“Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby ’schooled’ to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is “schooled” to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavor are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.”

I believe Snarky and his supporters provide all the proof of this one could want.

I’m not a neocon because I, unlike them - or you, who disagree with the neocons only on trivial matters, and fully and uncritically accept their collectivist, interventionist, and authoritarian fundamental principles of statecraft - see practically no use for the State, an institution that *by definition* must use force to benefit the well-connected at the expense of the less-well-connected.

You can call State-education bashing ‘moronic’ all you like, but you still haven’t even attempted to show that its quality varies in proportion to its funding, or that it has ever been anything but a tool of the elites you claim to criticise. (On that matter, I’m starting to think you protest too much. If your every solution is more centralization and more government, that makes you different from the banksters…how?)

You can say I ‘misunderstand deregulation’ all you like, but unless you can actually refute what I said and show that the above State interferences really weren’t, it’s *you* who misunderstands it.

Ah well. Like I said, you sold yourself and your children into slavery for a pittance, and welcomed your slavemasters with hosannas. You wouldn’t know who said it, save, perhaps, that ‘he’s that beer guy’, but a certain man, speaking to people just like you, and hence to you by extension, once charitably wished that your chains would set lightly upon you. So do I. It charms me that you call anarchists neocons, and that you are too dull and generally Californian to see the neoconservative principles in your own thought. You’re a caricature of the stereotypically stupid, self-righteous, statolatrous American, and I don’t think this little exchange could possibly have entertained me more.

How again are you not a Neocon? The only difference is that you actually mentioned Ron Paul. Aside from the sentence on Ron Paul, that’s word for word what Rick Santelli would say. Yeah Unger, I’m done with your pathetically idiotic posts.

As for ‘deregulation’ - I say ‘if only!’ The notion that this crisis occurred in a regulatory vacuum only shows how far removed you are from scientific habits of mind. In no particular order: I don’t suppose you’ve bothered to learn how accounting rules work, or how they’ve been repeatedly made less transparent and less reflective of reality? It’s probably never crossed your mind that the government sets, basically by fiat, the most fundamental price in the whole economy - the price of money - and that maybe thirty years of sustained fucking-with and serial bubble-blowing might do bad things. I suppose the Fed’s use of ‘primary dealers’ - shoveling tens of billions of freshly-printed, unbacked dollars (if you or I do it, it’s called kiting checks; if they do it, it’s monetary policy) at a handful of the biggest and most crooked banks each and every week is fucking textbook laissez-faire. Then of course there’s the sorry fact that the government always encouraged the popular delusion that some institutions were ‘too big to fail’ - and now is pulling through, yet again, to bail out the fuck-ups and buy more yachts for them. And let’s not even mention the government coercing lenders to lend to the indolent, and the government, via the GSEs, artificially propping up the markets for bad debt for decades on end…oh no. It was all the repeal of Glass-Steagall, see?

Sorry. Ron Paul (a neoconservative ringleader, right?) had your number, and you people didn’t listen. You people thought it’d be funnier to laugh at him. I, personally, don’t think he could’ve saved the country, but Obama, who, between the bailouts and the new ’surge’ in Afghanistan, seems intent on serving Dubya’s third term, *definitely* can’t. And now everyone is going to pay.

Also, only a closet Neocon, would present himself as a Libertarian, in order to try to get the department of education abolished so that his rich buddies can have more tax cuts, and the army can have more soldiers, and Americans will be easier to sucker into wars like Iraq. Again, very simple - you are a closet Neocon, stop denying it.

And the American Empire fell due to derugulation of the economy and the news media, that suckered Americans into the Iraq invasion and encouraged over-spending, as a result the situation that Obama is now in is downright scary. Also, now Americans must be vigilant more then ever, but must also be able to realize that bailout to Homeowners are ok, whereas AIG bailouts are not. You have a right to a house, but not to your tenth luxury yacht.

Americans - Neocons ruined your country, aren’t you going to at least prosecute them? Have some balls like Putin did and serve up Polonium to traitors, instead of criticizing Putin for it (and there’s a lot of actual shit to criticize Putin for).

And neither of you have done a damned thing to address any of that. All you can do is make ungrounded assertions, against the evidence, that there’s some positive correlation between State education and the well-being of civilization. (And, of course, say, with no more evidence, that I’m a closet-neocon.) In so doing, you illustrate my point.

