I’ve been thinking about this for years, but this post of Kevin’s made something gel.

I say we should quit using the term “public school” and start using “coercively funded school”.  My wife is not a public school teacher, she is a coercively funded school teacher.  Why should we use their language when we have our own and ours is more to the point?  It is one thing to say you’re for public schools, or you’re for “Our Children” but it’s another to come right out and say you’re for coercive funding.

Now I would hope, and predict, that most (though not all) church leaders would eschew coercive funding of their church on the grounds that with government funding comes government control (actually, churches are already government subsidized, but that’s a matter for another post).

As I said in comments at Smallest Minority; the purpose of coercively funded schools is to promote coercive funding.  I.e. they’ll promote that which gave them life in the first place, and that which sustains them.  What would be the result, after all, if the coercive schools actively and consistently promoted the American principals of liberty?  They’d be working themselves into extinction of course.  “You’re right” the students would conclude, “freedom, the free market, would be far superior both morally and functionally, in every respect including education.”

No doubt about it; the American founders got it wrong.  Education should have been included with religion and the press in the first amendment, for exactly the same reasons.  As a result of that failure, our coercively funded schools have become indoctrination centers– socialist missions, if you will, churning out useful idiots if not impassioned believers.  For the life of me, I cannot understand why this was not predicted in the 1780s.

After all these years of entrenchment, what is the fix?  So many states have education funding in their constitutions, I believe it will have to come from the states.  Rex Rammell had a good plan for Idaho, but due to an incompetent campaign no one heard of it.  He acknowledged the state constitutional mandate, but would have chopped much of the top off of the coercive education infrastructure and budget.  It is currently extremely top heavy.  Other measures would have opened the doors to more private schools.

Well I guess it’s official, with that PSA during some big sports game or other over the weekend, Clint Eastwood has joined the Occupy movement.  What I don’t understand is the surprise expressed out there.  I never figured Eastwood for a tea partier.  Far from it.

The Catholic Church seems to be standing up to some small part of ObamaCare.  Odd.  As near as I could tell these last several decades, they’ve been on board with most Progressive ideas.  Oops.  I guess they didn’t think it through.  Oh well.  May the backpedaling be strong and long lived.  So if they get a waiver for their religious beliefs, you know what comes next.  That’s right–  Millions of brand new “Jack Catholics”.  “Yeah, Mr. Bureaucrat Doofus, I converted, like three seconds ago, as soon as I learned that I could get a waiver.”  So I guess the next step would be a requirement for some sort of official certification of membership from the church, etc., etc.  Measures, countermeasures.  As always in any statist system, we have, officially, different sets of “rights” for different classes of citizens.

If you want to get Gay Married, forget the lobbying, the sign carrying, the stupid politicians and the dog and pony shows and come to Moscow, Idaho.  I’ll marry the two of you.  My fee is fifty dollars.  Of course I’ll require that each of you sign a legal document, transferring all your future earnings and assets to the other, and likewise with power of attorney.  No double standards here.  If you ever want a divorce, you’ll need a team of lawyers to decide who gets the house, the cars, the fashion design show, the various bank accounts, etc.  You want equality, you can have it.  But that was never what you really wanted, was it?  Right now you have the best of all worlds– you can shack up with no legal or financial consequences, and split up easily and relatively pain free.  With marriage it’s a whole different ball game, kids, and with marriage comes common law marriage too.  But I guess it’s about the money either way you look at it.  Spousal benefits are nice, but there’s always another side to it.  You sure you’ve thought this through?  Depending on what state you live in, how many of your past relationships could have resulted in a separation that would involve lawyers and splitting up of the financial and other assets?  Really?  You want this?  No.  You don’t, but you’ve been led to believe that you do.  Suckers.  Anyway; my offer still stands, if you think you have the guts.  I have no legal authority of course, but it’s about the commitment anyway.  Until death do you part, and we can combine your assets through simple, easy legal means.  If I had my druthers, I’d get the government sanctioning nonsense OUT of my marriage.  My personal life is not their business.  Leave me alone.  I just can’t identify with people who are dying to get the government IN to their private lives.

We’re hearing it more and more lately.  It’s being said because we’re starting to have a good influence; “The tone in politics has gotten so nasty lately…”  I heard it from my mother last night too.

