their governments don't recognize them. The same thing goes in this country for same sex marriage, or the right to choose, along with others.
Secondly, as far as I know same sex marriage is not prohibited anywhere in the U.S.A. However certain states won't grant marriage licenses to same sex couples. A marriage is simply joining with another person(s) to make a family and that's not illegal. Even polygamy is legal, you just can't have a marriage license with more than one person.
A marriage license is a contract between two people and the government. The two people ask the government to provide certain things like tax breaks, and legal recourse during a divorce, etc. In return they give the government a say in the marriage, specifically the "fruits of the marriage" (the children). Since the government is the granter of the marriage license they are actually the senior partner in all such marriages and have the ultimate say in the marriage, that's why you need their permission to get a divorce. That's also why children can (by law) be removed from their parents' homes and forced into public schools, because the parents have contracted their rights as parents to the government.
In other words, marriage is a right (the exercise of which is not denied). While a marriage license is a contract between two people and the government. The government grants certain privileges to people and in exchange those people grant the government certain privileges (ultimate control of the marriage and the children).
An interesting fact is marriage licenses first started because it was at one time illegal to marry an African-American. In order to do so you had to get permission from the government in the form of a marriage license. By the way the definition of a license is "permission to do something that would otherwise be illegal". Once they realized how much control this gave them the government soon offered marriage licenses to all couples (excepting same sex couples).
By saying that a person is not born with the ability to own property you're saying that you have no rights at all. A pretty poor argument for someone who believes that public education is a right. You do believe that public education is a right and not a privilege correct?
Let's use an even simpler example. Say you own a tricycle. I destroy your tricycle with a bomb. I destroy it so completely that the molecules of your tricycle can not be found, they are spread all over the earth. Can I be held legally liable for the loss of your tricycle? According to you I couldn't, because the moment I destroyed your tricycle I also destroyed all rights you had to that tricycle. In other words legally you no longer owned it and could not sue me for destroying it. This concept is the very basis of law. Rights exist independently of the thing itself. If that were not true if someone stole your tricycle they would also steal the rights to it, thus it would legally become theirs.
Now apply this example to life. Someone may destroy your life, but they are still legally liable for doing so. That's why murder is a criminal act, because you have destroyed someone's life, but not their right to that life.
Because the Constitution wasn't written by the government. It was written by the people. How does the Constitution start out? Is it "We the Government..." or is it "We the People..."? It's called the Bill of Rights because the people felt that it was important to enumerate certain rights in the Constitution to specifically make sure that the government knew they couldn't infringe on these rights.
Quite frankly I don't care that you hate my "argument" about public education. I have simply pointed out that public education is not an inalienable right, it's a privilege. That's not an argument, it's a fact of law. I'm really uninterested in your justification for having a public education. In fact your posts make a great case against public education since you obviously weren't taught anything about inalienable rights, privileges, law, and the role of government in society. These are all fundamental concepts that should have been drilled into you at some point and clearly weren't.
The Constitution was written by a few people, not the people And most of those people were a part of Government at one time. But it doesn't matter if the people or the government gave you those rights, because someone from this earth gave you those rights and you were not born with them.
Your condescending, hollier than thou attitude shows that you were either home-schooled or you learned at a fundamentalist school. You were taught with a narrow world view and that is how you still view it.
so i herd u liek mudkips...
Since you're equating the right to bear arms to the right to education why doesn't the government collect taxes and buy guns for everyone? The answer is simple, collecting taxes and buying guns for everyone would be a privilege, not a right.
Nothing that the government does is free. Everything the government does is paid for by the people. I believe the sooner you recognize this fact the better off you'll be.
What they ARE doing is limiting the ability to exercise those rights until a person is old enough (according to society) to responsibly exercise them. Until the age of 18 a person is the responsibility of their parent. Have you heard the line "With great power comes great responsibility."? The reverse is also true, since parents are responsible for their children under the age of 18 they have the power (by law) to control them. Once a person reaches 18 by law they take all the responsibility for their actions and thus are granted the ability to exercise the full power of their rights.
My prior post about "The right to vote tax" was a bit misleading and I apologize for that. The right to vote is actually free, just like any other inalienable right. The cost of the election is paid for with taxes. I was a little hurried when I wrote the response because it appeared to me to be a very silly question and I didn't want to waste time on it. Your question however was very thoughtful.
Even were someone to assert that we shouldn't have public education calling them a heartless idiot isn't a rebuttal or a statement of fact it's simply name calling.
In fact I pointed out that ownership is the whole reason we have rights. If you didn't own your body you would have no rights. Ownership=control=rights. It's the whole concept behind such court cases as Roe V Wade. If a woman loses control of her body to the government she essentially loses ownership and thus loses all rights.
