Politics Cause People to Stop Thinking.

Politics cause people to stop thinking.
I find it amazing that once politics get associated with a subject, people totally stop thinking and just start reacting. For example, the Common Core education standards. It has become a political entity, and so all thought related to it is totally gone and people react in visceral ways.
  Just some items to note -
  -There is the comment that these are nationally based standards and so threaten the states role in education. The reality is that we've had national standards for many years - long before CC. As a matter of fact, the previous standards were more comprehensive and covered most scholastic subjects. CC only really covers math and english (reading and language) and so is very minimal compared to previous standards.
  -The idea that the standards were created by the feds and forced on the states. Actually, it was the National Governors Association - an organization of state governors that had the standards developed.
  -CC is a democratic takeover initiated by the Obama administration. Actually, the roots of the standards come from Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative and it was long before Obama came in office. He was just the person in office when it finally came to fruition. It got associated with Obama because he created his Race to the Top initiative witch set up educational record keeping and testing in exchange for federal grant money. Commentators like Glenn Beck attacked it because he didn't bother to learn the difference between CC and RttT, and then his supporters jumped on the bandwagon. It has become almost a religious crusade based totally on falsehoods.
  -CC introduces high stakes tests. In actuality, CC has no testing at all. The RttT program introduced by Obama created the requirements for record keeping and testing. And just an FYI, high stakes testing has been around much longer than CC or RttT.
  -CC includes inappropriate sex ed, political indoctrination, and other controversial education topics in schools, often at early grades. Actually, CC is a standard and has no specific curriculum - or list of materials. Because CC is a standard for math, reading and language only, virtually any material could be introduced, and are the responsibility of the implementation. If your school has introduced controversial topics, it's because they chose to rather to rather than CC.
   -CC forces students to learn radical and unorthodox processes rather than simple basic tools. The reality, the process called for by CC aren't new and have been taught for many years, they do use multiple methodologies to introduce kids to develop a greater understanding of math rather than be dependent on specific techniques. In many cases, teachers don't know or remember these processes, and few schools have put effort into an effective implementation that includes teacher training to support the methodologies.
  Some good examples are floating around the net of "how bad" CC education is. Some of them show parents making snide comments on their students worksheets. The problem is they are showing a piece of curriculum - that's not CC, but someone's interpretation of how to teach CC. In addition, they are often not making any effort to understand what it is they're complaining about - virtually always it is an intermediate processing example where we try to teach students how a system works rather than a technique to solve a problem.
  -The CC standards are hidden to prevent parents from making complaints. Not true, you can see them http://www.corestandards.org/.
  I could go on, but those who are fighting so hard against Common Core have long stopped applying rational thought.

Who Are Gun Laws for?

  When supporters of gun rights suggest that laws restricting those rights suggest they have no value the typical anti-gun supporter suggests you are calling for no laws since people are breaking them they create a false dichotomy. It is because they misunderstand the point of law in the first place. Laws are created to define boundaries of behavior for those who are law abiding. In some cases, those laws are obvious, because they are bad - called malum in se. These are things that are inherently bad - such as murder, rape, assault, etc. malum prohibitum crimes are laws we create to control behavior, generally for the well being of all. For example, in the US we drive on the right side of the road - not because it is immoral to drive on the left, but because we have determined those rules to create a safe driving experience for all of us. Notice we don't spend a lot of time learning malum in se (the bad laws) because they are pretty obvious, but we spend time learning malum prohibitum laws because they are not obvious. Keeping the previous example, we spend time learning the traffic laws - not really to avoid breaking the laws, but to know what they are so we can stay within those boundaries.
  Laws are not designed for those who refuse to obey them. That's what penalties and punishments are for. The obvious reason behind these is deterrence - to make it uncomfortable enough that those who choose not to obey the law would prefer not to be punished. We place greater punishments on those laws that have a more serious impact. For example, speeding does not carry the punishment that murder has.
  This basic foundation is exactly why there are problems with laws restricting gun rights. We have to ask ourselves what the purpose is? If the purpose is for public safety, then there are problems with the theory. The motivating idea here is that restricting guns will somehow minimize more serious crimes. The problem with that line of thinking is that willingly violating moral laws takes someone far beyond the point of violating rules. Violating malum prohibitum laws just break rules while violating malum in se laws break rules and violate obvious moral standards. Creating malum prohibitum laws to stop malum in se laws is like using a fishing net to stop water. It has virtually no impact on the result.
  So then if laws restricting gun rights aren't useful for stopping those who choose not to follow the law, who are they designed for? The law abiding citizen. One then has to ask why we want laws for the law abiding when they are already obeying the law.