The federal college-loan money-grab was crammed into the Health Insurance boondoggle like the last blue frosted donut testing the frontiers of elasticity on our now calorically challenged, spandex wearing constitution. And unlike the obvious fascism of the bank takeovers and auto industry takeovers–and of course the health industry takeover, this one was not over advertised.
While all the other takeovers should offend us, it is these more subtle attempts at socialism that we should find the most offensive. Because while insurance reform was foisted on us in a manner nearly as grating as a royal edict, the college loan monopoly was simply slipped in ‘at the last minute.’ And while it got some attention, it hardly saw the kind of coverage it deserved.
What has occurred, thanks to the liberal majority, is manifold. First, the few schools that eschew any contact with government money, including government supported college loans, are no longer as accessible to the general public. If a school wants’ "to avoid “imperial entanglements" they will not be able to accept students who get loans from the government. But now that all college loans are coming from the government, how can that be possible? It can’t. That means less access, fewer choices, and such is the reality of liberalism.
Further down the rabbit hole, the monopoly on college money has other strings attached. The feds—and the taxpayers—now have a significant fiscal interest in the very nature of higher education. Not that they did not before. But when all the students will be there courtesy of taxpayer dollars it is impossible to suggest that any university can think outside federal control. Control of the classroom, the agenda, the research, all of it, can and will be–sooner or later–under congressional scrutiny. The cry-baby, busy bodies will be sticking their fingers in everybody’s pies; can we call them education death panels?
Government has long meddled in higher eudaction, but in anticipation (perhaps) of this take over, a piece of federal legislation was quietly passed into law last year by Herr Obama called the Federal Textbook Act. (H/T to Skip here) It is at its core, the federal oversight of textbooks and their content. More simply put—the government has now given itself editorial control over the printed matter of the entire educational system from K-thru-forever.
And because a majority of students will need loans for college, the majority of schools will be under the ever larger thumb of the government. That means that families who can afford to send a child to a university on their own—unless they choose an exceptional one like Hillsdale—will be immersing their son or daughter into four more years of the pro-government group think mentality even without the advent of government backed college loan.
Fewer choices, less diversity, liberals are BORG who want to assimilate you, just accept it.
So while the health insurance deform bill and the process used to pass it did significant damage to the constitutional protections created to prevent such abuses of power, this is potentially worse. It’s not just about a mind being a terrible thing to waste. It’s about every single mind from all future generations being pumped into a mill of declining standards and government controlled higher education–where it is likely such abuses of power will be explained as a proper function of government. And who but a few are left to contradict that?
Yes, the college loan grab has a ‘re-education camp’ mentality to it that cannot and should not be ignored. But the only way to stop it is to repeal it, shut down the bureaucracy that runs it, or-much like any other part of Obama’s agneda we object to, simply take back the US House and refuse to fund it.
The left has just denied Americans another choice. The choice not just to learn, but to decide what and where to learn.
Cross Posted From NH Insider
