I Quote Exactly

I'm learning it's tough to learn utter crap. I think the reason I never studied any to much in high school was because it all made so much sense. The only things I had to learn were the things that I couldn't make sense of except by memorizing them: trigonometry identities and biology vocab come to mind. All of my teachers were so good at making sense. That's because they were teaching me how to think more than they were shoving knowledge down my throat. Well, in Sociology 242, Modern Social Problems, this is the stuff I'm memorizing. I think the individual statements are ridiculous enough, I'll forgoe the commentary. I quote exactly:


"The powerful, by making and enforcing the laws, create and define deviance."

"In essence, the largest corporations control the world economy"

"Capitalism generates inequality"

"Thus, the candidates tend to represent a limited constituency - the wealth"

"The law does not exist as an abstraction"

"The schools, for instance, consciously teach youth that capitalism is the only correct economic system. This indoctrination to conservative values achieves a consensus among the citizenry concerning the status quo.

"Whenever the interest of the wealthy clash with those of other groups or even of the public at large, the interest of the former are served"

"The poor, being powerless..."

"Foreign policy seems to be carried on in the light of the needs of the munitions makers, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the multinational corporations"

[My favorite] "Religious beliefs, such as the resistance of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and of fundamentalist Muslim regimes such as in Saudi Arabia to the use of contraceptives, are a great obstacle to population control. However, religion is not an insurmountable barrier. Despite the Catholic hierarchy's resistance to family planning, some nations with overwhelming Catholic majorities have extremely low birthrates"

[My other favorite] "Malnourishment also causes a low level of energy. [Footnote:] Although low energy levels are a result of poverty, many persons have blamed poverty on an inherent lack of energy, or "drive" in the poor - a classic example of blaming the victim"

Deviance

"A guiding assumption of our inquiry here, however, is that norm violators are symptoms of social problems, not the disease itself. In other words, most deviants are victims and should not be blamed entirely by society for their deviance; rather, the system they live in should be blamed."

'Social Problems' - Eitzen, Zinn and Smith

A wise history teacher of mine once made the claim that liberals have a problem with human nature. I didn't completely understand what he meant (I had actually just finished saying liberals were complete idiots... his refined analysis caught me off guard), but now I think I do. If we can't accept our nature, that we have free will, that there is evil/wrong and good/right actions, and that our free will can choose evil, then you get the above quote. Get this: if we say that there are deviants and there are non-deviants, and the deviants are victims of a society of which they are not a part of, that means that non-deviants cause deviance. How's that work?

The Obligitory Monthly End of the World Political Conspiracy Post

The bottom of my UWEC tuition bill:

The Legislature and the Governor have authorized $1,189,756,579 of state funds for the University of Wisconsin System and its students during the 2008-09 academic year. This is a tuition subsidy of $8,041 per student from the taxpayers of Wisconsin.

If only the government paid for 1/3 of my home, or 1/3 or my heating bill. If only, if only.


Socialism is comin' folks.