Blame the parents and community leaders!

Comment to authro Marilyn vos Savant of Parade magazine

I respect your intellect and your thinking ability. However intelligence is of little value when moral and philosophical judgments get in the way. While it may be true that standardized tests have problems, the problems are minor in relation to the test's value; that is they measure the relative performance against some established standards of performance, enabling evaluation by college admission boards, and others.
You might consider that you, as a spokesperson for the intelligentsia, have a real obligation to offer solutions instead of opinions.
Perhaps the limitations of short comments in the publication prevented you from offering more.
One could even go further and offer that you, of all people, have an obligation to use your considerable intellectual resources to offer the solutions that logic dictates, even if they are philosophically and socially unpopular.
In the case of standardized tests, your failure to state the obvious, that cultural and parental failure is responsible for the desire to somehow provide other ways for under performing students to get a chance at a societal "A."
The inclination of commentators and pundits like you to offer "pity me" commentary in the absence of postulating real solutions just extends the time it takes to realize that solutions require real societal "tough love." Ignoring or excusing circumstance only prolongs a lack of recognition of assigning responsibility.
A Maryland college president, Freeman Hrabowski III, a black educator of some repute and accomplishment, recently noted "We have to admit to ourselves that large numbers of parents are not as involved... as they need to be." His comments were part of a Baltimore Sun article on September 23 called "a hard look at the achievement gap."
My feeling also is that the failure to achieve can be laid directly at the feet of parents, and further at community and religious leaders. Educators can only work with the materials (the students) they receive; if children are unmotivated and unprepared because of a lifetime of neglect, and misplaced values, it is way too late in the process for educators to be expected to correct parental and societal failure.
Blaming the objectivity of testing is a poor substitute for demanding a solution of parental involvement and perhaps consequences for those who do not provide parental motivation.
If I have somehow misinterpreted your comment, or unwittingly extrapolated from your comment, I apologize.
But, my opinions haven't changed.

My gun, my safety.

U.S. Constitution - Bill of Rights
Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

The U.S. Constitution, as quoted above, is the watchword of individual freedom in the United States. We currently worry, and rightly so, about all the firearms used in robberies, and other criminal acts.
But, do we wonder at what would really happen if our duty to keep and use firearms should be abridged in the many ways some well-meaning legislators have sought?
For instance, no army general, no officeholder, would possibly think, even today, of attempting a coup, or otherwise usurping the government. Why? Because the millions of households that do have firearms, from hunting rifles to pistols and shotguns, would be an impossible force to overcome, even if hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers could be convinced to shoot at their neighbors, and I don't think they could be so convinced.
The Founders envisioned a free society in which citizens having arms could be enlisted in a militia to defend the country and themselves as necessary. The Founders were considering at the time the certain possibility of attack from outsiders, and saw a future where they wanted to make it impossible for an errant government, even our own, to take over the country. If every citizen was armed and ready to fight, there was not much chance of any army being able to conquer ours. And we were the very best guerrilla fighters in the world at that time! Some might offer that we are no less a frontier country today, because the criminals have guns, and many of us don't. We should change the equation.
So besides contemporary worries about the criminal element, we really need to take our responsibility as Citizens seriously.
In that vein, I think every high school graduate should be required to take and pass a course in handling firearms. Upon passing and at graduation, part of the graduation would be a firearm license, allowing that person to obtain a hand gun and other arms as allowed, mainly being hunting and sport firearms, and shotguns and pistols for personal protection.
Yes, there would be jerks who did bad things, but no more than today. The upside is that many of the criminals who have firearms today would find less willing victims; potential victims who could and would shoot back, rapidly reducing the criminal population. Yes, there would be mistakes, yes there would be unintended deaths. But overall, there would be a rapid decrease in the criminal element. I cynically note the substantial cost savings in housing the prison population, although much of that is drug-based. ( More on drugs later).
So, let's take our Constitutional responsibilities as Citizens more seriously. Every household should have at least one person licensed to carry firearms for personal protection, and all those over eighteen should be trained in their safe use.
For those worried about our Privacy Rights, this might help; no government would attempt a coup if they were facing over 200 million armed resisters! For those worried about all those criminals with guns, how many armed robbers would be left after a year or so?
Answer: Not many.

May I have another, please sir?

No, this isn't David Copperfield or Tale of Two Cities.
This is the 2008 race.
And, my "another" refers to choices.
Isn't there a dark horse out there to rescue America from the mediocrity of the current crop. Or, can we combine some of the issues into one candidate? Like Tancredo on immigration reform, Guilianni on law enforcement, Romney on management, McCain on foreign policy?
More importantly, does anyone have a vision of how to correct the difference, the chasm, the abyss, between what America is today and what the Founding Fathers envisioned?
What happened to individual responsibility? To respecting yourself though individual accomplishment at whatever personal sacrifice?
What happened to community socialization and enforcement of cultural norms?
What happened to parental values and parenting of adherence to respect for your fellow citizens, respect for property rights?
What happened to community, and national, leaders who care more about doing what's right, that getting elected? Did they ever exist, other than in idealistic dreams? Did "Mr. Smith" ever go to Washington?

I want solutions, not feelings.

I was raised in a lower middle class family, went to public schools, drafted into the military, graduated from night school college in Maryland, undertook a business career. Worked in sales, investments and investment banking, retail, mail order, business and marketing consulting, and publishing.

Now registered as an Independent, voted every opportunity all my life. Believe in Democracy and capitalism, in free markets and individual opportunity. Want to see my children and grandchildren earn a better life in a world where individual freedom and privacy is respected, where government is limited to "defense for the common good," and domestic and foreign policy is strictly oriented to preserving and improving a society driven by respect for the individual, with consciousness of the value of each, and rewards in proportion to effort.

There are capitalistic solutions for most societal problems; we have to be tough enough to accept them.

Dropouts in a free society are a result of the failure of parenting and culture to expect more, not less; of failure to provide more in the way of personal commitment, not less.

It is not our society and culture's responsibility to take care of people; it IS our responsibility to provide opportunity for them to care for themselves. Nonetheless, there are those who, through no fault of their own, become wards of society. Besides preventing the failures that allowed these unfortunates to become the responsibility of all of us, it is the job of society from a capitalistic perspective to support the charitable organizations which take the responsibility of caring for these wards of society. What does that mean?

More about the role of taxes and charity in the future, and how culture needs to replace government in dealing with societal problems.

Evolution in the Darwinian sense must be allowed to work, otherwise we are all diminished by the stress of constantly lowered standards of behavior, of conduct, of performance.

The society and government envisioned by our Founders is in danger.

It can and must be saved.