Turns out that Senator Kerry’s* apparently on the record as opposing the banning of ROTC from colleges that receive financial aid – which, as James Taranto helpfully points out, is already the law, but still. Taranto argues that this would be a good thing for Kerry to play up as a Sister Souljah moment (the various bans are mostly there because of the extremely hypocritical and discriminatory policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” existing in the US military**): I disagree. The last thing that Kerry wants to do is remind the gay community that he is already not the most vocal supporter of gay marriage out there.
Naughty, naughty, James.
*Who apparently served in Vietnam. Gimme a break, the link’s from Taranto.
**Not that such hypocrisy and discrimination is the fault of the students who have joined ROTC, of course, and a college that accepts federal money from the government should consider whether they themselves are living by the moral code that they’re attempting to enforce on others.
The last thing that Kerry wants to do is remind the gay community that he is already not the most vocal supporter of gay marriage out there.
Mmm. Difficult choice. Vote for a President who, to butter up his main support group, says he’ll support an amendment to the US Constitution to make gay people a permanent underclass, never entitled to full equality. Or vote for a President who hedges a bit but says he’s in favor of civil unions for gays.
The problem really is, that (as ever) Bush comes across as such a tiny piece of shit that Kerry really doesn’t have to worry about losing support from the gay community: Bush made certain of that. So Kerry doesn’t have anything to lose by refusing to be a strong supporter of gay marriage: next to Bush, he looks good.
We had one of our universities attempt to ban the ROTC from their campus in the late 1990s. They caved as soon as students started complaining when they found out that the college was putting their financial aid in jeopardy.
Personally, I think we should abolish education grants entirely and cover it all to student loans. If a college graduate earns X thousands more than a non-college educated person, they should be willing and able to pay back a loan. If not, then it undercuts the economic rationale for federal subsidies for post-secondary education.
“cover” should be “convert to”
If not, then it undercuts the economic rationale for federal subsidies for post-secondary education.
Thorley, can you consider the possibility for just a moment that a graduate might just be making a valuable contribution to society that doesn’t relate to earning a high wage?
Teaching in a public school, for example. Requires a graduate education, doesn’t bring in a particularly high salary, is nonetheless an essential contribution.
I’m sure you can think of others if you really try and drag your mind away from money, money, money.
Which is irrelevant since my comments were confined to the “economic rationale” behind federal subsidies for higher education which is the justification used for confiscating the tax dollars of one person in order to subsidize the “education” of another – that the person receiving a subsidy would somehow become more productive, earn more money than they would without a college degree, and “pay back” their subsidy in the form of higher taxes from higher earnings. My point was simply that if this true, then give them a loan rather than a grant since they should be able to pay it back with their higher earnings. If not, then come to terms with the notion that the economic rationale behind “financial aid” may not be as true as we have been lead to believe.
Which is a great example of how requiring a college degree does not necessarily increase the value of the worker’s labor (the economic rationale behind federal subsidies to education) but rather in many cases simply inflates the requirements for a job while diluting the actual value of a college degree.