As to the "right to life" I maintain that no choice needs to be made to attain it, it is a function of birth. I believe it to be readily apparent that we can function as self straight out of the womb. Will not a baby try and defend itself from harm as well as it is able? Does this not show that even as a baby, with no knowledge of the world, we realize that our life is our own? As to when the exact realization of self occurs is a question best left to philosophers, I can neither remember when I first became self aware nor can I reason it out intellectually. I can however observe that even a baby fresh from the womb has self awareness.
I must take exception to your statement that I "...return to the idea of inalienable rights as listed by a government...". The government has nothing to do with the creation, enumeration, granting, etc. of our inalienable rights. The government was created to protect our ability to exercise our rights. While it is true some governmental documents may list some of our rights, I deny that they have anything to do with the granting of such. Inalienable rights are inalienable simply by their nature. Describing them in another way is akin to trying to describe colors to a blind man. How would you describe the color red in such a case? Red, is simply that, it's red. Inalienable rights are simply that, they are inalienable. While the property associated with such rights may be restricted or destroyed such rights never can be. They are not recognized as inalienable by governmental writ or law. They are recognized as inalienable by the people that posses them.
I aver that rights themselves are not hinged upon adherence to the structure of the state. The ability to exercise those rights are however fully a state function. In fact this is how we are able to judge whether the state is tyrannical or not. They are tyrannical not because they deny our rights, but because they deny the exercise of such. If individuals had no rights they would feel no animosity toward a government that denies such rights. The animosity arises wholly because of the conflict between the rights possessed by the individual and the denial of the exercise of those rights by the state.
Again, the government as originally conceived should have no thought to its own preservation. Being merely a function of the collective power of the people it should act not to preserve itself but to preserve the people. Yes, given the nature of people and power this is a rather idealistic notion and according to history our government didn't function this way for very long. Government turned from it's original mandate as far back as the end of the civil war when it incorporated itself in order to protect its own interests rather than those of the people it was formed to serve. The degrading of the individual's power to exercise their rights has continued to this day. With mandated health insurance on the horizon the government is poised to deny individuals the exercise of their rights to their own bodies, the very basis of every inalienable right. I believe this would solidify the state's restriction of the exercising of rights to such a degree as to put it firmly into the realm of a totalitarian state.
It has become increasingly obvious to me that you have been failed by whatever educational facility you have attended. You have not understood the facts when they are laid out in front of you and you willfully misinterpret those facts as presented. I shall try one more time to educate you and then I am done.
Your body, is property this is a fact in law. The very foundation of our legal system depends on this, without it there is no law (or rights). When you are born your body is owned by you, this is also a fact. Since you own your body at birth it's obvious that you have the right to own property. Once you acquire property other than your body, you also acquire the rights to that property. These concepts I have presented to you are all facts, they are not opinions held by me, they are facts known to me. I will not argue facts with you. If you wish to believe you have no rights that's fine with me, go ahead and believe so.
Once again, you claim that you can't acquire rights that they were given to you. So even, if you have the right to own your body, it doesn't give you the right to own anything else.
The things you have posted are not facts, but are your own opinions. I have never said a person has no rights, I have said that not all rights were given to you at birth and that you can in fact be denied your rights. But your religious fundamentalistic education won't allow you to comprehend what I have written to you.
So now we're actually questioning whether or not education is "good for the country"??
Well, as the saying goes, "if you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
On the plus side public schools provide "some" education for everyone regardless of income.
On the negative side they're rapidly failing to effectively educate children despite huge amounts of money being dumped into them.
Look at the thread above, some people don't even know what rights are. It would be laughable if it weren't so sad.
Yes, I said huge amounts of money. It costs more in taxes to send a child to public school than it costs to send a child to a much better private school. This means that our taxes are wasted in public schools. Study after study has shown that we would be MUCH better off if our government would abolish public schools and hand out school vouchers to the parents.
I'll summarize what the report says for the benefit of those that don't want to wade through it all. After 3 years: No statistically significant gains in math, statistically significant gains in reading equivalent to 3.7 months extra school time. Significantly higher satisfaction, safety, and orderliness. All for the price of $7,500 per year per child. Compared to a public school cost of $24,600 per year per child (calculated by adding up the various public school budgets and dividing by enrollment).
Studies of other voucher programs have shown similar results, I'm sure you can research them yourself if you're really interested.
du u liek mudkips?
This is what I was calling your opinion and not a fact. Which it is ONLY your opinion.
Quick question though, can an opinion also be a fact?
It's true I have presented no evidence for the facts I have written about. You have done nothing yourself but say "That's your opinion" over and over as if that makes you right. It doesn't, you have presented no evidence that your opinion about my opinion is correct. In other words the very fault you see in my posts is present in your own.
