Why did I go into $110K in debt for an education?

There is an issue in this country with education. I'm not talking about education with a capitol 'E' as in the Dept. of Education, or even the problems facing our schools or us fixing the system and become a leader in the world in terms of education. I'm talking about a basic belief that has come through clearly in this election that education is evil. While we say education is key to the future, we tell our children that if you want to be successful and happy you need an education, if you want to climb out of poverty or have options for a career you have to get an education. Everything about our individual and societal future depends on education.

So what's the problem? The problem is that because of disparate groups in this country galvanizing in the 1990's around the Republican Party, because they felt validated by the election of a president who did everything he could to endear himself to the American people by pretending he wasn't one of the wealthiest presidents from one of the most privileged backgrounds in our history, and lately by the Tea Party and their attacks on Barack Obama. Thanks to Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angles, we now have a social and political narrative that tells us that if you are educated, if you are intellectually above average and successful because you are talented and innovative and intelligent, and if you have any inkling about the makeup of Congress, current events or READ, than you are elitist. Not only are you elitist, but you are out of touch with the rest of the country and unfit to lead in any legislative or executive office anywhere in the country. Because Sarah Palin couldn't name a single newspaper or magazine off the top of her head in the Katie Couric interview in 2008, because she couldn't handle questions from any news outlet except FOX News and the conservative media, everyone but those friendly stations became the 'Lame Stream Media'. Thanks to those and others, disseminated through the media exposure and organizing of the Tea Party movement over the past several years, being a person with an education in this country makes you of less value.

Now, it has been true for a long time that intellectuals are often targets for totalitarian regimes, for fascist societies and political movements. Intellectuals think about things, and argue things and talk to other people about things. When intellectuals then disagree with a movement or regime they have to be silenced lest they foster unrest that erodes that regime or movement's power base. If that regime or movement is overtly and ideologically oppressing their people or if they are enforcing policies that have a broad reaching negative impact, more and more intellectuals speak out against that movement or regime. That is what we have here and it gets more and more insidious.

One topic that floats out among social conservatives in this country, and it floats around on all levels of government, is about the administration of our public schools. A central aspect, philosophically, to this topic is the issue of teaching 'Intelligent Design', which in reality is another word for creationism, the teaching of biology through the Biblical narrative of God creating the Earth and universe and all things and all creatures. This has been a point of contention over and over again in local and state school boards with parents advocating its teaching in place of evolution, or at the very least as a 'viable' alternative to evolution. At the national level, one of the areas of the budget most Republicans are willing to cut, or at least they say this as they're campaigning, is the Education budget. Sharon Angles and a number of other fringe candidates even want to dismantle the Department of Education. Christine O'Donnell mentioned, in reference to teaching ID (creationism) in public schools, that all those curriculum decisions should be made on the local level, that everything should be on the local level.

There aren't general education standards in this country, despite all the testing to grade schools and districts on their proficiency rates. There are, however, standardized tests required by colleges and universities. Why? Because they want to see that a student is able to handle the academic requirements, that they are a desirable candidate for their school, and that they have long-term potential to become successful in the world, thereby reflecting well on their alma mater and donating money as an alum. Whether or not this is a major hurdle for students in this country based on race and socioeconomic status, it would only become that much harder when there is no nationally funded government agency to help support the administrative infrastructure for testing. It would only become that much harder by removing even the appearance of some national standard of education and putting curriculum on the local level.

Of course conservatives want the curriculum decisions to be placed on the local level. They want religious to conservatives to have more control over their kids' education, they want to have more control over the 'moral' or 'social' issues brought up in the schools. Evolution then wouldn't be the only thing for the chopping block. Another perennial issue is 'sex education', or what the rest of us know as health class. Effectively they probably would be most comfortable to return education in this country, and some have said this explicitly, to that of the 1950's. All of that is representative of the incredibly romanticized version of that period in history that many in this country believes in. They may want this for many reasons, too many for me to speculate, but the effect would be to indoctrinate all of our children in a worldview that isn't even recognizable to our modern world. It would ignore the empirical evidence of climate change and the effects of industrialization on the environment, convince children that industries have our best interests at heart as they cut costs to produce food more cheaply, all while promoting the idea that America is the greatest country in the world to the exclusion of everyone else, not just that we can but that we have the right to take unilateral action in the pursuit of our own perceived national interests.

