It's what you do with them - and how they're used that counts.
Foxy,
That's what I'm constantly on about. Most educated should not be allowed to call themselves Academic.

Individual,

You don't have to be an academic to be educated.
And as an academic you may only be educated in
the one field or area of expertise.
It's complicated. That's life!

Every now and then I feel the need to remind people of the true nature of Mr O's claims to being credentialed. Note I said credentialed - we all can plainly see he's not educated but that doesn't disprove having credentials.

This is my post from last year...
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=9219#309052

A quote from that post..."A small anecdote...A little while back one thread devolved into a discussion about the Athenian constitution. Mr O asserted with full confidence that the Athenian leadership was chosen by lot. Its the sort of error someone would make if they based their knowledge on some Reader's Digest style history or perhaps a misunderstanding of the history channel.

Anyway it was utterly wrong and completely bonkers. While some inconsequential positions were chosen by lot nothing approaching leadership was.

So I pointed out the error and offered a few facts that demonstrated the error.

Mr O's response wasn't to defend his claims with data. It wasn't to admit error.

Instead he suddenly proclaimed that he had academic credentials in ancient Greece and therefore anything he said about Athens was correct. He'd created these supposed credentials out of thin air as a means to defend the indefensible.

I assume all his other claims are equally invalid."

mhaze,

One thing I do know for certain: I am definitely not on your level.

.

Dear ttbn,

.

You wrote :

« Let's just say that only a referendum would solved this question, and leave it at that. »
.

Sure, let’s give that a try, ttbn, but the problem is that by answering the question, you don’t necessarily solve the problem !

It depends on how you word the question. We already saw that back in 1999 …

But I guess we’re a little older and a little wiser now. Once bitten, twice shy !

.

If there's to be a republic there has to be a referendum. There's just no other way. The constitution has to be changed and a referendum following the rules as set out in the constitution is the only way to make the change.

Whatismore the change has to be in a Yes/No format ie the question would be something like "Do you want to change the wording of the constitution from this to this? Yes/No."

Therefore you need to have a question most people would say Yes to. But the public remains divided into roughly thirds - one third want no change, one third want an elected president, one third want an appointed president. So getting a 50% Yes is near impossible. Remember also that not only must the vote get more than 50% overall but it must also get more than 50% of the states agreeing.

So good luck with that.