It's probably my fault for responding to you in the first place, I (wrongly) assumed we were both knowledgeable about the basic facts of the origins of rights and law. It has become clear to me that you have done no research on this subject, have no knowledge of this subject, and indeed are the type of person who shouts "No it isn't!!!!" over and over until they get their way.
Good luck with your crippling personality disorders, I hope you can find help soon.
BINGO!
My first thought once the video clip was over, was "what the frig did he even say?"
I had to think for a moment, was he talking about California's budget cuts in it's State University system?
I guess so... then why didn't he mention budget cuts, or California's State University system?
If the issue is one of Public Policy, namely California's State Universities, and the budget problems that State seems to have all the time, then why go off on a tangent, and start ranting about rights, and the Constitution, and kids today they don't appreciate anything...
The guy is just too hard to follow, he's just too hard to make sense of, you start off trying to figure out what he's saying, and then you say frig it, who really cares, if he doesn't make any clear sense on the surface of his words, then what makes you think there's anything sensible behind them?
If this guy beck was spewing all this nonsense to a shrink, I think they'd just stop writing it down, and stop trying to figure it and him out, and just give him a pill or a straight jacket or electro-shock therapy, because there's nothing to figure out from his talk, and the shrink would just sum it up as...
"He says a lot of words, but he says NOTHING."
If they do a little research they might soon discover that the only thing Paine and Beck have in common is that they're both carbon based lifeforms.
Remember, Tom: vampires don't cast reflections.
From da bible
Ummm, Beck, someone disagrees with you...
Less education = more votes for the Democrats. Note that there are exceptions to this rule.
See, it can apply to either side, so why even bother going there?
Alas, he probably just means that education should be for the rich only. Education is a privilege alright; for the privileged.
Ultimately, Beck's piece of paranoid propaganda regarding education was just heartbreaking to watch.
;)
You mean like West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs?
They are indeed {6 years minimum}, but not all of them fulfill it; some are separated {"resigned"} due to unsuitability, failure to achieve rank in a specified period, or simple incompetence.
And some of them would fall in the "Richie Rich" category {I served under more than one} . . .
Hi MagCynic,
I'd really like to know why you call this a "problem".
Thanks,
-Vysotsky
Well if I was proud that one semester in college was a good thing in my life. I would freak out too huh Becky??
LMAO!
I've seen that trick before.
Vaseline would be more appropriate for a Limpballs thread . . .
It boggles the mind that Beck actually thinks it would be a fool-proof system to only allow children whose parents can afford it even basic education. So what happens to all those kids in poverty, Beck? Do they just get ignored and swept under the carpet, so that they have to either work their fingers to the bone in sweatshops to get the smallest wages imaginable or leech off government benefits? Or should we give them a chance to better themselves and hopefully move out of the gutter so that their future is a bit brighter than that of their parents when they were their age?
Withholding basic education from thos in poverty only breeds more poverty. It dooms lower-class children to the same fate as those that came before them. It's sickening that these people who claim to be for the little guy actively promote the ideology that money solves everything, and that they're willing to destroy any form of charity for the less fortunate just so that they can pinch a few more pennies.
It's ironic that someone like Beck is so actively against the idea that education is something all humans deserve to have when he's someone who could really benefit from learning a bit more about the world himself. Except for the people in your audience who can barely see past their own doorsteps, Beck, we're all quite aware that Stalin and Mao weren't very nice people; you don't have to act like it's some shocking revelation when you say that people died under their rule. You want to talk about privilege? It's a privilege for Beck that someone like him can make millions of dollars a year just by running his mouth off and showing the world, every time without fail, that he knows absolutely nothing.
Glenn Beck never earned his education, so this must be why he doesn't value it.
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The Midnight Review
Do we think that Glenn has ever heard of Horace Mann? Mann compared the obligation to educate the next generation to the obligation of the upstream landowner not to pollute or hoard the stream as it passed through his land.
* If you think that education is expensive, try ignorance.
o Derek Bok
Thomas Jefferson: * Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
o Letter to Richard Price (8 January 1789)
* Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
o Letter to Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours (24 April 1816)
* Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education & free discussion are the antidotes of both.
o Letter to John Adams (1 August 1816)
* Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.
o Epitaph, upon his instructions to erect a "a plain die or cube ... surmounted by an Obelisk" with "the following inscription, and not a word more…because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered." It omits that he had been President of the United States, a position of political power and prestige, and celebrates his involvement in the creation of the means of inspiration and instruction by which many human lives have been liberated from oppression and ignorance.
There is also a rebuttal to another anti-education rant that was posted on YouTube, here is the link to the rebuttal.
Access to education for all is a community obligation.
Failure to honour that obligation is a failure of society as well as an economic waste.