Not incomprehensible is the connection between these conservative ideas of 'local' control and the religious fundamentalism that has become pervasive throughout the Republican Party. It has allowed people of generally less political knowledge, awareness on current events, and general education to congregate around some very well funded party leaders masquerading as outsiders. The rhetorical device of 'educated elite', especially representing them as all from New England, sits really well with working and lower class voters in other parts of the country, and especially in rural areas. These voters then were duped into trusting candidates whose own funding can be traced directly to insider political action groups and often directly to enormously wealthy individuals and corporations. Their own lack of political knowledge and savvy let them vote against their own interests in candidates who we are now seeing turn against some of their own campaign messages and a party interested in nothing but obstruction and further economic problems. At odds with this are the many labor unions who activated their traditionally Democratic base and supported Democratic candidates with money and people-power. These unions recognize the connections between corporate interests and financial groups and the deeply held principles of the Republican Party's conservative agenda antagonistic to the working class.

Where does that leave us as a country? Well, on climate change for instance, 151 nations signed the Kyoto Protocols back in the late 1990's. President Clinton abstained, as did India and China, because it called for a large reduction in fossil fuel emissions. That means that 151 nations, including all of the industrialized nations we call allies and who have historically stable economies and governments, recognize the threat of global climate change resulting from global warming and its involvement in destroying ecosystems and the environment. With every new Republican member of Congress stating during their campaigns they do not believe in global warming, and with several of them looking to hold public high profile hearings to prosecute the 'hoax' of global warming, how can we even think about being competitive in any meaningful way. When evolution, a central principle to all of science, the cornerstone of the field of Biology and it's resulting disciplines, and to the field of genetics so crucial to the fight of diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's, how can we expect to progress in any of the sciences when it is not just questioned by our politicians, but policies put in place that discourage it from being included in classrooms and promoting religiously inspired doctrine instead?

Something that gives me hope, and something that has always made the socially conservative politicians in this country call academia 'liberal', is that in universities and colleges, you are required to prove your points by citing sources, defending sources, defending theories and hypothesis and the process you used to develop those from the evidence you collected. In science, for instance, you are required to present all of your evidence and facts in a structured way and cite any sources. If there is anything faulty in your research methodology, in the quality of the sources or in the logic in whatever argument you're making, your professor gives you a lower grade, talks with you about how you went about your work, or helps to correct errors to strengthen your work. Other fields of study follow similar methods, they call it critical thinking, and it requires you to think beyond just the words on a page, to develop connections and ideas with other material or sources you've read or encountered, and to argue your point in a clear and convincing way. We all have to go through this when we go through a college or university education. We all may not be at a school with the same level of academic intensity, not all of us are able to compete at the same academic level or are interested in pursuing a very academic career path or studies, but we are all challenged to learn and think beyond the superficial.

That is what really is at the heart of the whole idea of 'educated elite', which then translates to 'liberal elite', or if it's about a schism between Sarah Palin and the real Republican Party, the 'establishment elite' or 'Washington elite'. Somehow it's always about 'elite', and how the 'elite' is bad. Well, when you are dealing with multinational corporations, with international trade or political policy, when you are dealing with micro- and macroeconomic issues, with stabilizing and incredibly diverse economy and understanding the intricacies of a multicultural and multilateral approach to prosecuting a war, instead of just sending planes to bomb the hell of out whomever, don't you want the elite? Doesn't 'elite' mean the best, the highest order of whatever it's being applied to?

Of course some random housewife with a mediocre education and no policy background will never be considered to be qualified to become president. Running the nation isn't anything like running a household, despite whatever she might say. Stabilizing the world's largest economy during major global economic uncertainty is nothing like balancing a family checkbook or paying household bills. No, 'common sense' solutions have absolutely no place in Washington, D.C. because that's where we want the smartest, brightest, most talented people in the fields of economics, political science, law and international trade to be and to be working. Sarah Palin is a million miles from any of that. And if an ignorant housewife with no business experience and who has no political skills at all other than being an agitator within her own party can become president, then what the hell did I take on $110K in student loan debt for?

