As I said in regard to Manfred Zyst's quote. Our homeschooled son has better socialization skills than any of the public school kids I've met. Here's the link to Lisa Russel's "Socialization" article, again: http://www.tnhomeed.com/LRSocial.html ...and a list of a few famous homeschooled individuals: Claude Monet, Grandma Moses, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt Peale, Jason Taylor, Tim Tebow, Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Agatha Christie, Alex Haley, Beatrix Potter, C.S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Hans Christian Anderson, Louisa May Alcott, Margaret Atwood, Mark Twain, Phillis Wheatley, Pearl S. Buck, Robert Frost, Virginia Woolf, Andrew Carnegie, Colonel Harland Sanders, Dave Thomas, Joseph Pulitzer, Ray Kroc, Felix Mendelssohn, Irving Berlin, John Philip Sousa, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Alan Alda, Charlie Chaplin, Christina Aguilera, Dakota Fanning, Hanson, Hillary Duff, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Justin Timberlake, LeAnne Rimes, Louis Armstrong, Whoopi Goldberg, Davy Crockett, George Rogers Clark, Alexander Graham Bell, Benjamin Franklin, Cyrus McCormick, Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, John Paul Jones, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Matthew Perry, Ansel Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Washington, Grover Cleveland, James Garfield, James Madison, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, William Henry Harrison, Woodrow Wilson, Brigham Young, Dwight L. Moody, Joan of Arc, John & Charles Wesley, William Carey, Albert Einstein, Blaise Pascal, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Pierre Curie, Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Webster, Patrick Henry, William Jennings Bryan, William Penn, Winston Churchill, John Jay, John Marshall, John Rutledge, Sandra Day O’Connor, Abigail Adams, (wife of John Adams), Clara Barton, (started the red cross), Florence Nightingale, Martha Washington, (wife of George), and Susan B. Anthony.

We homeschool our son. I'm reminded of one reason every time we visit a playground. Fletcher is well behaved, speaks English better than most adults and makes an effort to get along with everyone. Public school kids don't seem to value others much, but because he's not packed in with others like sardines every day, he values the company of others much more. I see the same difference between city dwellers and country folks. Like Mr Zysk, I don't see much from public school children which I would want Fletcher to emulate. Here's a great article by Lisa Russell about "socialization" which should be read by anyone who believes children need and can only get socialization skills through forced association with the pack. http://www.tnhomeed.com/LRSocial.html

...or, as we say in the US, "America, love it or leave it." If you can't be an ignorant drone, then go away.

I think schooling would have been a better term to use than education. There's a huge difference between education and the rote memorization of schooling. Schooling produces uneducated slaves. Education produces free individuals.

There is a right to speak, not a right to be heard. The exercise of a right never requires involuntary action on the part of others.

I usually like Mencken, but my Bible doesn't say Satan is the "creator of knowledge" in it anywhere. The specific knowledge acquired by eating from the "tree of knowledge" was that of good and evil, not knowledge in general. In fact, In Hosea 4:6 God says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee,..." John 8:32 says, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

What if I believe Nietzsche is correct? Does my belief automatically make his statement false?

After studying Lincoln and his actions, I have a difficult time reading what he said without thinking of it as nothing more than deceitfully contrived rhetoric.

I think we Christians tend to miss that important lesson. Christ didn't teach that we should use the force of earthly government to beat the sin out of non-believers. Much of the animosity directed at Christianity today isn't because we act toward them like Christians - with love, compassion and forgiveness, but because we don't. When we abdicate our positive responsibilities to the poor, elderly, infirmed and imprisoned and instead, focus on ways to force a corrupted world to "act" righteously, we do much more harm than good. Sometimes I believe that next to Satan himself, we Christians are Christianity's worst enemies. Like Paul, I am the chief of all sinners. We have enough of our own sins to work on, to worry about those of others.

You go, Ben! You're the man! OK, useless trivia... There are three people on US Federal Reserve Notes who were not presidents. Ben was one. Who were the other two?

Thanks Bob! "...laws should be for the welfare of society as a whole..." sounds double plus ungood to me, too. Laws should only exist in as far as they protect the equal, reactive defense of each individual's negative rights to life, liberty and property.