“The issue is not whether public schools are good or bad, but rather whether I am allowed to disagree with you without getting shot.”

December 25, 2007

Never forget, simply claiming a problem exists is never a justification to get the federal government involved. It makes no representation as to whether the federal government would help resolve the problem or simply make it worse. The world would be a better place if we all learned to judge a program by results rather than intentions.

There are problems with American inner city schools, but the federal government already subsidizes those schools and they haven’t helped a bit. It makes no sense to tax someone in Montana, who may have other more important problems, to pay for inner city schools in Chicago. It makes no sense for complicated issues to be dealt with by people who don’t understand the problems they’re trying to solve.

Furthermore, it’s quite relevant to remind you that many of the problems educators and families suffer from in the inner cities are caused by government. The war on drugs is a perfect example. You can’t tax the people to create a problem then tax them to deal with its repercussions. That’s the essence of a scam, a very profitable one.

I was recently involved in a debate with a woman about public schools. Naturally, she came up with reason after reason as to why public schools were beneficial, how wonderful they were for underprivileged children, how essential they were for social stability etc etc. Each of these points – and many more – could have consumed hour upon hour of back and forth, and would have required extensive research and complicated philosophical reasoning. But there was really no need for any of that – all I had to do was keep saying:

“The issue is not whether public schools are good or bad, but rather whether I am allowed to disagree with you without getting shot.”

Most political debates really are that simple. People don’t get into violent debates about which restaurant is best because the state doesn’t impose one restaurant on everyone – and shoot those trying to set up competing restaurants. The truth is that I couldn’t care less about this woman’s views on education – just as she couldn’t care less about my views – but we are forced to debate because we are not allowed to hold opposing views without one of us getting shot. That was the essence of our debate, and as long as it remained unacknowledged, we weren’t going to get anywhere.

This fantastic piece of reasoning comes from here via here. I strongly recommend you spend a few minutes to read the entire post carefully.