The Paradox of Conservative Populism and Class Warfare

Since the great debates and struggles in Congress to pass health care reform there has been a very vocal and visible conservative opposition to not just health care reform but the entire progressive agenda. The group that galvanized this so effectively was the Tea Party, with their Colonial garb and tea bags and angry slogans. They voiced their opinions by gathering in Washington and using signs that denounced President Obama as a totalitarian dictator, a fascist, a Nazi, a tyrant and a foreigner. They invited the leadership of people like Sarah Palin, who was more than happy to turn her notoriety as a political nobody prior to the 2008 election and her quirky average American-ness into a potent force. Because of the anger and general ignorance of the members of the Tea Party, the message they formed around, protesting taxation and overreach of government, has been subtly and sometimes overtly overtaken and changed to suit the Republican leadership who seized control.

Amidst all the rhetoric about government involvement in the private lives of citizens and their general anger at the lack of representation for their political views by Congress and the White House, there have been many instances of outright contradiction and hypocrisy that is either conveniently ignored or aggressively denied. First is the assertion that the majority of Americans are sympathetic to the message of the Tea Party, namely political revolution against a perceived class of political elites. Second, and this is something that Sarah Palin has always used in her rhetoric, that somehow 'common sense' solutions will stimulate the necessary recovery of our economy, and that if we got the 'elites' out of Washington and put some people with 'common sense' and 'traditional values' into the role of government, then everything would be okay. And third, and this is central to the identification of the 'elites' versus the average/normal American, is the demoniaation of educated people, hence the other part of that title of those dastardly 'educated-elites'.

The rhetorical device of 'educated elites' and class warfare isn't unique to Palin's speeches, and isn't even really unique to this election cycle. Class warfare has been around for as long as there have been struggles to form government and the distinction between economic and political classes. Sometimes this type of political manipulation is done with race, by fusing race, ethnic background and economic status together to form generic profiles of a people on whom to place the blame for the political and economic woes of a given time period. This happened in Germany with the Jews, often a target of adding race to class warfare in Europe. It's happened to the Irish, to the Polish, to the Russians, and often, as we saw in the states of the former Yugoslavia, this has often come to violence and civil war.

One of the key objects of concern that is listed off by those talking about their concerns about the economy and their own financial future is how to send their kids to college, how to educate their children, how to leave their children with a more optimistic future. There is a fundamental problem with the rhetoric when one of the goals, it seems, is to vilify education and those who are educated as being 'out of touch' or somehow diminishing the legitimacy of their policies and legislative efforts while at the same time recognizing the importance of education. Education does more than just give people earning potential, it improves the intellectual capacity and knowledge level of individuals. Education expands an individuals ability to understand the world around them, to be able to think deeper than the vague, provocative slogans some use to try to shape the minds of this country. Even among people who have advanced educations there are political issues so complex that they take years to understand. Our economy is one of those issues.

Unbenounced, perhaps, to people in the Tea Party, this is not the economy of the eighteenth century. The protests at that time were more than just about taxation, but illegal search and seizure, and the lack of due process. When people like Joe Miller argue for legislating strictly by what's written in the original framework and the Constitution, he purposefully ignores the fact that at that time there were no voting rights for women or recognition of citizenship for African Americans. Beyond that, there were, at that time, nothing like the multi-national corporations of today. Even the holding and trading companies of the British Empire at that time pale in comparison to the predatory and consciousless policies of the modern corporation.

Candidates like Christine O'Donnell use explicit class warfare to explain the discrepancies in her education background. She claims she did not get her degree right away because she 'didn't have a trust fund' to pay for school and because she had to pay her student loans back before they'd give her her diploma. Anyone who has gone to college knows how ridiculous that claim is. But by setting up the distinction between her and her opponent, who was Harvard educated and holds advanced degrees, she plays to the element of people who are willing to outright deny the serious allegations of campaign fraud and contradictory statements about political positions and experience level. Even the famous commercial where she denies being a witch, she says 'I'm you.' That effort at populism plays successfully among those who have little understanding of our political system or even care about issues other than acting out on their rage against the political process.

