Posted on 03/04/2005 5:12:44 AM PST by kjvail
I find that to be a totally meaningless statement, ungrounded in fact or logic. I don't see where you can even begin to substantiate it.
Actually, to be accurate, you did not answer my question at all. According to your standards, there has never been a free society in human history - true or false?
Dear snarks_when_bored,
Thanks.
"I guess we differ on our views of the degree to which public schools are indoctrinating (in some way) rather than educating."
Hmmm... Maybe. Maybe not. I really haven't actually said that the public schools are doing a lot of indoctrinating. Only that if education is compulsory, then the state may define education. If the state may define education, then the state is capable of forcing indoctrination on the people.
"I went to public schools, and, as my teachers would attest, nobody indoctrinated me in anything at all."
I'd say that because education has traditionally been handled at the level of the individual states and jurisdictions therein, rather than the federal level, the amount of indoctrination has varied widely from place to place. Certainly, it's getting bad in a place like Montgomery County, Maryland (rated, incidentally, as a very good public school system) where the folks in charge want to force middle and high school kids to learn all about condom use and how glorious and wonderful safe sex is. In Prince George's County, Maryland, a number of the public schools adopted an "Afro-centric" curriculum, complete with the "Afro-centric" version of history. This is a school system with about 120,000 kids in it.
Where I live, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, the teachers took thousands of our school kids out of school one day to go down to Annapolis (the state capital) to protest against the governor's efforts to introduce slot machines at our horse racing tracks (!).
"Public education at the pre-collegiate level is pretty much of a mess, but I don't see homeschooling and the sort of cooperative network (with exchanges of emoluments) that you describe as an answer to the problems."
Well, I'm not trying to solve society's educational problems through homeschooling. I'm more ocncerned with Hoppe's concern, which is the power of the state.
I figure that voluntary, family-controlled education, with no state control, wouldn't do much too much worse than the system we have now, and you seem to agree that what we have now isn't working all that well.
I do know that it would substantially reduce the size and scope of the state. In Maryland, it would reduce the direct burden of taxation by roughly half - as half of all state and local tax dollars go for the support of public education. That'd save the average Maryland family three or four thousand dollars per year, right off the bat, would decrease the number of folks employed by the government by tens of thousands, and would dramatically reduce the power of the state.
If the educational outcome would be roughly the same, it looks like a pretty good trade-off to me.
sitetest
Long but excellent.
The left and the right are broad spectrums of many different degrees of lunacy. I am not an EXTREME Right Winger but I am way right of center. I am a Christian, a gun owner, I support the constitution, I'm a patriot, I favor smaller government, tighter borders, personal responsiblity, etc. Yet Pat Buchannan (sp) irritates the crap out of me, but I like Zell Miller.
Do these nuances prevent me from calling myself a conservative? I'm certainly not a liberal.
A non-statist society requires a rigid cultural and societal hierarchy.
I wouldn't go so far as to say 'rigid'. It does require more personal "responsibility".
The American Indians were not statists. And they did have cultural and societal hierachies. But I don't think they could be classified as "rigid."
More flexible and with a lot more personal responsibility for ones own actions.
To prove this point the author goes where? ..to a qoute from the 1950's where, in the context of the cold war, Buckley says we should keep the military strong.
This piece is riddled with contradictions and out of context conjecture. To distill the author's theory on what is American conservatism, he believes that one need go no further than a perusal of Marx's Communist Manifesto. Be still my beating heart...
I read another article by him. Here it is.
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
I don't think he is not saying "controlled". It is common knowledge that in order for there to be some form of cooperation, and not total anarchy, there needs to be some form of structure. Either centralized structure or a structure that is "agreed on" by adherence to a set of norms. Very political stuff all this!!!!
Just damn! Gotta proof my stuff better, sorry.
We do have a form and structure. It's called the constitution(s). It would be nice if it were still the agreed upon set of norms...maybe someday.
We have similar preferences. As far as Zell goes, from my perspective, it's grading on the curve.
Do these nuances prevent me from calling myself a conservative?
People who have precisely the opposite of your preferences also call themselves conservatives, hence my comment.
I'm certainly not a liberal.
I am, a classical liberal. Before they perverted the word it was a good thing.
Actually, true.
You fail to see the basic truth of the author's perception. To have a 1900 state, you have to have a 1900 society with a rigid cultural consensus enforced by the "right" sort of people (and for there to a be a "right" sort of people there has to be a "wrong" sort of people) and a respect for authority so unquestioning that a generation would go over the top. The more power is concentrated in the "right" sort of people who share common values and mores and are bound by a "gentleman code" (the violation of which results in social death) the fewer written laws and government you have to have. The old boy network. The "club". That is how the world of 1900 worked.
A "gentleman's code" doesn't work when people of different backgrounds are interrelating as equals. Then you need laws because the "gentleman's agreement" isn't shared. That is why it was so important for the "club" to exclude "that sort". A "gentleman's agreement" won't hold if everyone isn't indoctrinated in the same values.
True.
Of course, I said it. :^}
(Is is 3:30 yet? I can't wait for this goofy week to be over)
1030 here. It has been a crappy week.
For a non-statist society to work, the most feared punishment must be disgrace.
Disgrace presumes fixed reputations for life and shared cultural norms. Like you can't just pick up and go live somewhere where physical cowardice is considered alright.
Libertarians often babble about militias. A militia can only work when there is tremendous social pressure to do your duty. When shirking will result in disgrace for life.
You are consistently failing to prove that assertion. Freedom does not require a rigid social order. There are some common values necessary, yes, for any society to function, but it does not follow that the resulting society need be Victorian.
You have decided on your conclusion and are working backwards from it, which is very unconvincing.
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