It’s like everything else in politics– if the Progressives like it, it’s great, no matter what, but if you love liberty and say things in support of it, you’re being “mean and combative”.

Our freedom can be attacked from all directions, and there’s never a problem with that.  We can be told we should just back down and shut up, or guns are good for one things and one thing only: Murdering.  That sort of thing has been said for decades.  The very process of making a living in business can be maligned, vilified and smeared for generations, ownership of certain cars or trucks, or of guns, or simply being successful can be said to be a sign that we’re (ehem) “Compensating for something”.  We can be accused for generations of being racist if we want all people to live as equal under the law, and that’s not “nasty”.

Until we push back in favor of liberty– Then we are being “nasty”.  Then we’re being told how unfortunate it is that things are getting so vitriolic. 

Well sure; the ideals of statism/Progressivism/socialism, and plain old blind-and-stupid anti-Americanism cannot coexist with the principles of liberty.  One destroys the other.  So it’s been nasty all along.  As nasty as nasty gets.  How can a 100+ year long attack on the very ideal of human freedom and liberty be anything other than scum-sucking, in-the-gutter nasty?

So let’s not play stupid mind games.  Leave that to the Left, to play on each other.  For generations we’ve been cowards.  We let them get away with it for fear of being ostracized from polite society.  We let them play us for fools, always hoping against hope that that would somehow buy us something with them, and always failing.

On that note; I notice a lot of our own using disclaimers.  “I don’t work for so and so” etc. after giving a good review on a product or service.  Well how about this?  I love you, I respect you, I appreciate your input a LOT, but SCREW YOU!  That is to say; you don’t need to excuse yourself for saying good things about something.  If it turns out you were being dishonest, we’ll eventually find out and stop taking you seriously.  If it turns out you were right, as I suspect you are, I’ll listen to you next time with heightened interest.  See?  Understand that your eagerness to put in with the disclaimers comes from your having been cowed all your life into believing that there is something wrong with what we’ve come to call “commercialism” (with a little cringe at the distastefulness of the word).  Stop it, gawdamit.  If we can’t promote products for our own benefit, how long before selling ideas or principles for our own benefit becomes taboo?

How about this, just as an attempt to jolt you out of your life-long anti-capitalist hypnotic state (even though you think you’ve overcome it); How DARE you come here with nothing to sell!  How DARE you make comments with no products or services to offer your fellow Man.  How DARE you come here empty-handed, with naught but words.  Get your wits about you, Man.  Shake off the perpetual apologetic state and start selling something.  And no– don’t even go along in sarcasm, making disclaimers just to show how stupid they are.  That’s how it starts you doing out of habit.

OK;  Buy UltiMAK.  See?  That didn’t hurt a bit, did it?  Maybe I own the company and maybe I don’t, and it’s none of your business if I don’t feel like telling you for some stupid reason.  I do own it, and if I didn’t want you to know it would probably be because I was embarrassed by it and that should make you wonder why.  I’ll let the products speak for themselves, mainly, and my opinions of them will be tested by time and experience.  Anything I say about them will either be proven a; true, or b; not so true, and my reputation will go likewise.  And if someone comes busting your door in for trying to make a living in your own way, or they try to seize your bank accounts, fuck with your family, etc., you can always shoot them.  So what’s to lose?  You life, your liberty and your sacred honor.  That’s just three things.  At the end, which will be most important to you?

I the spirit of keeping the tone polite and cordial; anytime anyone spouts the slightest bit of even semi socialist, quasi-moderate or anti capitalist, anti corporate drivel, any time, anywhere, in any company, tell them to sit back and shut up because you’re sick and tired of the divisiveness and the nastiness.

As I and many others have pointed out many times progressives have a thing about “education” and “labor” camps.

I pointed out an article to wife Barbara a few minutes ago with this information:

North Korea’s hardline regime is punishing those who did not cry at the death of dictator Kim Jong-il, according to reports.

Sentences of at least six months in labour camps are also apparently being given to those who didn’t go to the organised mourning events, while anyone who criticised the new leader Kim Jong-un is also being punished.

Those who tried to leave the country, or even made a mobile phone call out, were also being disciplined, it has been claimed.

Her first words were similar to my thoughts. I could see that happening here.