No Dollar Left Behind

JAVITS CENTER, NEW YORKAs recently as 1996, the Republican-party platform called for the abolition of the Department of Education as an unconstitutional, heavy-handed, and ineffective entity. Eight years later, things have changed.

Conservatives in New York this week knew there was trouble once they read the first sentence of the platform on "No Child Left Behind." It read: "Public education is the foundation of civil society." (In comparison to "family," which earned the description of being the "cornerstone.")

The second sign of trouble was learning that the subcommittee handling education was chaired by Rep. Phil English (R., Penn.), a key ally of Arlen Specter this past spring, and had the endorsement of the National Education Association.

The two days of platform debate confirmed the suspicion that the GOP has become the party of Big Education.

On Wednesday, conservative Texas delegate Kelly Shackelford moved to strike the "foundation" sentence, asking "were we not a civil society for the first hundred years of our country?" English and most of the delegates resisted, insisting the GOP declare its undying support of government schools.

So Shackelford offered a compromise: just remove the word "public." Education as a foundation of civil society was an idea most people can accept. Invoking an idea of tolerance fit for George Orwell, some delegate objected that without specifying public education over private and religious education, that sentence would be discriminatory. Shackelford lost again.

After all was done with the subcommittee, the first sentence appeared as, "Public Education is a foundation of free and civil society [emphasis added]." Shackelford and others tried in full committee to add other kinds of education to that sentence, but they were defeated again, at the urging of English.

The next section was even more displeasing to conservatives. Titled "Historic Levels of Funding," it bragged about outspending Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Richard Nixon on education. The paragraph could have been mistaken for an angry screed from a disillusioned fiscal conservative:

Efforts to strike this paragraph ("we're using liberal Democrats in our platform and saying we're worse than them," objected one delegate) were met with angry scolds by the Bush campaign's proxies, but conservatives got a bone thrown to them when the full committee struck the words "President Johnson" and replaced them with "the 1960s."

One other scuffle on education reflects the entire platform process's central-planning problem. Shackelford introduced an amendment to reinsert language from the 2000 platform saying education is essentially a local undertaking. He was defeated by other delegates who explained that Republicans no longer believe in local control after No Child Left Behind.

When he couldn't convince other delegates with appeals to conservative principles, Shackelford turned to the true guiding star for the platform: the Bush campaign's policy team.

With the stamp of approval from the campaign, Shackelford was able to pass his amendment through full committee — with the campaign's proxies explaining that although No Child Left Behind looked like a huge federal power grab, it really was all about local control.

Delegates also failed to insert language objecting to in-state college tuition for illegal aliens. No one even tried to deny illegals access to public schools.

Conservatives hoping for real education reform had started losing hope in the GOP before the 2000 election. This platform convinced conservatives that on education, it may be about time to jump the GOP ship.

Unfortunately, our Founding Fathers - and others- seemed to be prescient about how difficult it would be to keep a Constitutional Republic viable when the populace finds out that they can vote themselves all the things they can't earn on their own- in other words, a "democracy".

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
--Thomas Jefferson

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
-- Daniel Webster

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
-- John Adams (1814)

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-- Voltaire (1764)

A few, more contemporary minds have certainly agreed.

"Government must not supersede the will of the people or the responsibilities of the people. The function of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves."
--Ronald Reagan, 1968

There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head.
-- P.J. O'Rourke

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.
-- Thomas Sowell (1992)

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