How does a Conservative explain thier support of Public Education,Social Security and Medicare?

[calmObserver688]

I don't know why I bother answering questions like this. You don't want to actually hear a legitimate answer; you merely want someone to stroke your ego and agree with you.

I'm a Ronald Reagan Conservative. Reagan wanted to get rid of Social Security and Medicare (and Bush wanted to privatize Social Security. Statistics have proven that you would get probably 50% more at retirement of you were allowed to invest that money into safe funds, rather than have the government sit on it).

There are some institutions that simply cannot exist to everyones satisfaction. We all know that public education is a nightmare. I'm living in Europe, and I can attest to the fact that Europeans spend as little as 1/8th the amount of money on education (no fancy buildings or football programs... sorry), but the level of education is higher. Students learn. Just check language mastery skills of Europeans against Americans. It's not only embarrassing, it's humilliating.

Public education makes sense in part because there are too many variables. If education is to remain compulsory, you need to have a ready-made institution to which you can send your children. Otherwise, people could simply use excuses such as, "the nearest school is too far, doesn't meet my requirements, costs too much", and so on.

So, to answer your question, we Conservatives don't pretend that programs such as public education don't smack of Socialism, but the concept of public education supplied by the States goes back to Thomas Jefferson, who made the very modest suggestion that people should be given four years of schooling so they can learn the basics of living in modern society.

But who is for the school voucher system, when it is a viable alternative? Conservatives. Our philosphy is not invalidated by realizing the need for public education. In fact, we're trying to make that education actually worth something through the No Child Left Behind Act. People can cite flaws all they want, but generally the deficiencies are the abysmal administration of the schools themselves that account for some places not meeting standards.

So, I hope you realize that Conservatives are not some group of blind followers of an idealistic philosophy. We are realists too.