As a sort of conservative, I'm of the belief that the smaller government, the better. I also believe that control should be exercised by the smallest government entity possible. As much as I believe this achieves the greatest possible results, the days of small government having almost any control whatsoever seem to be over.

When I was young, schools were run almost exclusively by local school boards. There was almost no interference from higher levels of government, and frankly the schools seemed to work pretty well. Most of us graduated from elementary and secondary schools with a reasonably rounded and complete education. One thing was for sure: most of us could read, write and do basic math. My observation is that has all changed, and much of it is the fault of the monstrous education bureaucracy.

I teach at a local community college. I've been teaching as an adjunct instructor for ten years now, and have taught at three different community colleges and a state university. I'm currently teaching basic skills reading and writing. Basic skills are for students who have scored below minimum on basic state proficiency tests. Somehow they passed high school proficiency tests to get out of high school, but three months later fail basic skills tests for community college.

Each year my school admits over 5000 (That's right,5000) new students who fail to meet basic skills levels in reading, writing or math, and sometimes in all three. These kids come from schools all across the county, and from adjacent counties as well. Deficiencies are many and varied, but basic skills students typically cannot write a simple essay, struggle to read beyond the grade school level, and are barely functional in math skills.The fact that they graduated from high school means nothing; they are graduated with or without minimal skills.

Most of these kids are reasonably bright. They are simply uneducated. Beyond the skills mentioned, they have almost no concept of things like geography or civics, science or current events. For the most part, a student can get through high school today simply by showing up.

So what happened? How did we go from educated to uneducated students in a few decades? In part, I blame the education machine. Today we have government at every level putting its two cents into education and screwing it up. At least four levels, local, county, state and federal have something to say about how our kids are educated. They create requirements and tests and reports ad nauseam. They throw money at the problem, and rarely stop to observe that money does not work.

Teacher unions are also part of the problem. They have so politicized the role of the teacher that everyone in the school system is more worried about CYA than teaching the kids.In ten years I've observed one major point: the kids are coming in less educated each year. The system is on a downward slope.I'm sure individual teachers try their best, but they are caught in the quicksand created by both their unions and the government bureaucrats.

I practice "triage" teaching. I do the best I can with my students in fifteen weeks, but realize I'll never offset twelve years of failed education. It saddens me and makes me angry.I listen to politicians and "educators" endlessly babbling about "the children" when all they really care about are themselves and their feifdoms. It's hard not to be gloomy watching these phonies pontificate while our kids get short changed more and more every year.

When I came home from Vietnam, one of the first things I noticed was how little the war seemed to effect everyone else. People went to work, watched football games, went out to dinner, and generally lived their lives normally. No matter that 12000 miles away young Americans were dying. The war had precious little effect on the public at large. Sure, there was a draft, but even with that, the odds of any given male being drafted were less than one in ten.

I just heard a CNN reporter referring to "war weary Americans", and it made me wonder what is causing their weariness? To be sure, any person with a son or daughter or brother or sister in the military has plenty to worry about and be concerned with. But outside of these overly burdened folks, the rest of us have it pretty easy. Unlike World War II, there is no rationing, no inconvenience of any kind. We have it pretty easy while once again a few young men and women carry the load.

I wonder how many Americans even know a soldier or Marine, much less than one in Iraq or Afghanistan? With no draft, the public has far less exposure to the military than perhaps ever in our history. Outside of airports, I would venture few Americans rarely even see one of our folks in uniform.

I know a few men and women who have been to Iraq, and a few more who could go any time. That makes me lucky, knowing them. These are some of the finest young men and women in our land. If anyone has the right to be "weary", it's them and their families. Too many of the rest of us are more interested in American Idol or the upcoming football season. We now have wars without sacrifice, except for a brave and noble few. The rest of us have no right being "weary". Posturing and feigning concern about our troops is hypocritical. You either really care or you don't care at all. I believe too many of us fall in the latter category.