When Sarah Palin plays to the 'average American' element within the Tea Party, she's trying to legitimize her own candidacy for president. She's trying to paint a picture of a government filled with sneering elitists from Boston who went to Harvard, advancing the party message of anger against the government for a variety of reasons that all revolve around their party losing. They're dissatisfied because they didn't want Obama to win, they don't want this country to move forward with a progressive agenda that they feel infringes on their lives by stealing their money and giving it to poor minority people. Surveys of the Tea Party found that the vast majority of them were middle class and middle aged or older. They also were largely educated people, at least with college degrees.

So what about having an advanced education disqualifies you from governing? What about it indicates that you would govern badly? We live in a representative government for a reason, our system was set up for a reason. Even back at the founding of our nation there were geographic and cultural differences that required a diverse representative body. While there is no required level of education in our country, in any other career path there is a meritocracy that favors those with advanced educations. Politicians surround themselves with staffers with advanced education. Even though there is a stereotype of educated people being elitist, is that any more true than stereotypes of black people being uneducated or Jewish people being cheap?

The fact is that when someone like Sarah Palin seeks to legitimize her own possible campaign for the presidency, she does everyone in this country a disservice. Not only does she create an atmosphere that discourages the youth in a segment of society from seeking educations but she also brings that rhetoric to the mainstream through her media exposure. The honest truth is that there are no 'common sense' solutions to our economic troubles. There is no easy answer to how to deal with financial regulations and manage energy policy in a way that promotes private sector job growth. This is not the kitchen table or the household budget for a family in Alaska, this is a matter of dealing with innumerable variables with effects both nationally and locally.

We should want people who are educated and capable in office and running this country. It's not just a matter of having someone who you agree with ideologically. It is also a matter of having someone who doesn't need basic civics lessons to understand the responsibilities of the offices in the Executive Branch, who has a proven ability to manage sensitive and difficult situations like natural disasters and economic crises. Whoever is president should be able to communicate economic policy or discuss issues facing the nation either legislatively or judicially with a sense of command and expertise, providing Americans with the appearance of being a confident leader, if not actually truly being a confident leader. Someone who wasn't just sure of their religious or conservative social positions, but someone who seeks to truly represent all people and not just a small slice of the far-right political fringe.

This isn't Alaska, this isn't the household budget of a Midwestern family, this is a varied and diverse nation with just as diverse of an economy and position in the international community. Anyone who can't proceed with confidence and authority, armed with knowledge and understanding, should not be taken seriously as a candidate. Someone who can't name even important heads of state, who doesn't have even a cursory understanding of other cultures and who can't inspire the confidence of foreign leaders and the potential investors from other nations, should not be seen as anything more than a media side-show.

The Tea Party, The Constitution, Freedom and Liberty

The Tea Party from the very beginning has been outspoken about their interpretations of the Constitution, about the freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and about the limits and powers granted to the government. They have all along insisted that what they stand for are the freedoms and liberties guaranteed to them and that they believe the government is infringing upon. One of the constant parts of the rhetoric espoused by Sarah Palin and the rest of the Tea Party celebrities are those freedoms and government infringement and how all citizens have the responsibility to demand that they don't suffer under government infringement by making their voices heard and by voting.

I've already written about how social conservatives and the activists among politicians who created the Christian Coalition and the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress have co-opted the Tea Party. It is such a blaringly obvious hypocrisy that the Tea Party candidates continue to run on slogans invoking liberty, the vision of the founding fathers, and rights guaranteed by the Constitution while at the same time denying and fighting against the rights of many minority and marginalized groups in our country. They preach about freedom of thought and expression and especially about freedom of religion, yet they are some of the most vocal in championing the Islamophobia exhibited in the discussion of the mosque near Ground Zero. They constantly use the phrase 'it's time to take our country back', explicitly state that Obama is foreign and Muslim and deny his legitimacy as a democratically elected official, and describe his administration and the Democratic majorities in Congress as totalitarian and socialist.

