Recently, I came across yet another in a long line of calls for ‘holding accountable those who are supposed to serve us.’ In this case, the writer was talking about public schools. Yes, we should definitely do that. We should hold accountable the people who operate our public school system.
Also, it’s time for us to reduce our energy costs by investing in the development of perpetual motion machines.
Those efforts would be equally likely to succeed.
Seriously, when we set up an inherently political welfare project as our primary mechanism for educating children, it’s delusional to expect results other than exactly the ones we’re getting — and have been getting for at least half a century now.
Think about it. The idea is for elected officials and appointed bureaucrats to be held accountable to voters, right?
Is the solution to elect (and appoint) ‘the right people’? There are three insurmountable problems with that.
First, if the job involves wielding power over other people, there is no right person for the job.
Second, even if you think you’ve found the right kind of person, as soon as he gets into power, he’ll quickly become the wrong kind of person. (Ron Paul and John Valera seem to be the exceptions that prove the rule.)
Third, and most importantly, the best you can hope for is that a majority — really, just a plurality — to which you happen to belong is able to push something on everyone else that they don’t want.
The smaller the plurality, the more nearly this becomes the opposite of government by consent, and the more brazenly this ignores Jefferson’s admonition that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.
P doesn’t like what Q is teaching in schools when Q is in control. But Q doesn’t like what P has been teaching when P was in control. And the rest of the alphabet doesn’t agree with either of them.
Is this really something that can be settled with coercive funding extracted by majority rule? Or should we start treating being educated the way we treat being armed — not as an entitlement, but at a responsibility?
For consent — and accountability — to be meaningful, people have to be able to understand what they’re being asked to consent to (which is why they need to be educated); and they have to be able to say no and back that up with force if necessary (which is why they need to be armed).
That’s why the federal constitution (in Amendment 2) says that arms are necessary to the security of a free state; and why the state constitution (in Article 83) says that education is essential to the preservation of a free government.
Arms and education are the principal mechanisms of accountability available to a free people. Putting either of them under the control of the government is the first step towards disabling them.
