Economics would be a good one, teachers are ill equipped to teach and debate economics above all. And economics ties in to politics so much because much of politics is about controlling the economy in various ways. -this ties into the constitution through taxation, and the lack of the power to tax given to the government in the original constitution.

Operation Paperclip, Northwoods, or Gladio?

Discuss the economics of unions, and how they lead to higher costs and greater unemployment due to restricted entry into job markets, despite their intended purposes.

Be polite, be humble, and do not directly confront her in front of the class. Speak to her through speaking to the class.

I think a fight on the 10th amendment and the interstate commerce clause is coming. I think the 17th amendment is being questioned by an increasingly large circle. I think people are starting to see a difference between “promote the general welfare” and providing specific welfare. I find that if you take a contrary viewpoint the grading is harsher. Your arguments must be more logical and better supported than taking a position the teacher already agrees with. Perhaps you could pick a topic on which libertarians and democrats might agree, but libertarians take a stronger stance, for example drone strikes. Or that it is unwise for those that support the 2nd amendment in part to protect us from government to simultaneously desire an dramatic increases to spending aimed at arming that government.

I second Adamo’s point about the interstate commerce and general welfare clauses. Misinterpretation of both has facilitated a huge expansion of the federal government. At its root, almost any federal activity (e.g., gun control, economic regulations, welfare and other social programs, etc.) not specifically authorized in the Constitution stems from one or both of these clauses.

As inspiration, I’d suggest you download a copy of Butler Shaffer’s “Boundaries of Order” at Mises.org. The first chapter offers an exhaustive list of issues facing society today. Shaffer then reveals them to all be, at their root, issues of property rights.

You could pretty much choose a subject and try to analyze it as a property rights question, and what those implications are for policy and law. Then assuming you disagree with the proposed or actual government policy, you could take it down in two ways: 1) the utilitarian perspective (ie, it doesn’t work and why), and 2) the moral perspective (it is wrong to do and why).

Duranty’s prize was for his work before the terror famine, but he was still a sleaze.

How about discussing the fact that the constitution is in a strict sense a non-binding, legally ineffective document….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWESql2dXoc

Do how the 14th amendment was not properly ratified. If you need a book that goes into detail of it read Kevin Gutzman’s Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution. Well you don’t have to read it but just skip to the section of the book. Anyway I think that’ll be a pretty big one considering lots of juqrisprudencial decisions have been based off of the 14th amendment, for example Brown v Board of Education. So if the 14th amendment was never legitimately ratified all those decisions should in theory be null and void.

It’s possible she might fail him. My experience from college is that about 50% are open minded to allow you to make your case, and 50% aren’t.

You are probably smarter than your teacher, only younger and less experienced. I wouldn’t try too hard.

I stand corrected. Thanks Tom.

He was a scumbag.

The case of Anwar Alawki, quadruple bam! none of these are popular in MSM press but would make good cases against Obama and there is plenty in independent articles and journals. Some topics will have a NYT aeticle worth including, which honestly wouldn’t hurt your case to use a liberal paper that argues against liberal policies.

The 2nd amendment

If she is a good Democrat voter then she believes that she is anti-war. She probably also believes that a state asserting its 10th amendment rights leads to secession or nullification which are only ideas promoted by racist white-supremacists. If this young person could show that if we lived in a society that saw the states as more powerful/legitimate than the federal government then we probably would have avoided some many of the wars of the 20th century. I know that my state of MA would most certainly have nullified the decision to go into Iraq by not providing our national guard troops had we thought that was a viable option. A topic like this could cause the teacher to look at her own views in a different way.

I concur. It’s an excellent suggestion.

Many good suggestions. Whichever topic the student picks I would also suggest pick a conservative or republican as the exemplar of the bad policy under scrutiny and use a little invective even. Corrupt Reagan spent too much. Tricky Nixon took us off the gold standard. Hoover meddled in the economy. Lincoln violated Habeas Corpus. Bush started needless wars. Etc.
This will get her emotional buy in by attacking the person THEN you can attack the policy directly and thoroughly.. and THEN you hit her with the fact her sacred democrats do the same thing.
And this works either way. You can do the same to neocons in reverse.
The key here is WE care about the POLICY, but they tend to care about the PERSON. Use that to your advantage, and don’t assume they will agree with your interpretation of policy on the merits alone. You can do it much more easily if you put an evil republican face on the policy first. (or democrat if talking to a neocon)

Sorry son. If this teacher is hard core statist, which is likely, no fact, example of our distorted history, economic theories that have been proved wrong empirically wrong again and again, or logic will change their mind. There is log term conditioning at work and we cannot exactly kidnap the victims to deprogram them. It will take a LONG time to change their minds. Best thing you can do is get the door open a crack.

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