Let’s Close All the Government Schools

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So, the first thing we do, as Dick the Butcher might say, we close all the government schools. I don’t care how we get there, via charter schools, or by vouchers, or by home schools or all three.

Why? Because, it must be perfectly clear by now, the government’s approach to government schools is the same as the military’s approach to basic training. It amounts to “boot camp” to turn ordinary citizens into soldiers in the rulers’ wars.

It’s not that our leaders don’t understand the danger of ideological indoctrination. Every good wokey knows the horror of the religious robots turned out by “fundamentalist” Christian churches. And everyone knows the danger of allowing fascists to enroll the young generation in the Hitler Youth.

So, if the one-size-fits-all public-school education doesn’t do the job, and often enough churns out left-wing activist robots that are good for nothing except as useful idiots in mostly peaceful protests, how should we educate our children?

May I suggest an idea that has come to me over years of deep philosophizing? When it comes to the education of children, We Have No Idea.

Do we have the society we enjoy today because of the Enlightenment or in spite of it? We Have No Idea. Some of the philosophers were great; others were idiots.

Do we live in the last best hope of man on Earth because of our Founding Fathers, or despite them? We Have No Idea. We had Harvard graduate Sam Adams and up-from-nothing Ben Franklin. We had slave owner George Washington and up-from-nothing Alexander Hamilton. Did they change the world, or did the world change them?

I tell you what I think. I think that the world changes for the better not because of the Great and the Good, but because of the lives of ordinary people that achieve extraordinary things: the men that invented machine textiles and the steam engine; the men that cut the price of illuminating oil by 90 percent and steel by two-thirds. The adopted son of a coast-guard mechanic that gave us Apple and iPhones.

Then there was the 1980s when Britain was led by the daughter of a grocer and the U.S. was led by the son of a traveling salesman.

For the last century we have been ruled by educated people, the best and the brightest. Their faith and their political formula is the Cult of the Victim. We could say of the Victim Age that it Makes Things Worse.

Gender dysphoria or fluidity is avoidance of something irksome; feminism is avoidance of maternity; homosexuality is avoidance of paternity… Diversity, Equity, Inclusion… [avoids] acknowledgement of personal responsibility.

Maybe the Victim Culture isn’t such a good idea. Maybe what we need is rule by the ordinary that rules through faith in ordinary people. Call it the Cult of the Ordinary.

Maybe that is what the election of Mike Johnson as House Speaker means. Son of a teenage mom, first in his family to go to college, a lawyer that didn’t go to the Ivy League. He is an ordinary American that has done extraordinary things.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Rick Obst

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