Good deeds are as beneficial to us as to whom our good deeds are directed. It doesn't matter who gets credit for them, it is your own character that they are building.

I intend to do excellent things on a regular basis. That's just as good, isn't it?

Maybe the answer is that the top positions in government need to have less power. If the positions of President, Supreme Court Justices, Congressmen, and Senators are so powerful that no one can avoid being corrupted by them, maybe we need to clip their wings and take some of the sovereignty we loaned them back. Decentralize the power of government and put the power closer to the people, so we can keep an eye on it.

Just because immorality has carried on for thousands of years and everybody does it, doesn't make it less immoral. Egyptian dynasties were not particularly known as freedom loving regimes, after all. Neither are France, Japan, China, or India for that matter.

I think Waffler gets it! Subsidies are evil because they cause harm to your neighbors. They are just like affirmative action that takes a level playing field, tilts it, then calls it level.

This is the duty of a citizen. Waiting for a government handout is what is expected of a subject.

Coolidge was probably the last truly Federalist president and was more libertarian than most. In fact the big criticism of Coolidge is that he was too laissez-faire and refused to regulate the economy as was becoming fashionable in Fascist Europe at the time. He was very popular and there is a reason my uncle is named after him. Can anyone imagine naming their child after any President from the last fifty years?

The difference between the voluntary "collective" of religion or secular organizations and the Stalinist collective of the global warmists is the difference between freedom and slavery. If I join a religion, I can leave when they start promoting values with which I don't agree (the exception being Islam of course-they'll track you down and kill you), just like the self-righteous Barrack who took 20 years to decide he didn't agree with racist hate. He must really love AmeriKKKa.

The path to (global warming) hell is paved with good intentions. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant; ask any tree. The carbon credit trading schemes are just a government power grab to control every living thing in the world. He who controls the carbon controls the world. He can regulate how much energy you use, where you travel and how you get there. He can tell you where you can live, how warm or cool you can keep your house, how big your house can be. He can tell you what you can eat and how much. He can even tell you that you've met your allotment for carbon exhaled and tell you it's time for you to die. That certainly sounds collectivist to me. It sounds even totalitarian. Carbon credits are just the beginning.

The snow goose DOES bathe itself as any waterfowl will. If it's a good idea for a goose to bathe itself, it's probably a good idea for the rest of us to do so occasionally ourselves.

Morality is simply restraining your natural inclination to take advantage of or cause harm to others for your own benefit. No one needs to terrorize me into treating others as I want to be treated.

Most people are too busy talking to hear anything, especially their inner wisdom.

Pay attention to your intuition and that "still, small voice."

Considering all of the billions of human beings that are or ever have been, it is rather conceited (or mad) to believe that our thoughts are entirely original. There are occasional innovations that individuals often make and very rarely, an epiphany, but most of what we think is a synthesis of all of those thinkers that have gone before us. If we are wise, we'll consider their thoughts so that we won't have to reinvent the wheel every generation.

Deciding what is a good or bad point is often the trick. The value of cultural norms is that in five thousand years of civilization many people have thought about the questions of right, wrong, good, and evil before us. It may not be superficially obvious why some things are or are not in society, but there usually is a reason. When deciding what is a good point or not, consider your conscience first, then the culture of which you're a part, then the opinion of those people that you respect.

Your intentions mean nothing to me. How you treat me means everything. How many government programs have started out with lofty, seemingly moral intent to have unintended consequences destroy peoples' lives? Probably all of them.

When a man is not free to be greedy with the proceeds of his own labor, he is not free to be altruistic with them either. In essence, the government robs men of the opportunity to be charitable when it taxes money away from them for "social justice" programs. Every incremental piece of freedom that is taken away from you makes you less of a free moral agent with the ability to choose to do good or evil.

Schools have become more impatient lately. Since it was taking too long to break the students, it is now fashionable to drug them into submission.

What a wonderful civics lesson! Do schools even teach civics anymore or does that knowledge just provoke students to rebel?

The ability to suffer being bored happens to be a very useful skill. I use it almost daily.

I'll agree with you about the No Child's Behind Left Alone Act, Waffler. It is the misbegotten spawn of "compassionate conservatism" and far left liberalism that takes control away from local government and gives it to the feds. I will also agree with you about the parents. They are now, what? The fourth or fifth generation that were educated in "public" schools themselves? They have been conditioned to believe that it is government's and teachers' responsibility to teach their children everything from the 3 R's to morality. They have been taught to put their own needs and desires ahead of their children's. They are much like children themselves of the State. In short our society has become in large part a product of the public education system, and it has become a negative feedback spiral moving ever downward to greater decadence.

Here's an interesting commentary, "US Can't Pass English 101" http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/us_cant_pass_english_101.html

I would venture to guess that the students of this teacher were better equipped and better educated than most. It sounds like this man actually cared about his students, enough to bring down the wrath of the teachers union on him in fact. Teacher of year? He should be teacher of the century!

I am stunned: a teacher that actually sees the truth and is willing to put it in writing! It seems like the teacher mafia really doesn't like the light of day shined on their operations. Throw a rock into a herd of swine and the one that squeals is probably the one you hit.

Half of the dumb masses have an IQ of less than 100. That is an unalterable fact. It does not mean they are without value, but it does mean that, perhaps, a better way to educate them in occupations that they can do and will enjoy exists. Unfortunately, these other approaches would cut into the teachers union monopoly, and will not be allowed. It also takes control away from government to "properly socialize" the young citizens to their liking.