[BlueStreak]

"Heck they can make Rhodes scholars out of kids with Crack moms.."

I thought it was YOU that could take any group of inner city kids and turn them into Chemical Engineers?

"And if you believe it's "eminently sensible" to condemn most inner school children to a public education monopoly that has criminally low expectations for them..."

I think success is up to individual drive and ambition. So, in lieu of public education, which worked out pretty good for me and very well for you, apparently, just what do you propose? Are you ready to pay for all of those kids to attend private school? Because their parent(s) can't. How about jobs? And not shitty, worthless, low wage jobs that leave people applying for food stamps despite the fact that they work, but gainful employment for the parents of those kids? Seems to me that that would solve a lot of these issues. Then, they could pay their own way. Oh, that's right, the business community finds wages like that to be completely intolerable. Oh, well. Looks like we're stuck paying for it through our taxes. And, you know what that means..............

Anyhow, the "Social Contract" to which we refer is really very basic and simple.
Like it or not, we are a village. A village that grows more and more interconnected everyday. Each man living as an island may have worked somewhat, a hundred years ago, but it is as gone as the last Mohican now. And it aint comin' back. EVER.

Dave