Miracles Used to be Common in America

That’s what Citizen Tom told me when he linked my Miracles post.

He brilliantly positioned my latest homeschooling post into a cultural and historical perspective.  You should go read the whole thing, but here is the gist:

“We have lost so many of our freedoms so gradually and so slowly, we don’t know, understand, or appreciate what the founders created. . . .

Nonetheless, occasionally a miracle still occurs, and some citizen takes it upon herself or himself to do what needs to be done without waiting for the government to do it. . . .

When Alexis De Tocqueville visited America in 1831-32, he found our people doing something so remarkable he had to study it. He found of nation of self-starters, people who took it upon themselves to fix what needed to be fixed.”

I told him what a great point that was, and then Tom answered with a comment that warrants a whole post of its own.  Here’s an abridged version:

Linda, when you expressed reluctance to blog on homeschool issues, I was disappointed. I think you should write about homeschooling, and I wrote this post to help you understand why.

. . . . As a homeschooling mom, you have an unusual perspective. Please share it with others.

. . . [L]etting politicians educate our children is destroying our republic. That’s why I believe we must make school choice this generation’s civil rights issue. The public school system will never teach children how they can get things done without the soft tyranny of government.

. . . . Did Jefferson accuse King George III of not providing the American colonists with happiness? Was Jefferson campaigning for a welfare state?  Of course not. . . . Ultimately, the Pursuit of Happiness is about freedom of religion, and that is the freedom power-hungry politicians most hate.

To protect our children’s God-given right to the Pursuit of Happiness, we need school choice.

You are right, Tom.  I serve as a potential window for others who may be trying to decide whether to homeschool.  I should pull the shades back further.  It’s just hard.  I worry about whether my words are actually helping matters or just putting people off with an appearance of being ‘better than thou.’

At this point I’m wondering what exactly ‘school choice’ even means.  (Or, as our political opponents probably see it, what form of The Destructor do we choose?)

I used to think that education could be fixed through two complementary avenues: a) vouchers and b) parent-initiated change from within, starting at the school board level.  Frequent relocation sidelined me from pursuing those avenues, though.

It was for mostly personal reasons that I ended up abandoning the whole system for the short-term.  Older Son had such a tough time in 3rd grade.  I’ve never posted much detail, in an effort to maintain privacy–another aspect that makes blogging difficult.

Now, we’ve been settled in Tampa for a year.  As I read Tom’s wise words and ponder my old ”a and b” solution to education, I feel a little lost.  I’m not so sure the public school situation can be improved, given the current state of our culture.

In the short-term, vouchers would help a ton of children who are otherwise imprisoned in failing schools.  I am still pro-voucher.

But in the long run, I’m not so sure vouchers are a solution either.  Couldn’t they end up providing another way for government to dictate how kids are educated?  To make sure we are using that voucher money in an authorized manner, of course.  Or, if folks get dependent on voucher money, will that lead to the same situation states are now in, i.e., agreeing to certain curricula in order to keep the funds flowing?

The only sure way to give taxpayers “school choice” is to not tax them for schools in the first place, or at least drastically reduce the amount of government spending on schools.

What are my chances of successfully selling that one to the public at large?

Alright everybody.  Guess I’m done.  Please do share your thoughts.

The Tragedy of The Commons, Children’s Edition

The whole “the kids don’t belong to you; they belong to the community” bit is just a less cagey way of saying “it takes a village,” so at least Melissa Harris-Perry gets points for honesty.

My favorite part of the “All Your Children Are Belong To Us” MSNBC Promo comes at the end:

“Once it’s everybody’s responsibility and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments.”

I marvel at the sheer act of willful blindness required in order to believe such a complete load of male bovine manure.  I mean, let’s all apply this to our front yards, shall we, and then hold our breath while we wait for the neighbors to come mow ours?

You know, corporations are a kind of microcosm of the larger society.  Corporate-y type folks who make their living ensuring that a corporation ”makes better investments” have noticed that the truth is exactly inverse to Ms. Harris-Perry’s statement:

When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.

