Ep06 : Empty Campaign Promises and Education

What this episode covers

We’ve got some pretty tough topics to tackle this week. With a spotlight still on the 2012 presidential election, and in addition many other incidental points discovered along the way, we discuss the emptiness of political positions. From there we segue into a much more pressing issue (and one that Jad is particularly passionate about), the unfortunate state of American education. Tying the two together, if we’re not raised to think critically, then it’s really no wonder politicians can claim whatever they want. Our conversation gets rolling with a clip of Senator Rand Paul appearing on CNN. The Senator is discussing his desire to cut military spending. Material from Podcast Clips sampled Senator Rand Paul appearing on CNN with Erin Burnett discusses why he does not agree with Mitt Romney's foreign policies. Music Education by Pearl Jam Transcript of Podcast Kevin: Hello again and welcome back to another episode of our show. While we still remain nameless, we do have a website up and running at JKPod.com, where we house all of our episodes, recordings, and show notes. For the sake of promotion, we'd certainly appreciate you passing that link around as you see fit to do. We also have yet to settle on any specific subject matter for the show and I'm not entirely sure that we're trying to at this point. That said, we continue to focus on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality for all. We've got some pretty tough topics to tackle this week with a spotlight still on the 2012 Presidential Election and in addition to many other incidental points discovered along the way, Jad and I discussed the emptiness of political positions. From there, we segway into a much more pressing issue and one that Jad is particularly passionate about, the unfortunate state of American education. Tying the two together, if we're not raised to think critically then it's really no wonder politicians can claim whatever they want. Our conversation gets rolling with a clip of Senator Rand Paul appearing on CNN. The Senator is discussing his desire to cut military spending, and while I found the clip to be enjoyable and appreciate his position being contrary to both Governor Romney and President Obama, Jad was quick to warn that a deeper analysis might be warranted. A friend of mine this evening sent me a clip to Rand Paul being interviewed and I don't usually like a lot of Rand Paul's positions - they're definitely not that of his father. And they asked him about Mitt Romney's foreign policy - the speech that he gave the other day - and Rand Paul was saying, "Well, I definitely do not agree with the Governor's analysis of this." Audio Clip of Rand Paul: One, I think whenever we get involved with war, or providing weapons, or bombing countries, it needs to go before Congress. You know, the Constitution says that that is the prerogative of the Legislature, so that's my first objection. Audio Clip of Interviewer:-Mmm hmm. Audio Clip of Rand Paul:My second objection is it's difficult to know who friend and foe are. We've been over a decade or almost - over a decade now - in Afghanistan, and we have trouble telling friend from foe. The people we're training - the Afghan soldiers - are turning their weapons on us, so how are we supposed to know who in Syria is our friend, who is our foe, what do they stand for - Kevin: He went on to say that - he said what we really need is a more sensible and lightweight foreign policy. Audio Clip of Rand Paul: What I would say is the same thing I say to liberals, you can't always make education better by throwing more money at it. You can't always make your country stronger or more safe by throwing more money at the military. Let's figure out what we need as a country to defend our country, to defend our vital interests, but let's not be everywhere all the time. Let's not decide that every war is something that U.S.