But just to satisfy you and let you think you’ve won, I’ll confess to something juicy: I don’t think what’s happening to America is *all* bad. Eventually, your government is going to turn on you - openly, I mean. If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll at least make you aware of what you should’ve known all along: you sold yourselves and your children into slavery for a pittance, and welcomed your slavemasters with loud hosannas. The people with power do not deserve to hold it - no one, in fact, does - but many of the people they’re going to grind under their boots *thoroughly* deserve what they will get. Someday the guillotines will come out and the empire will fall, but not before it has scourged the worthless for their indolence.

If that’s not the case, perhaps Unger learned nothing from the pinkos, but increased governmental control over education leads to a reduction of quality of the education of a nation. Soviets didn’t censor math and science and became one of the best. Soviets censored politics and humanities and became one of the worst. Eliminating public education also leads to a reduction of quality of the education of a nation. Either way, Unger’s or Neocon’s the average American is getting fucked.

But if Snarky and Unger are the same exact person - Snarky/Unger - WHY HAVE YOU BEEN PULLING MY LEG FOR SOOOO LONG!!!!

In addition to all this, teachers now have more work. As a result, the education system suffers. It took NASA less then ten years to put a man on the moon, (since JFK’s pledge). Still no man or woman walked on Mars, forty years later. Not difficult to see that since JFK’s assasination, especially during the Nixon-Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years, education has been in steady decline.

Also, funding doesn’t mean increased federal control. You could simply designate a talented principal, hand him a chunk of money and say “run the school as you see fit”. The “No Child Left Behind” Act was passed with Neocons in power, and it was an attempt to destroy the American Education System, just as you are trying to destroy the American education system by abolishing it. Also, Unger, if you’re not a Neocon, why are you denying it. I’m not a Republican, but if someone calls me a Republican, I’m not going to write essays denying it, unless I have something to hide.

So Unger, go and suck Cheney’s dick, that’s what you excell at doing all these years. Suck it hard Unger, it’s the only thing you excel at. That and writing the lamest insults I have ever seen. “You dum mofo” - what are you? A WWE wrestler? A cunt? Seriously, that’s just lame.

Also, since you fail at reading comprehension and probably didn’t pick it up: increased federal money does not equal increased federal control; UC Berkeley gets federal money and has very little federal control. Now Unger, go back to your master. He awaits with his pants open….

And this is pretty damned rich. I provide hard objective historical proof that the neocon educational program is and has always been one of increased federal control over all education, public and private. I express my dislike of said program. You lecture me on why increased federal control over all education, public and private, is good…and then proceed to call *me* the neocon.

Am I on Candid Camera or something? Because seriously, I can’t imagine how even UC-Berkeley could pass you if you’re for real. If you are, you’re the dumbest motherfucker I’ve ever encountered in my life.

Unger then goes on to explain why Neocons aren’t so bad, and finishes off with the usual “Neocons aren’t that bad, I’m not a Neocon” garbage. Unger, how stupid do you think the reader is? You said you won’t post a couple of posts ago, and yet you still continue, showing pure Neocon hypocracy. You stalk this column, posting as soon as you can.

Also, I don’t see what’s wrong with government giving money to private school. Education is the best investment you can make. Too bad you didn’t make that investment Unger. No Child Left Behind was a moronic act passed by an uneducated moron. And guess who were bitching about it? The teachers! One bad act doesn’t make the whole system invalid. George Washington’s military career started out as a disaster, should he have quit? And yet you’re forcing Americans to quit education, haven’t Americans earned the right to be educated?

Reagan didn’t streghten the department of education. He dumbed down Americans, I don’t see how dumbing someone down makes him or her smarter, perhaps you can elaborate on that Unger the Neocon.

Also, where exactly is the connection between me supporting education and me cheering for choco-rations? When you make a comparison, poor, poor uneducated Neocon Unger, it is supposed to be relevant. You aren’t even comparing apples to oranges, you are comparing apples to aliens!

I don’t say you are a Neocon because you dislike Berkeley. I said that you’re a Neocon, because you support their policies, by fooling the people into believing that without government education, as poor as it may be, Americans will be better off, which is the biggest amount of bullshit I have ever read! You, (Unger) cannot even fit that much bullshit up your (Unger’s) ass!

Once again Unger, the hilarious thing is that you are try to shadily argue the Neocon agenda, by using the Libertarian Shield, on a website that’s dedicated to exposing Neocons!!! Do you see how idiotic you are?! And Unger, you may want to fuck me, but I don’t swing that way. Keep on insulting me, to me those are compliments, coming from an uneducated doltic boor such as yourself. Or you can go fuck yourself, your choice. In reality is it you who is ignorant, and angered that not everyone else is. How much are they paying you Unger? Is that worth treating fellow Americans like shit to you Unger?