Rick Santorum Represents Everything Europeans Find Weird About America.

[[WDW]Megaraptor]

Wait, isn't that one of the core principles of US conservatism?

Abolishing all social programs, returning to the gold standard, abolishing the Federal Reserve and eliminating income tax entirely? No, not really...

F*cking moron just called the President a "snob" for wanting college to be available for everyone.

And I agree with him. Too many people go to college in this country. It also costs too much. As a result we have millions of people taking on massive debt loads in order to get devalued degrees. Santorum is right, we need to stop with this snobbish attitude that your life is a failure if you don't go to college and get rid of the snobbish idea that trade schools and working with your hands is demeaning.

[Spartan10k]

The encyclopedia of Alabama disagrees with you on this one.

http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/fac....jsp?id=h-2367

I take issue with that (wrong) characterisation. I don't have time now but I'll look up who wrote that in that encyclopaedia when I get home. First guess is he/she is a liberal. Second guess is he/she is a damnyank.

[California Joe]

Yeah, cause I'm sure the President meant "force" everyone to go to school when they'd rather be a frigging plumber or heavy equipment operator etc. The idea is to make it available to people who want to pursue an education for chrissakes.

Call it what it was, a thinly veiled attempt to appeal to anti "elite" non edumacated types that those evil colleges might instill "liberal" ideas about a wide range of subjects that religion doesn't cover.

[kimujnr]

Education is a key part of this administration's prerogatives, wanting more people to gain college degrees is not some evil Orwellian intelligencia conspiracy that Santorum's making it out to be. But, at any case having listened to him these past couple of years I certainly wouldn't mind him taking a stroll back into a classroom.

[[WDW]Megaraptor]

Yeah, cause I'm sure the President meant "force" everyone to go to school when they'd rather be a frigging plumber or heavy equipment operator etc. The idea is to make it available to people who want to pursue an education for chrissakes.

Call it what it was, a thinly veiled attempt to appeal to anti "elite" non edumacated types that those evil colleges might instill "liberal" ideas about a wide range of subjects that religion doesn't cover.

Nope, I actually watched the whole ABC interview, not reading the edited and falsified media summaries.

We need a culture change that says there's nothing demeaning or wrong about being a heavy equipment operator or a plumber.

I think because there are lot of people in this country that have no desire or no aspiration to go to college, because they have a different set of skills and desires and dreams that don't include college.

And to sort of lay out there that somehow this is -- this is -- should be everybody's goal, I think, devalues the tremendous work that people who, frankly, don't go to college and don't want to go to college because they have a lot of other talents and skills that, frankly, college, you know, four-year colleges may not be able to assist them.

And there are other -- there's technical schools, there's additional training, vocational training. There's skills and apprenticeships. There's all sorts of things that people can do to upgrade their skills to be very productive and build their community.

[kimujnr]

Nope, I actually watched the whole ABC interview, not reading the edited and falsified media summaries.

We need a culture change that says there's nothing demeaning or wrong about being a heavy equipment operator or a plumber.

But hasn't this always been the case? America has always prided itself on being built by the hands of industrialists, roughnecks, hard working men and women etc. If anything aren't these the folks who garner the most respect when it comes to working Americans? Unless on the coasts(where I have heard less about it), most of the US in my experience views hard work as paramount to success even more so than big fancy degrees.

[Seek]

Abolishing all social programs, returning to the gold standard, abolishing the Federal Reserve and eliminating income tax entirely? No, not really...

Is he proposing the same on state level too?

[Corrupt]

And I agree with him. Too many people go to college in this country. It also costs too much. As a result we have millions of people taking on massive debt loads in order to get devalued degrees. Santorum is right, we need to stop with this snobbish attitude that your life is a failure if you don't go to college and get rid of the snobbish idea that trade schools and working with your hands is demeaning.

There's a difference between "available to everyone" and "everyone goes". College should indeed be available for everyone assuming, they have the intelligence and work ethic required and a college degree is what they want/need for their chosen career.

