Abolish Compulsory School Attendance Laws

Just thought I'd throw out some red libertarian meat today. I'm pretty sure that Remy isn't going that far out on a limb, but …

HTML-annotated lyrics are here. But since I brought it up, my fellow crazies have thoughtful advocacies for repeal: Aaron Steelman at Chronicles; Jacob G. Hornberger at Mises Wire; Kerry McDonald at FEE (also here). From that last link:

Someone asked me recently if I could wave a magic wand and do one thing to improve American education what would it be. Without hesitation, I replied: Eliminate state compulsory schooling statutes. Stripping the state of its power to define and control education under a legal threat of force is a necessary step in pursuit of education freedom and parental empowerment.

Also revealed by Googling: here in the "Live Free or Die" state, ten half-days of unexcused absence may, and probably will, get you and your kid in trouble.

Also of note:

  • Being honest about the real problem. Pun Salad appreciates strong, exact language, especially in expressing an opinion Pun Salad agrees with. At the Federalist, Kylee Griswold goes there: Kamala Harris Is Too Stupid To Be President.

    Univision hosted a “Latinos Ask” town hall with Kamala Harris on Thursday night, and it was about as airheaded and disingenuous as you’d expect. Here was one word salad from the first five minutes — remarkably in response to a question about the two hurricanes that just decimated the southeast of the country:

    Leadership is about understanding the importance of lifting people up, understanding that the character of our country is such that we are a people who have ambitions and aspirations, dreams, goals for ourselves and our families, and are entitled to have a leader who then invests in that. … The two visions [for our country], simply put, are that one is about the future, and the other is about the past and taking us backward. And I do believe that the American people are ambitious and aspirational about an investment in the future in a way that we are optimistic while being clear-eyed.

    That’s a lot of ambitions. After one voter observed that Harris was never elected to be the Democrat nominee but just magically became such when “President Biden was pushed aside,” the vice president naturally drove home the point for the umpteenth time that Donald Trump is the “unprecedented” threat to democracy. Funny she brought up Trump and democracy because the former president actually made an apropos comment about the topic earlier the same day, telling the Economic Club of Detroit: “Our biggest threat to democracy is stupid people.”

    Specifically, stupid voters are the biggest threat to democracy.

    And to be brutally honest, stupid voters are how we got Trump. Ironic that he should bring that up.

    (To be clear, I'm tossing ignorant people into my "stupid" basket of deplorables; technically, that's an oversimplification.)

  • Allegedly smart people are no treat either. Robert Shibley, at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) notes a regrettable trend: The AAUP continues to back away from academic freedom.

    This week, the American Association of University Professors gave its blessing to mandatory “diversity statements” in hiring — as long as the faculty votes for them first. FIRE has long argued that such statements can too easily function as ideological litmus tests and has repeatedly warned against them.

    The AAUP’s new statement on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Criteria for Faculty Evaluation” marks yet another departure from the organization’s roots as a stalwart protector of faculty members’ right to dissent from the orthodoxies of the day, whatever those might be.

    Shibley's rebuttal to the AAUP's denial that DEI statements "require candidates to adopt or act upon a set of moral and political views":

    FIRE is careful to consider each such policy individually, as not every statement requirement is the same. But in general, when employees or job applicants are required to pledge or prove their allegiance to a school’s interpretation of DEI concepts, we object precisely because ensuring that allegiance is the stated goal of the policy. From the perspective of the policy authors, that’s not a bug, it’s the key feature.

    Schools adopting DEI requirements want to filter out people who don’t or can’t agree to act upon the institution’s specific set of views in the classroom and in their service work. If colleges and universities didn’t care whether applicants agreed with their conception of DEI, why would they bother to ask applicants to demonstrate that agreement?

    Can I imagine a happy day when the New Hampshire legislature (a) repeals compulsory attendance laws and (b) requires University System of New Hampshire schools to abolish required "diversity statements" for hiring and promotion? As Han Solo would say: "I don't know. I can imagine quite a bit."

  • [Amazon Link]
    (paid link)

    And you won't guess who those little bastards are. Alan Jacobs has tracked down [Professor Richard] Rorty’s bastard children. Inspired by the Jewish Space Lasers Weather Control crowd:

    In MAGAworld, declarative statements are not meant to convey information about (as Wittgenstein would put it) what is the case. Declarative statements serve as identity markers — they simultaneously include and exclude, they simultaneously (a) consolidate the solidarity of people who believe they have shared interests and (b) totally freak out the libtards. That’s what they are for. They are not for conveying Facts, Truth, Reality — nobody cares about that shit. (People who call themselves Truth Seekers are being as ironic as it is possible to be.) Such statements demarcate Inside from Outside in a way that delivers plenty of lulz, and that is their entire function. In that sense only they articulate a kind of dark gospel. 

    Thus it is pointless to insist that Democrats have not in fact unleashed weather weapons on Florida and the Carolinas; even more pointless to argue that if Democrats had such weather weapons they would have used them when Donald Trump was President in order to discredit him. Whether it is factually true that Democrats have and deploy weather weapons could not be more irrelevant; what matters is that this is the kind of thing we say about Democrats — so if you want to be part of this “we,” you’d better say it too. 

    My informal understanding is that this is very similar to the late Harry Frankfort's thesis in On Bullshit (Amazon link at your right). And of course, it's not solely practiced by inhabitants of "MAGAworld".

  • Hm. Should I vote for this guy? The Libertarian Party's presidential candidate will appear on my November ballot. Reason's Nick Gillespie interviewed Chase Oliver on Budget Cuts, War, and Immigration and if you're as disgusted/amused at the major party candidates as I am, you may want to check that out.

    But for me, this is a deal-breaker:

    You've said that what Israel is doing in Gaza is genocide. Is that an accurate description of your view of Israel's actions in Gaza?

    When you look at the definitions that are brought forward by the International Criminal Court, I think much of the standards there have been met by the practices of the Israeli government.

    That's to the detriment of the Israeli people, who would like to see a more peaceful and stable Israel, who would like to see a more peaceful and stable region.

    Given the deep U.S. involvement in the Middle East, do you believe we should completely withdraw, or is there a role for the U.S. in brokering peace in the region?

    We need to be removing our military footprint as quickly and orderly as possible so that it can be done in a way that's responsible, not like what we saw with the Afghanistan withdrawal. But we do need to withdraw ourselves completely from the Middle East.

    The best thing we can do is be a neutral arbiter. What we should not be doing is putting our thumb on the scale. That's what we've been doing and it's not led to better outcomes. In fact, it's led to more turmoil and more tension in the region.

    Stipulated: US foreign policy has been, and is, more inept than it should be. But not "putting our thumb on the scale" when it comes to barbarism vs. civilization would make things much, much worse.


Last Modified 2024-10-13 4:54 AM EST