Thanks for your post I think it shows how stupid it is to draw the lines- Democrats believe this, Republicans believe this. People should stop just blindly following party lines and start thinking about the issues, then vote for the person who they feel has the same values they do.
For me, this is how I feel.
DRUGS – As a teacher I have watched more children and families than I can count hurt by drug use. Some people say that doing drugs only hurts the person who is doing them. That is not true; they hurt their family, their friends and society. We need to work harder in preventing drug abuse; one way is for stronger sentences for those involved in the selling and distribution of drugs.
IMMIGRATION- Illegal immigration hurts people that are here legally and adds to overpopulation (the average immigrant doubles their live births per female when they move to the US-Virginia Abernathy- Population Politics), but I think building walls and deporting people and such will not help. Their plight is too strong. Instead I want tougher laws for the people who hire illegals and we should consider putting at least some of the money we put into fighting illegal aliens, into changing the situations in their home lands, people don’t immigrate illegally if they have a decent life in their homeland.
AFFIRMITIVE ACTION- I agree that it should be the best person for the job as well as equal pay for equal work, but we must realize that everyone did not have an equal background. I think that we need to work harder on insuring that all children in the US have access to a decent education and enrichment activities so that our best and are brightest, no matter what they background, have the foundation to do the job.
GAY MARRIAGE- I don’t understand being attracted to someone of the same sex, but I don’t understand the attraction many heterosexual people have either, more importantly, what business is it of mine? I know that there are many people who cannot understand why I am in love with my geeky computer nerd boyfriend or why he is in love with me, a chubby older woman who is over dedicated to ensuring that her lower income minority students stay out of drugs, away from gangs and go to college. But that is none of their business.
Additionally, I doubt that you think that the only people who should be allowed to be married are lesbians and yet by tying your anti gay marriage stance to AIDS infection would do just that since they are at the lowest risk of all for contracting and spreading AIDS.
AIDS is not just spread by men having anal sex with other men. It is spread by the transfer of bodily fluids, predominantly semen and blood. So heterosexual anal sex has just as much of a chance of spreading AIDS as homosexual anal sex. Also, vaginal heterosexual sex has a high rate of transfer,( true not as much as anal, but still very high), especially for the woman, and oral sex has a high rate of transfer for the person receiving the semen- man or woman. Bottom line- unprotected sex with an HIV infected person is highly dangerous no matter what kind of relationship the people are in. (except for lesbian relationships, since there is no semen exchange and little blood exchange.) You don’t seem to be against heterosexual couples having anal or oral sex, and even if you were, there is no way you could stop it. (I am assuming that you do not believe that we should have cameras on people 24/7 and “professionals” who job it is to watch everyone and make sure that a married man is not getting a blow job from his wife.)
DEATH PENALTY- Yes, I know that we spend more money putting people to death, and that there have been innocent people who have been put do death, but I believe that in certain circumstances it is OK. In highly violent crimes, if we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the person is guilty and that if they are returned to society they will repeat their offence, I agree with it. Furthermore, in some cases, like gang violence, many people believe that even if they murder someone, they will eventually be freed or that they will work from the “inside”. The death penalty would send the message that neither of these is true.
ABORTTION- I hate the idea, but I hate the idea of children being neglected, poor and abused, even more. I see the ramifications of our belief that every child conceived needs to be born every day that I go to work, and on most that I don’t. This does not mean that I believe in aborting every fertilized egg in the US or in aborting every late term pregnancy. Like so many of my other stances, I believe in being proactive. If we addressed the reasons behind the unplanned pregnancies, then the abortion rates would naturally drop. Of course that does mean that the populace needs to learn about birth control, but the operable word here is “learns”. It does not mean that they are forced to have sex, but when they do have sex, they will be able to protect themselves and prevent unwanted pregnancies.
I’m going to go off on a soapbox for a second here, sorry, but it is just something that I feel the need to state. I find it amazing that people can scream about how horrible it is to abort a 6 week old fetus- calling it a baby and person, but then want to deny that very same child/person adequate housing, food, health care, and education a few years later because their parents are lazy, drug addicted, uneducated and so on. By not allowing our teenagers to learn about birth control and by making abortion illegal, no matter how much we push abstinence, we are insuring that eventually there are children born to people who aren’t ready to be parents and therefore insuring that there will be more children who are either neglected, poor and abused and we as a society have to help.