We who believe in progressive values of inclusiveness and honesty must acknowledge and tolerate the hateful, bigoted and outright lying rhetoric of those on the political right who advocate and are leaders in the Tea Party. At the same time we do not have to agree with them nor do we have to like what they say. Not only is there mutual agreement between the visible members of the Tea Party with socially conservative groups on issues of abortion and gay rights, but they are funded by far-right fringe elements of the political right and actively support and promote candidates with radically un-American views and dangerous positions and rhetoric.

One example is how they say they're for smaller government, which to them is linked in part to high taxes and the IRS, as though the IRS is the villain because they collect and process taxes. But...they also are instrumental in processing Medicare and Social Security. Both of those programs are socialist programs. Both of them are central benefits that the Tea Party, according to polls, supports and refuses to give up. Still, they support candidates who quietly, and some openly, advocate for abolishing those 'entitlement programs' and privatizing them. That fundamental divorce from reality is of course central to their interpretation of the Constitution and constitutional rights as civil rights. They also support candidates like Sharon Angles who has advocated for abolishing the Department of Education. Well, the Dept of Education is principle in issuing and handling student loans, the student loans that most college students depend on. Christine O'Donnell advocates for local control over curriculum and education. The reason she advocates for that is so that parents can have a chance to enforce their religious beliefs into school curriculum and somehow circumvent the First Amendment.

Keith Olbermann said it best, I think, when he characterized the Tea Party as the 'Something For Nothing' party. They want to cut all taxes but they want the benefits that the government uses those taxes to pay for. They want food to be safe to eat, they want their prescription drugs to be safe and paid for, they want bridges built, emergency services such as police and fire departments to be responsive and well funded. They want hospitals, many of whom benefit from large subsidies from the government either through direct aid in grants or through the benefits of Medicare and Medicaid that offset the costs of the poor they are ethically obligated to treat no matter what. They want all these things yet they want the government to cut the administrative structures critical to funding and supporting and managing these agencies.

They want all the rights guaranteed to all citizens, especially the rights to free speech, freedom of religion and the right to bear arms, yet they only apply them to themselves, somehow limiting the concept of freedom and liberty for all or 'all men are created equal' simply to people who share their skin color and religious or political ideology. To all others they view constitutionally guaranteed rights, civil rights, as 'special rights', and groups that work to guarantee that laws aren't enacted which infringe on those rights, whether they are minority caucuses working to register black and Latino voters or groups working for LGBT rights, as 'special interest groups' advocating for changing the fundamental fabric and vision of what America was meant to be.

Either the Tea Party is truly for freedom, liberty and justice for all citizens of the United States, as well as treating those who are not citizens with compassion and respect, or they are hypocrites and liars whose selfish and bigoted motivations are simply to ensure that they are able to legally discriminate without punishment. Either they believe in the fundamental tenants of the Constitution and the democratic process, or they a group seeking to enforce their religious and political ideology on the rest of the country through political control. Either they are people who truly understand the process and purpose of a democracy or they are a group of angry voters who are willing to ignore all facts and scientific reality by supporting far right fringe candidates whose policies are bad for our society in order to express their outrage that they lost and at the candidates whose political positions they disagree with.

They are not in anyway mainstream, they don't represent the majority opinion in America, they don't represent the intentions or vision of the founders of this country, and they don't really believe in the concepts of freedom and justice.

Conservative Agenda

It's really interesting how much of the rhetoric of the conservative political movements and Tea Party surround the idea of limited size of government, limits on government power, restricting government's involvement in the private business sector and then removing the government's involvement in our private lives and our 'liberty'.

This last bit is a complete falsehood. The conservative politicians and Tea Party movement doesn't want the government out of OUR lives, they want it out of THEIR lives. What this means in some practical terms is that they want to be able to be free to do and say what they please, to believe what they want and to be free to act on those beliefs without any infringement. They want to be able to deny gay people and Muslims the right to rent apartments, they want to be able to fire people for 'lifestyle choices'. They want to be able to say whatever they want wherever they want, including at work, and not be afraid of others being offended or suffer any consequence for hurtful or outright hateful things they say. They want to dictate what is legally acceptable in our society based on THEIR beliefs and not be forced to deal with the 'special interest groups', which really means minority people.