[JCR]

Ron Paul is simply how Libertarianism should look like if people took it seriously, not as opium for the 99%

[Wahnsinn]

Education is a key part of this administration's prerogatives, wanting more people to gain college degrees is not some evil Orwellian intelligencia conspiracy that Santorum's making it out to be. But, at any case having listened to him these past couple of years I certainly wouldn't mind him taking a stroll back into a classroom.

Don't know so much about the US but here in the UK far too many people are getting degrees these days. For apply for a lot of mundane office jobs you need a degree. It doesn't matter what it is in, where from or if it is any good or not. You don't need a degree to sit in an office and answer the phone yet more and more companies are starting to require it.

I'm all for people getting a degree, a well educated population benefits us all. What I do however have issue with is this idea that you have to have a degree to do jobs that really don't require them.

[[WDW]Megaraptor]

Ron Paul is simply how Libertarianism should look like if people took it seriously, not as opium for the 99%

Ron Paul is also a Baptist fundamentalist and a creationist, who thinks we should go back to the Gold Standard because the Bible says to use "honest weights and measures," has written that "the collectivist Left hates religion" and said the other week that his foreign policy will be guided by "Christian Just War theory."

How's that going to play in Europe?

Don't believe me? Check it out:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul148.html
http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issue...ment-of-faith/

Don't know so much about the US but here in the UK far too many people are getting degrees these days. For apply for a lot of mundane office jobs you need a degree. It doesn't matter what it is in, where from or if it is any good or not. You don't need a degree to sit in an office and answer the phone yet more and more companies are starting to require it.

Indeed, in the USA it has gotten to the point that for a young worker a master's degree is pretty much required to get any sort of well paying job. So of course more and more people are getting master's degrees.

What will eventually happen is that the cost of getting a degree will become more than its earning power, and people will be better off financially taking crap jobs but avoiding student loan debt. The college debt bubble is going to burst.

[JCR]

I'm not of the opinion of the other guy that Europeans in general like Ron Paul.
Most simply never heard of him, and I certainly wouldn't vote for him and don't share any of his beliefs.
But he comes across as honest, that I must admit and if I were libertarian and religious, I would support him.
Also christian bellum iustum doctrine as laid down by Augustinus and Thomas Aquinas doctrine IS basically the classic guideline for a christian monarch on when he's justified to wage war.
Nothing fanatic about this one, it is simply a educated/religious way of saying he opposes interventionism in favor of "classic" war and peace decisionmaking.

[harryc]

Nope, I actually watched the whole ABC interview, not reading the edited and falsified media summaries.

We need a culture change that says there's nothing demeaning or wrong about being a heavy equipment operator or a plumber.

WTF ? I never pictured you as a fellow traveler. I wholeheartedly agree that folk should be paid for their labor, not their paper. Equal wages for ALL !

(I say sitting comfortably in my little box paid rather well because of my engineering degree).

[[WDW]Megaraptor]

Also christian bellum iustum doctrine as laid down by Augustinus and Thomas Aquinas doctrine IS basically the classic guideline for a christian monarch I'm not of the opinion of the other guy that Europeans in general like Ron Paul.
Most simply never heard of him, and I certainly wouldn't vote for him and don't share any of his beliefs.
But he comes across as honest, that I must admit and if I were libertarian and religious, I would support him.on when he's justified to wage war.
Nothing fanatic about this one, it is simply a educated/religious way of saying he opposes interventionism in favor of "classic" war and peace decisionmaking.

I don't really have a problem with him saying that, it's just that it's rather ironic that some of the same people bagging on Santorum as a theocrat are supporting a guy who literally said that he would base his government policy on the Bible and the teachings of the early church fathers.

[kimujnr]

I often wonder if these tuition hikes really are the result of Universities "struggling to meet obligations, state budget cuts etc." coz they never seem to struggling and some are raking in nearly hundreds of millions off of Athletics alone. In the end the laborious jobs are gonna be the place to be coz even though they don't pay as much they're stable, and you wont have to worry about spending the rest of your existence paying off a student loan.