And haven’t the sociological/psychological types done study after study and pretty much come up with the same truth regarding human nature?

I wonder if Ms. Harris-Perry, being a good collectivist and all, would respect Garrett Hardin‘s belief that human overpopulation is a serious global threat?  If so, maybe she could also put some merit into his concept of The Tragedy of the Commons:

“In 1974 the general public got a graphic illustration of the “tragedy of the commons” in satellite photos of the earth. Pictures of northern Africa showed an irregular dark patch 390 square miles in area. Ground-level investigation revealed a fenced area inside of which there was plenty of grass. Outside, the ground cover had been devastated.

The explanation was simple. The fenced area was private property . . . .”

Yeah.  Let’s all ignore a truth so obvious that even a Malthusian human ecologist with totalitarian tendencies can see it, and let’s ”break through” the private idea that kids belong to their parents.  Let’s engage in an experiment called The Tragedy of the Commonly Cared-for Children, because Miss MSNBC Lady says things’ll turn out just peachy.

Good grief.

I haven’t seen a more sure sign of the decline of our society since I first saw somebody pushing one of those dog strollers through the park.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m hating on the cute dog’s stroller.

Spam, Spam, Eggs and Ham

Twitter is a wild and dangerous place.  I fell into one particular rabbit hole called #WeDemandAVote several days ago.  The seeds of this hashtag were sown in the State of the Union Address:

Next came a follow-up call-to-arms:  We Demand A Vote (but not a vote on actually amending the Constitution properly, mind you).

After that, I was alerted to the apparent use of spamming by gun control advocates using fake accounts to tweet on the WeDemandAVote hashtag.  I’ve been scanning and responding to these tweets ever since.

Many of the #WeDemandAVote tweets are clearly from real people; these folks may be Obamabots but they are not spambots.  Still, the excess of egg-avatar spam was too obvious to be ignored:

Twitter ‘eggs’ scramble to push Obama’s “We Demand A Vote” Gun Control Effort

Hey, Nice Try With The #DemandAVote Spambots

GOP lawmaker: Obama using fake Twitter messages in fight over gun control

I have tweeted an “are you real or spam” message to dozens of suspicious #WeDemandAVote tweeters, and so far exactly zero have responded to my inquiries.  A few real Twitter users have noticed my inquiries and vehemently denied the existence of spam, using that special unicorn logic: “well I’m real therefore all accounts are real.”

Uh-huh.  One of the “spam deniers” actually deleted his tweet after I sent a couple of examples his way and asked if he had verified them as authentic.  (I guess that meant no.)

After a few days, the egg avatars became less prominent on the #WeDemandAVote string, but the spam didn’t go away.  The spammers just got more elaborate, using older accounts and/or actual photographs.  Here is a likely candidate:

And another:

The good news is, as of today this spamming appears to have mercifully ended.  The only folks left on #WeDemandAVote are die-hard Keepers of the Faith, as well as some #TCOT patriots itching for argument.

Oh, bonus:  My diligent responses to the suspected spam tweets in the #WeDemandAVote string really really really annoyed one of those die-hards.  You know, every time a leftist is annoyed an angel gets his wings.

The bad news is, the agitators responsible for this astroturfing fakery have probably not quit.  The spam isn’t really gone.  It has just been redirected to new hashtags.

Like the hashtags promoting MSNBC shows.

On the Homeschool Battleground of the Culture War

Photo obtained from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,511825,00.html

Via Lady Liberty 1885 comes homeschooling news I’m rather embarrassed I didn’t know:  one of the German families persecuted for homeschooling has petitioned for asylum in the United States, and Eric Holder’s DOJ is fighting this grant of asylum in federal court.

Eric Holder thinks there is no fundamental right to homeschool.  So if all Germans are banned from homeschooling, no grounds for political asylum exist.

Wow.

Maybe I’m not so surprised.  Eric Holder and his ilk don’t really believe in natural rights generally, do they?  To top it off, homeschooling is a right-wing-extremist-bitter-clinging-Bible-thumper’s issue, so combating it would be instinctual.

