You have no right (rebuttal to editorial that laid claim to home school kids)

“North Carolina is depending on today’s children to grow into the type of skilled workforce that attracts new business and investment. We ignore the education of 38,000 of these priceless resources at our peril.”

What is wrong with this excerpt from Friday’s editorial page? What makes it so obnoxious, threatening, condescending? To be blunt, the “we.” The imperial/imperious “we.” “We” the masters must make sure that “you” the subjects don’t mess with “our” merchandise. “Our” possessions. “Our” “resources.”

Got news for you, N&O, and coercive utopians everywhere. Home school children are cherished family treasures. Family responsibilities. They are not yours to process. They are not domestic cattle of The State. They enjoy that archaic thing called “freedom,” which is, historically, the catalyst for greatness.

Statists, worry about the kids you already have. When your janissaries, your “resources,” are as resourceful, competent, and literate as the home-schooled kids, then you might have credibility. Meanwhile, mind your own business, and leave well enough alone. What we see you doing with those you already have gives us no confidence in your bald, bold assertions regarding the kids outside your re-education camps.

"...if The State wants kids, it had better d**mned well learn to make its own."

I think you might want to consider the horrifying corollaries of that sentiment, cloning being just one early step towards the totalitarian anschluss of child-rearing.

The State is a killing machine.

Do not throw your children into its furnace.

The janissaries were single in their heyday. By the days of their decadence, they had become a hereditary caste. Part of this was because the Empire had lost their traditional recruiting grounds in the Balkans.

During theor glory days, they were the most efficient and feared body of troops in the world. A big part of this was because the European troops of the day were so undisciplined and ill-regulated. While Europe became more and more effective militarily, the Ottomans stagnated and eventually became extraordinarily decadent.

...these priceless resources...

That's the phrase I find obnoxious. The implication is clearly that the children are not free human beings, entrusted in the care of their parents, but state "resources" to be used for the benefit of the state.

Bump for that sentiment! I hate it when people talk about 'for the good of the children' or ask 'What about the children'? All it means is that they see children as objects rather than people. I'm only 18 and I vividly remember feeling that to many people I was more important as a figure in their cultural calculus than as an individual, and I was homeschooled at that! I cannot imagine putting your children through that sort of torture.

In Ender's Game, a novel by Orson Scott Card, one of the characters tells her brother that adults hold all the cards. "They call us children and they treat us like mice," she says. It's a good comment, in that it reflects a society where children are more important for what they can do for the government than what they will become on their own. I recommend the novel highly, (it is science fiction) for anyone who wants a look inside the heads of brilliant children, and also for anyone who thinks that the government actually cares anything about your children.

North Carolina, keep fighting! You've got your values straight, don't let them get twisted around!

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