This last is an especially hypocritical part of their rhetoric. They say they want to restore individual liberties and freedoms, which is actually the above, but they want to outlaw all abortion via constitutional amendment, as well as gay marriage. Some visible conservative activists, and leaders in the Tea Party movement, have actually said on television that they think we should outlaw the building of any new mosques in this country. I think that some of them would actually outlaw interracial marriage again if they could.

How do you justify having these above beliefs when you profess the principles of freedom of religion and rights to privacy? They hate it when they are called racists, yet they continually proclaim the illegitimacy of President Barak Obama. They don't do this by using a situation like the Florida recount of 2000 when George W Bush was elected because those 'liberal activist judges' upheld ballots some said were questionable based on the principles of voter rights. No, instead they use language that, though they claim it isn't racially motivated, isn't even subtle in its racial implications, such as saying he's a 'Kenyan tribal anti-colonialist'. They have no problem claiming that that isn't racially motivated or racist language, which is incomprehensible to me.

Some among the conservative candidates running in this year's mid-term elections have even publicly taken the position of being anti-abortion, with no exceptions made for victims of rape or incest. Rachel Maddow claims that this kind of stance on abortion used to be totally off-limits for all but the extreme fringe. Obviously that fringe has taken to the mainstream. The idea that making it illegal for women to have access to reproductive health resources ISN'T a right to privacy issue is ludicrous. If there are any circumstances in which we should absolutely have a right to privacy it is in our most intimate relationships and the right to control our own bodies. While they are claiming the Obama administration is part of a socialist/communist conspiracy to control the minds and bodies of everyone in this country, ironically not recognizing any difference between socialism and communism, they would do EXACTLY that and are completely unapologetic about it.

The same principle of hypocrisy holds true for their stance on gay marriage. While they have a right to believe whatever they want to believe, and are free to practice their religion, it is bizarre to think that their values of 'freedom of speech' and individual liberty wouldn't extend to the governments interference in the private relationships of same-sex couples. If they were truly for individual freedom and liberty they would make every effort to ensure that the government doesn't make any laws to restrict the rights of any of its citizenry. And while some conservatives might say that they aren't restricting gay people's rights to marry, they could marry a member of the opposite sex any time they want, no one can deny that this is exclusive of the types of loving relationships gay people do enter into. Those same people who would reinstate sodomy laws if they could share that same sentiment of not seeing any conflict between their stance of individual freedom and being anti-gay marriage.

Ultimately it comes down to this, and I've said it before: the conservative political movement isn't about freedom for all citizens, it's about freedom for themselves and asserting control over everyone else in the country so that theirs is the only system of beliefs and values that are legal in this country. They may rail against the current administration and against progressive politics in general, but when any rational, thinking person thinks through the issues surrounding these social values, they will see that progressives, many of whom are Democrats, some of whom are Independents and moderate Republicans, are the only ones looking to protect the 'liberties' that those in the Tea Party most enjoy and take for granted.

Sarah Palin as Politican Pundit

Here is a woman who was widely known for her ignorance on matters of everything related to politics, international affairs, American history, world geography and who has since the end of the McCain presidential campaign kept a busy schedule with paid speaking gigs and writing a book rather than learning anything about the above topics. In what way is she at all qualified to be a commentator on topics of current events and politics?

Beyond that, she has difficulty with public speaking. By this I don't mean she's afraid to get up and speak, but rather that she has difficulty, even with scripts and teleprompters, articulating a single coherent sentence much less a substantive and original thought.

It is staggering to me that she has the following she does. It is difficult for me to listen to her for more than a minute at this point because whereas she was amusing before, her continued lack of any grasp of key issues involved in the fields of which she speaks and reliance on the political rhetoric, buzz words and empty and vague spin from the failed presidential campaign, frankly nauseate me.

I have a difficult time addressing anything related to her as a serious public figure, either political or in the news arena, because I am torn about the fact that she is a woman with an enormous platform to made a genuine difference in the lives of women across the country, and the potential as a role model. Her absolute lack of relevant skills, however, and the ambition evidenced by her continued drive to remain in the public spotlight, make me resent her status as a media figure and how she embarrasses the millions of educated and intelligent women working in every field across this country.