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To: missileboy
You have utterly missed the thrust and historically accurate consiquences of so much " liberty ". Libertarians suppose, incorrectly, that it somehow doesn't matter if a majority (it is NOT, as you claim, a MINORITY of parents !) of childen will be either NOT educated at all, or even MORE poorly educated, than when the ( barf ! ) government schools them. Parents and religious institutions, have, form the beginnings of time, have held the provinence of educating the young. The result of that, was a HUGE class of illiterate / semi-illiterates ! The governmental take over, of education, actually worked quite well, for a VERY long time, in America ! I shan't go into all of the historical foot notes, on education, here, as it would take me HOURS to do so, and bore most people to death. It is also rather off topic. : - )

As with ALL Libertarian theories, the consiquences of their yearnings, are completely ignored by all of them ! Let's take just ONE example. If, by some utterly horrible happenstance, our entire governnment was Libertarian, when we all wake up in three weeks. Every public school is closed that day. NOW WHAT ? Please post your thoughts on this, and I'll refute your's. : - )

109 posted on 12/24/2001 12:23:41 PM PST by nopardons
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To: nopardons
Let's take just ONE example. If, by some utterly horrible happenstance, our entire governnment was Libertarian, when we all wake up in three weeks. Every public school is closed that day. NOW WHAT ? Please post your thoughts on this, and I'll refute yours

I've thought about these issues. I think it comes down to how fast you'd like change. Now, one can make the argument, as Harry Browne does, that gradualism won't work, which means all changes must be enacted immediately. I generally feel that way but in some cases it may not be appropriate. Or, perhaps initially the change may cause chaos but the end result will be better (witness Russians' initially now knowing what to do when they were presented with the freedom to determine their own professions - eventually, their eyes adjust to the bright light of freedom and they can see).

Or perhaps you're arguing from utility, in which case I would say that, if all public schools were closed, and kids were to be either home-schooled or were to go to private schools, all the other freedoms would have to be in place. That is to say, the income tax would have to be repealed so that parents could afford to send their kids to private schools, along with the property tax, of course, which funds public schools. To be cliche, freedom is not like a chinese menu, it's either all or nothing. Giving partial freedom creates disastrous results (witness the 'deregulation of California's power industry where the price was deregulated from producer to distributor but NOT from distributor to consumer - partial freedom created a situation worse than previously existed, but this is not a failure of freedom of choice, since none really existed)

115 posted on 12/24/2001 2:35:55 PM PST by missileboy
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To: nopardons
The governmental take over, of education, actually worked quite well, for a VERY long time, in America ! I shan't go into all of the historical foot notes, on education, here, as it would take me HOURS to do so, and bore most people to death.

I don't have the stats in front of me, but wasn't the literacy rate already pretty high before we allowed the government to run schools?
Has the situation improved? It seems to me that the modern-day public school teacher is little better than any other bureaucrat.

187 posted on 12/26/2001 9:34:56 AM PST by Virginia-American
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