Thoughts, essays, and writings on Liberty. Written by the heirs of Patrick Henry.

October 4, 2009

Cracking The Education Monopoly

From Reason.tv:

Posted By: Doug Mataconis @ 9:36 am || Permalink || Comments (1) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Education
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June 27, 2009

Public Schools and the Public Option

Imagine a private school where students sat in a math class for weeks misbehaving and learning nothing. Imagine that school gets on TV news because the administrators suspended the young lady who blew the whistle by taking a cell phone video and giving it to her mom who confronted them. Do you think [...]

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June 5, 2009

Liberty Rock Friday: Another Brick in the Wall, Part II by Pink Floyd

This is one of my all-time favorites. To truly appreciate the message, one needs to see the video (below).

Pink Floyd
Another Brick in the Wall, Part II
The Wall (1979)
By Roger Waters
We don’t need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in [...]

Posted By: Stephen Littau @ 10:53 am || Permalink || Comments (2) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Education, General, Liberty Rock, Theory and Ideas
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June 1, 2009

Education Is Not One-Size-Fits-All

Kevin Drum recounts a tale of a specific charter school that has had excellent results. He unwittingly makes a good argument for school choice:
In a nutshell, this story explains pretty well why I like charter schools [snip] So I say: fine. If there are some parents who want their kids to go to [...]

Posted By: Brad Warbiany @ 5:15 am || Permalink || Comments Off || TrackBack URI || Categories: Education, Monopolies
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May 14, 2009

Boy Scout Training: “Put him on his face and put a knee in his back”

From the “Not The Onion” files comes a tale that I can’t even believe, much less figure out how to respond to. Is this really what the Boy Scouts are becoming?
The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in [...]

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April 22, 2009

Supreme Court One Step Closer To Allowing Strip Searches In Schools

I’ve written in the past about the case of Savanna Redding, a now 19 year-old woman who, when she was thirteen years old was strip-searched by officials at her Arizona school who were convinced that she was concealing a banned substance; Advil.
As it turned out, Savanna had no drugs on her, but the strip search [...]

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April 4, 2009

$1.00

This is the amount a jury awarded the America hating professor, Ward Churchill in his civil rights lawsuit against The University of Colorado. Despite charges of academic misconduct “deliberate and repeated plagiarism, falsification, and fabrication” Churchill and his legal team turned his dismissal from CU into a First Amendment free speech issue.
Maybe I don’t [...]

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March 2, 2009

House Democrats Want To Kick Sasha & Malia’s Classmate Out Of School

The Washington Post takes the Democrats to task for playing political games with the District of Columbia’s school voucher program:
REP. DAVID R. Obey (Wis.) and other congressional Democrats should spare us their phony concern about the children participating in the District’s school voucher program. If they cared for the future of these students, they wouldn’t [...]

Posted By: Doug Mataconis @ 1:05 pm || Permalink || Comments (6) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Democrats, Education, Politics
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February 17, 2009

Another Looming Bubble: Higher Education

College enrollment has been booming. Schools have not only been adding new seats to existing programs but also adding new programs. And, unlike the free-market process where the supply of a good is expanding dramatically, the price of these seats has been increasing dramatically – much faster than the CPI. The increased [...]

Posted By: tarran @ 5:45 pm || Permalink || Comments (2) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Credit Crisis, Education, Government Incompetence
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January 30, 2009

The Unselfaware Irony of Fascism

Eric Arthur Blair famously said “The word FASCISM has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies
“something not desirable.“.
In this he was referring (among other things) to the tendency of those on the left to call anything which restricted their tendencies or desires in any way fascists; which in such usage has been [...]

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January 14, 2009

Today’s Blog Post…

…is brought to you by the letter “E”
“E” for education, that is.  While education isn’t one of my hot-topic items, two interesting articles arrived in my inbox around the same time this morning.  First of all, Garry Reed identifies a key problem:
Last September the state of Maine gave their kiddos a lasting lesson. They tossed [...]

Posted By: Stephen Gordon @ 3:49 pm || Permalink || Comments (2) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Education, Taxation
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January 6, 2009

Obama’s Terrible Stimulus

During the recent presidential election, I found myself unfortunately defending Barack Obama from charges that were absurdely false (ex. Obama’s a foreigner, Obama’s a Muslim, Obama’s a terrorist) than demonstrating how absolutely terrible an Obama presidency would be for country and for individual liberty. Fortunately, Obama is demonstrating through his policy proposals how dangerous he [...]

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November 26, 2008

The Un-American Pledge of Allegiance

One aspect common to totalitarian regimes is the forced loyalty oath. Nazi Germany, for example, forced all pastors, civil servants and soldiers to take an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. In the Soviet Union, in Communist China, and numerous other nations, the state demanded that people swear loyalty to the government as [...]

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November 23, 2008

Gay Marriage, Religious Rights, and Freedom of Association

California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure aiming to outlaw same sex marriage, passed on a very close vote. Prop 8’s supporters* pushed a campaign of fear, misinformation, and a complete distortion of the meaning of individual liberty. This campaign commercial is typical of the intolerance and hysteria being promoted from the “yes” campaign.

Argument [...]

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November 18, 2008

States Spend Tobacco Settlement Money — But Not On Tobacco Programs

It just goes to show you… A government’s promise is worth about what you’d expect:
U.S. states have not lived up to their commitment to devote a major portion of their huge legal settlement with the tobacco industry a decade ago on anti-smoking efforts, health advocacy groups said on Tuesday.
In the 10 years since the [...]

Posted By: Brad Warbiany @ 4:37 am || Permalink || Comments Off || TrackBack URI || Categories: Education, Government Regulation, Government Waste, Healthcare, Politics, Taxation, The Nanny State
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October 4, 2008

Why Libertarians Should Vote: Threats to Liberty from the Left and the Right on the Colorado Ballot (Part 2 of 3)

Cont’d from Part 1
What motivates these very nice people to be such tyrants? Some will vote in ignorance of the issue* and others out of a sense of ‘social justice.’ Very few will intentionally vote to take liberty or property from a fellow citizen; most will vote to do so out of a well intentioned [...]

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September 2, 2008

Ron Paul’s Speech at the “Rally for the Republic”

Ron Paul spoke in front of a crowd of approximately 10,000 at the “Rally for the Republic” (AKA the “Ron Paul Convention”) across the river from the Republican National Convention.
Below are the first 3 parts of his speech, the full text of the speech can be read here.

Other speakers on the last [...]

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July 23, 2008

Want to Serve Your Country? Well, What’s Stopping You!

Time has an ongoing series which advocates the need for “voluntary” national service. In the magazine’s latest article by Managing Editor Richard Stengel, the author praises both John McCain and Barack Obama for their urging of Americans to “serve interests greater than self.”
It is a unique moment for the idea of national service. You [...]

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May 1, 2008

Hey, At Least They’re Honest!

I found this little gem on reason.tv. On April 16, 2008 a group called Ad Hoc National Network to Stop Evictions and Foreclosures held a protest in Washington D.C.

What were they protesting? As the name of the organization suggests, Ad Hoc was advocating a freeze on all evictions in the U.S. Many of the [...]

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March 27, 2008

Newt Gingrich: Federal Control Of Education Is A National Security Issue

There are some things that Newt Gingrich has said over the years that I agree with, and I’m somewhat a fan of his alternate history novels, but this is just plain daffy:
Newt Gingrich gave a luncheon talk about education at the American Enterprise Institute today.  Among other things, he said he’d “argue with any conservative” [...]

Posted By: Doug Mataconis @ 2:58 pm || Permalink || Comments (1) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Education
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