Canada: What are your 'fringe' political ideas?

[Robert Lawless]

I propose the following three constitutional amendments. Can we get the bulk
of anthropologists behind it? Is this action anthropology or what?

1. The United States of America renounces armed force and the threat of
armed force as a means of settling international disputes. The armed forces
can be used only in defense of a attack upon the sovereign territory of the
United States. All treaties that would entangle the United States in armed
conflicts must be renegotiated within two years of the adoption of this
amendment.

(This is loosely based on Article Nine of the 1947 Constitution of Japan.)

2. All government powers of taxation shall be restricted to progressive
taxes, and no taxing agency shall establish a regressive tax.

(See <http://www.psnw.com/~bashford/taxation.html <http://www.psnw.com/%7Ebashford/taxation.html>>.)

3. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States or by any state on account of age, color, disability,
economic standing, ethnic background, gender, marital status, national
origin, rank, religion, role, sexual orientation, sex, social class, or status.

(This is, of course, based on the ERA amendment proposal.)
      



Ronald Kephart wrote:
> On 4/26/09 9:14 AM, "Harold Schiffman" <hfsclpp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> What are your 'fringe' political ideas?
>>     
>
> Jeez, Hal, almost everything I think is fringe, which is why I have so few
> friends. Where to begin? Hmmm...
>
> (1) Universal tax-supported health care in the US (and of course taxation
> that supports it).
>
> (2) Ditto for education through university. Nothing corrupts the
> student-teacher relationship like money.
>
> (3) Give Texas back to Mexico.
>
> (4) Round up the entire G W Bush administration and send them to The Hague
> for trials. I suppose we have to do this before we do number (3).
>
> See what I mean? Anyway, for language and related issues, with the US
> specifically in mind:
>
> (a) Institute first literacy in a phonemically based spelling for all
> English speakers. We know it works, we know that kids so treated quickly
> surpass kids who do only traditional spelling.
>
> (b) Develop a policy of respect for dialects such as Appalachian, AAVE, etc.
> that children bring to school, and USE them in early education especially.
> (I believe that something to this effect can be found in the UN Convention
> on the Rights of the Child... which, most likely, the US has yet to ratify.)
>
> (c) To help make (b) possible, all teachers of children K-5 should be
> certified in basic linguistics.
>
> (d) All "social studies" teachers should be anthropologically trained, and
> middle and high school "social studies" should be anthropological and
> linguistic, so that every kid who escapes high school comes out knowing
> something about these fields.
>
> This will probably get me in enough trouble.
>
> Ron
> Blog: http://crankylinguist.blogspot.com/
>
>
>   
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: robert_lawless.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 239 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20090427/ada8e2aa/attachment.vcf>