White male, white male, white male, white male, white female, black male, white male, white female, white male, white male, white male.

Just look at those demographics! Along with a link to the Yellow Brick Road Of Bill Gates. Yup. I know where these guys are going. You can make it if you try, and incidentally, if you have the tools to start with, which we won't mention.

I'm interested to note that you believe a society that offers hope to its less fortunate, as well as a shot at opportunity, and thereby provides stability to us all, is somehow a criminal arrangement rather than a social contract. Can we assume that, unless someone can point to your piece of whatever is being purchased or provided, you are against any government spending whatsoever?

Make sure you let me know which square foot of the Gettysburg National Park belongs to you so I can send you a thank-you note the next time I step on it.

It's heartening to see that you understand the value and importance of education. Do you understand, likewise, the relative values of educations funded by people with money vs. people who have none? At what point is the government to step in and redistribute some of those funds to make the schools in poor sections as good as those in wealthy ones? I don't know how your schools have been funded in CA, but here in PA, where schools are paid for by the property taxes of the district, very rural districts and those in economically depressed areas suffer serious deficiencies in quality because of the low value of the property upon which school budgets are based.

And what about the time of day when one is not in school? If one has no heat, can one study effectively? If one has very little for breakfast, can one concentrate in the morning? If one was kept up half the night by some abusive couple screaming at each other and throwing things in the apartment upstairs all night, can one stay awake for the afternoon classes? If random shots drill holes in the teachers' cars, how soon will the best ones find work in a more secure location?

Quality of life matters. If someone joins a gang instead of going to math class because one has gone to class since Kindergarten and still can't read, and one is now 14 years old, and the school has demonstrated an inability to help when asked, well then, I would call that a poor life decision. But I grew up in a place where I had heat and food, and I knew how to read. It's easy for me to talk. The organizations I could turn to when, as a teen, I had a need to belong to a group of kids my age were the Girl Scouts and the Louise de Marillac Society.

Is it our fault the 14-year-old chose the gangbangers? No. Is it our responsibility that his previous life offered that choice as an attractive one? I would say yes. You may disagree. Our philosophies on being our brother's keepers would, in that case, diverge there.

And for every poor kid who rises above his origins, I can also show you a rich and privileged kid who ends up in the gutter with an overdose.

That would be an interesting statistic, if you could produce it. I don't think you can. I also think that, if you did, you would be surprised to see that both numbers were really really small. Far greater would be the numbers of the people who didn't rise out of poverty, but didn't descend into criminal behavior either. This is a tribute more to their own characters than to any societal success. And it's not to say they are not the victims of a lot of criminal behavior either, which is another way in which we neglect our fellow citizens. Quality of life counts.

The number of privileged kids who die in the gutter, dramatically, of an overdose? Very small, I bet. The number who wind up in pricey treatment centers, and later doing community service and spending weekends in jail while they continue to work? I bet, more.

How would I begin to pull the pendulum back into a sensible period? We can set an example by cutting benefits to ourselves, rather than cutting benefits to others and saying it's for their own good. (Yeah, right...) Let's start on Social Security. The goal: to make sure that the Boom makes it on our own. After having preached moral righteousness our whole lives from both antipodes of the political world, and sinking into self-indulgence like St. Augustine in adulthood, if we should actually practice moral righteousness as a last grand hurrah of groupthink, American society might be shocked enough to follow that example.

Regards--
Mary Anne