Reply #3: Yeah, why bother to educate the poor at all? Why should the hard-working rich pay for

[Peace Patriot]

public schools? Why should oil profits be wasted on these lazy, good-for-nothing criminals, whom God has seen fit, in His infinite wisdom, to consign to a life of squalor? Why not give the money to people who know what to do with it--the rich, who create housekeeping jobs and gardening jobs for the few worthy poor? Computers--bah! Given 'em prison cells instead, and fascist prison guards to beat subservience into these low-lifes!

Charles Dickens created many characters to describe Reagan-Bushism, though he couldn't know that that is what it would be called a hundred years hence. The best of them was probably Scrooge. When making money gets such a grip on your mind that you can see nothing else, your soul shrivels down to a tiny, shrunken, mean, hard little pea, isolated from all the life around you, and you become the bitterest of bitter people, the most lonely, isolated, miserable creature on earth, and you start spouting views just like this: "It ain't sensible to give poor kids computers. They are fated to live amongst criminals and gangs, in filth and want. That is the way things are. It is a waste of good money. And, um, Hugo is a terrorist-loving, crime-loving, incompetent dictator!"

:sarcasm:

:rofl:

---------------------------------

Tell me this, social_critic: How many violins, trumpets, French horns and other musical instruments that the Chavez government has GIVEN, free of charge, to tens of thousands of poor kids in Venezuela's barrios, along with a FREE classical music education--a program that has been touted by European and other music critics as "the rebirth of classical music"--how many of these instruments, which the children take home, every night, to practice at home, walking these expensive instruments through their barrios, have been stolen?

I don't know the answer to this. Could be none. Could be ten or a hundred or more. Given the community organization and social control in barrios, it wouldn't surprise me if the answer was none, but I don't know. But let's estimate high, for the sake of argument. Say ten in a hundred free classical musical instruments given to poor children are stolen. Is that a good reason NOT to give out the musical instruments to children HUNGRY for the beauty and the order and the mathematical perfection and sheer joy of classical music, and who prosper and grow large-souled in the discipline, cooperation and friendship of orchestral playing? These children have rocked the European and U.S. classical music establishments with their passionate, vibrant, amazing style. What began as a private vision of the transformative power of classical music for the poorest of street urchins, has grown, with generous Chavez government funding, into a national movement and a worldwide movement. The Chavez government just built them a brand new theater in Caracas. Child and community classical music orchestras have sprung up all over Venezuela--hundreds of them. The children's experience of the collective power of an orchestra to transform themselves and others has committed them to classical music for life. Thousands of poor children's lives have been transformed.

Would you deprive them of their beloved musical instruments because they might be stolen? I'll give you some credit. I'll guess that you wouldn't deprive them. Scrooge would. Reaganites, Bushites and Milton Friedmanites would. They would use that excuse, or any excuse, to reverse all benefits to the poor to further pad the pockets of the rich and the super-rich. But I'll guess that you wouldn't. I'll guess that all you wanted to do was make a sniping comment about Chavez, to reduce or eliminate any credit he might be given, and leftist government might be given, for this fine and forward-looking use of the oil money: to give computers to all schoolchildren.

But here is where you come off as a Reaganite, Bushite, Milton Friedmanite and Scrooge. You blame Chavez for not solving every problem in Venezuela. You want people to think "street crime" when they think of Chavez. But you refuse to acknowledge the truly amazing things that the Chavez government has accomplished, against great odds, that are equally important in evaluating Chavez as a leader and in evaluating the Bolivarian revolution, which is made up of many people. So it pisses you off if anybody highlights a Chavez accomplishment. You snipe at it. You tear it down. You are not only personally blind, you want others to be blind. You may be personally generous; you may actually think that government giving musical instruments and computers to poor kids is a great idea. But you will NEVER give Chavez, his government and the Bolivarians ANY credit for doing so. And that makes you a rightwing propagandist--a blind servant of the Scrooges of this world.