Caffeinated Thoughts lays out all the details, quoting generously from homeschool pioneer and HLSDA founder Michael Farris.  DOJ makes additional legal arguments, all of them horrifying.

You know, when I pulled the boys out of brick-and-mortar school, part of me was actually looking forward to playing the rebel’s part.  Disappointingly, the typical response of the everyday person has been respect, even encouragement, rather than the skepticism or derision I was looking forward to refuting.  Articles like Glenn Reynolds‘ and Paul Elie’s lend further support to the idea that homeschooling is becoming an accepted, mainstream concept (or, as the Professor quotes Buffy, “not just for scary religious people anymore.”)

Our ruling class may hate homeschooling and try to get rid of it, or more likely try to provide some oh-so-reasonable federal regulation and oversight “for the children.”  Attempts to regulate are already popping up and needing a whack-a-mole-smackdown on the state level, like in post-Newtown Connecticut or in South Carolina.  Their attempts will fail, however, if they don’t succeed in ”othering” the homeschooling population as something suspicious and dangerous.

They are trying it.  Check out the title of this news article linked over at Lady Liberty’s, about a murdering homeschooled teen, for example. But this is one battle of the culture war the left is currently losing.  Homeschooling is growing steadily, and in my anecdotal experience people just aren’t scandalized by the idea anymore.  Everybody knows somebody who does or did it successfully.

“Oh, you are homeschooling.  That is so great, but I could never do that,” is probably the most common response I get.  It makes me uncomfortable.  It also tells me that the next hurdle in normalizing the concept of homeschooling is to convince the average parent that they can do it, too.

Not that they must homeschool, but that they could if they wanted.  I worry that too many parents don’t trust themselves to educate their own children.  Those that feel they couldn’t get along without a  public school are at the mercy of the government benevolent to provide it.  The “experts” certainly encourage this kind of mentality, using impenetrable academia-speak to build their intimidating field of expertise.

Imagine the decrease in governmental coercive power, if every parent with public school-attending children woke up tomorrow and decided, not that they are going to pull their kids out.  Just that they could pull their kids out, if pushed hard enough.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Finding Post-Election Peace

I’ve been needing to find peace in the aftermath of the election.  I’ve written countless posts in my head, usually while driving to the myriad classes and activities in which the boys currently participate.  That’s as far as the writing gets, however.

The reelection of President Obama has so fundamentally transformed (nice reference huh?) my view of this nation and my role within it, that I hardly know what’s worth posting anymore.  “What’s the point?” is the basic question, now that I realize that a few Davidian foot soldiers like me might not be enough to quickly influence the American culture, after all.

This fact will not stop me from blogging, though.  Writing is pretty much the awesomest.  I’m so grateful for every single reader, and I hope that my words have substantively helped or maybe even inspired a person or two.

At this juncture of our political history, Freedom By The Way has the right idea:  it’s time to prepare.  Our culture didn’t turn stupid overnight, and it won’t experience a period of enlightenment overnight, either.  I don’t pretend to know whether things will go into total crisis mode, as in dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.  Maybe the likelihood is overstated.

Seriously, though:  QE3?  More bubbles on the horizon?  The possibility of hyperinflation?  Unfunded liabilities of 86.8 trillion dollars?  The examples could go on forever.

What do the Boy Scouts advocate?  Being always prepared?  And anyway, better safe than sorry.  Also, a bit of Murphy’s Law:  what can go wrong, will.

So, I’m focusing on more concrete changes.  The funny thing is, most of this preparation is already complete.  We have gone as far Galt as possible:  becoming a single income household, getting out of debt, homeschooling our children, and getting rid of cable TV.

Pretty much the only thing left is getting trained and comfortable with firearms.  My basic safety class is on Sunday.  Owning some land of our own would be helpful, too, but that will just have to wait.

If you can take some of these steps, please do so.  Also, give yourself some peace by shutting out as much liberal noise as you can.  I can only imagine how hard it was for conservatives to return to work and school amongst the gloating socialists and general know-nothings after November 6th.  For me, being surrounded by like-minded, supportive peers after the election was worth more than money could ever buy.