[Winstonbiggs]

Originally Posted by Demosthenes9

I'd still strongly advocate learning about how our government was meant to be structured. Biggest point here is to understand the difference between "Federal" and "National".

Reason why this is fundamentally important. Take an issue like Welfare. Most people would say that there should be some kind of safety net, at least for some situations. Republicans and Democrats largely agree on this. The question is, what level of government should this be done at ? Democrats argue that it should be done in Washington. That's a "national" view. Most Repubs would probably argue that Welfare is something that, if the voters so choose, should be done at the State level.

Same with public education. Should it be controlled from Washington ? Or by each state ?

Again, this is important because you might go to some site that says the Dems support public education, while accusing Repubs of being against it because they might want to gut the Dept of Education. It's not that the Repubs are against public education, they just think it should be handled on the state level, that each state should decide how they want to run their schools, as opposed to having dictates handed down by Washington.

This also segues into another topic, which is that for each subject you look at, you really need to look deeply and think about it. Again, Dems will argue that Repubs are against public education, because Repubs want to scale back the power of the teacher's unions, and some/many might favor vouchers.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the Repubs are against Public Education, rather, it means that they just want to change the way things are done. That scaling back union power will BENEFIT public education, as will vouchers. Now, I'm not asking that you agree with the position, but just demonstrating that it's not always clear cut.

Using public funds for private education and home schooling is most certainly anti-public education.

Republicans seem to want this both ways. Block grants from the Federal Government without Federal control of those funds. Guess what I'm not represented in the States where those block grants go to.