ENVIRONMENT- I can’t understand why anyone would feel that it is ok to destroy the environment. If they are religious, they believe that God gave us the world. Why would they want to destroy the gift? I know that they believe that God gave them dominion over the earth, but dominion means to control, not to destroy. When I was a child and my father gave me a gift, I had dominion over it, but if I destroyed it, he would be angry and I would be punished. Don’t they believe that God would feel the same way?
.If they are not religious, they still care about themselves, their future and their children’s future... Why would they want to destroy that? The only reason I can see for people not caring about the environment is either self centered greed on their part or lack of understanding about how their actions affect the world around them. Once again, I believe that the best way to deal with this is through education. We need better education in our schools, especially when it comes to science, history, social studies and geography.
HEALTH CARE- every working American deserves health care. People always say to me, “Why should someone who isn’t working get health care?” But the truth is they get it. We give it to our prisoners, to our unemployed, our drug addicts, and our teenaged moms who are no longer in school and not working. If you don’t want them to have it, fight those programs. But Universal Health Care will allow all of the working 47 million working Americans who do not have insurance at their work and their children to have access to medical care. What is so horrible about that?
EDUCATION- No Child Left Behind or vouchers? . The two have little to do with each other and they surely aren’t opposing situations. NCLB is a federal law that states the all states must make standards and then test their students at the end of the year to make sure that they are reaching those standards. In addition, every year each school has to show more and more growth until 2014 when ALL children will theoretically be passing the test. Vouchers are a system where parents will get the amount the state pays per child for public education and apply that to a private education.
Although I completely agree that we need to revamp our educational system, I disagree with both. NCLB has actually lowered the standards in many states (so that they can meet the requirements of the law and receive the federal funding). It has teachers focusing solely on force feeding students the answers to the questions on the test, and has removed science, social studies, history and geography from most public schools in the country since they aren’t tested (Seriously, I was asked at a teacher meeting the other day, why would I waste their time teaching something that is not on the test? It would hurt the potential for funding). For more information on how I feel about NCLB, go to my Answers profile and read the answers to questions on NCLB.
Vouchers- most people who think that they are a good idea think so because they believe that they will be able to get their children into any private school that they want. Others think that it will be a blessing for the poor and minority who can’t afford a private education.
First, what would stop some people from using the vouchers to put their children in a neo-Nazi school, or a school that says that science is the work of the devil? How about a school that believes that reading and writing isn’t important, or that an ancient Babylonian devil inhabits thin black lines? Don’t kid yourself; these are just few private programs that parents are paying for today. I find it horrible that they are, but at least now, the tuition money is their parents’ responsibility; I would hate to think that in the future taxpayer’s dollars would go for it.
Worse yet what would stop some unscrupulous person from opening up a school, putting the kids in front of a TV set all day and just raking in the dough? If they took the $8000 a year and shared it with the parents, they’d get 4 grand and the parents would get four grand. If they only got 10 children in their program that would be $ 50,000 a year; more than the average public school teacher makes! Don’t tell me there won’t be people who will try it.
Voucher proponents say, that there will be controls over which schools will get the money. Students will have to take a test at the end of the year to prove that their students are learning. Well, we see how well that is working out with NCLB and there schools aren’t competing for the money against anyone but themselves. When schools become businesses looking for customers, education becomes a commodity and although people talk about that driving the quality of it up, I can tell you that it also drives the producers to focus on quantity, but on quality.
Additionally, the voucher isn’t a paper that allows any child to attend any school. It is just a check for a certain amount of money. What’s to say that a private school won’t raise their tuition the exact amount of the voucher? People with the voucher still won’t be able to pay the whole tuition and the private schools will now have MORE money for their children. The rich will be helped, the poor will be hurt.
I believe that instead of vouchers or NCLB we need to revamp our whole education system. For more information on my personal feeling about this, go to my profile and check my previous answers to education questions.
Answered By: Lysa - 1/13/2008 |