Well, this happened at a public high school in the SF Bay Area:

A freshman at Clayton Valley High School in Concord, California says that’s just what she had to endure in algebra as her classmates went wild.

“People smoking marijuana in the classroom. They smoke cigarettes.” Arielle said. “There was one kid who peed in a bottle and threw it across the room.”

Clayton Valley High School is a public high school, and I have no doubt that it will open with just as many students next year as it did this year. When parents pay for an education, they absolutely will not tolerate a school run like Clayton Valley HS. When the state provides an education for free, a vast majority of parents will generally take what they can get and call it good enough. They might picket and protest for improvement, but they won’t take their kids out of the school.

What does this have to do with health care? The public option being created as part of “ObamaCare” is rather similar to public schools, in that it is designed to undercut private health insurance on the basis of price:

The Lewin Group crunched the numbers through their health care model and found that premiums for the public option plan would be 30 to 40 percent lower than private plans.

A price difference of that magnitude would lead employers to throw their employees into the ObamaCare option:

Overall, the Lewin Group estimates that if Medicare reimbursement rates are imposed, the number of Americans with private health insurance would decline by almost 120 million, leaving only 50 million Americans in the private insurance market.

That would leave approximately 15% of the population in non-government health care, just slightly more than the percentage of students that go to private school. At that point, ObamaCare will have similar monopoly power to the public schools. I expect abuses and incompetence similar to that captured by Arielle Moore at Clayton Valley High when the public option achieves its monopoly power. The scary difference is that instead of not learning algebra, the people who have to suffer that abuse and incompetence will be missing out on life-saving medical treatments.

A human life is too important to waste on government health care.

Update: John Calfee compares ObamaCare to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the WSJ. Yet another sterling example of how we don’t want our health care managed.

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 all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

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 all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

“Wrong, Do it again!”
“If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you
have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?”
“You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!”

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 schools like this, let ‘em.

…

It makes sense to try out different kinds of schools for different kinds of kids and different kinds of neighborhoods. With a few obvious caveats, I’m all for it. But let’s not pretend that any particular one of these charters is necessarily the model for everyone else on the basis of 18 cherry-picked graduates. It ain’t so.

Well, given that he was marginally quoting someone else’s strawman, I’ll let his aside about pretending that any one of these is “necessarily the model for everyone else”. As far as I can tell, most libertarians and most advocates of vouchers don’t think that there’s a one-size-fits-all model.

And Kevin Drum, from these comments, doesn’t seem to think that there’s a one-size-fits-all model.

But the education bureaucracy seems to want to put everyone into a one-size-fits-all model.

Most reasonable collectivists I know are honestly more concerned with making education work than making it uniform. To some extent, they view things as charter schools as laboratories to test new educational methods, which can then be integrated into “regular” public schools. But they forget that there’s an enormous entrenched bureaucracy that is adamantly opposed to doing anything outside of what is best for the unions.

I agree with Kevin Drum that it makes sense to try out different kinds of schools for different kinds of kids and different kinds of neighborhoods. But where I suspect we disagree is in the assumption that the educational bureaucracy will EVER allow charter schools to do this in any meaningful way. They have too much stake in controlling the debate, and charter schools allow the debate to slip out of their grasp.

The only way to fix education is to offer real choice. Allow parents the ability to make the choice where to send their kids on a real widespread basis, not limited by geography or a tiny number of charter schools with far too many applicants for slots. And the only realistic way that I can see to achieve real choice, given the landscape as it currently sits, is through vouchers.

Education is not one-size-fits-all. We need to stop pretending that we can make it so*.

* The same goes for healthcare.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

One participant, Felix Arce, 16, said he liked “the discipline of the program,” which was something he said his life was lacking. “I want to be a lawyer, and this teaches you about how crimes are committed,” he said.

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns — known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets — in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.

“I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”

There is so much wrong here that I don’t know where to start. Maybe putting a 15-year-old into a bulletproof vest and running him through a course where his goal is to take down “active shooters” is one problem, since — you know — that’s such a HUGE part of the average cop’s day, would be a problem. Radley Balko, in his excellent work over at The Agitator, regularly points out the problematic aspects of training our police to be excitedly enacting para-military fantasies. There’s a fundamental difference between “to protect and serve” and seeing every person on the street as a potential “active shooter”.

When I was a kid, “troop leader” didn’t involve fatigues and a bulletproof vest.

But hey, this is the Boy Scouts, so it’s still a family-friendly environment:

Just as there are soccer moms, there are Explorers dads, who attend the competitions, man the hamburger grill and donate their land for the simulated marijuana field raids.

So don’t worry, fellas… You can avoid the humdrum days spent in your cubicle as a CPA or marketing nitwit by living vicariously through your kids, as they storm terrorist strongholds in Omaha, stem the illegal alien tide in California, or make the world safe from marijuana. Folks like Kathryn Johnston and Angel Raich are evil and must be stopped, and you need to bring train the next generation to bring the necessary firepower to handle them.

Hat Tip: Radley Balko

As it turned out, Savanna had no drugs on her, but the strip search is something she’ll never forget, and, yesterday, her case against the school officials who did this to her was argued before the Supreme Court of the United States:

An important case at the Supreme Court sometimes informs as much about the justices as the issue at hand, and yesterday’s animated hearing on whether school officials have the right to strip-search a 13-year-old female student seemed just such a case.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer wondered if the incident was much different from the experience of disrobing for gym class. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy affirmed his deep concerns about illicit drugs. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seemed at times on the edge of exasperation with her all-male colleagues. And Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. searched for a way to make the issue go away.

But it was Justice David H. Souter who seemed to sum up the dilemma for a majority of the court. He put himself in the place of a school official balancing the need for keeping his young charges safe from drugs while respecting the constitutional protections even middle school students should receive.

“My thought process is, I would rather have the kid embarrassed by a strip search, if we can’t find anything short of that, than to have some other kids dead because the stuff is distributed at lunchtime and things go awry,” Souter said.

As ScotusBlog’s Lyle Dennison notes, the Justice’s questioning seemed to indicate that their decision in this case will be motivated by fear more than anything else:

With an undercurrent of fear running across the Supreme Court bench about drug abuse among school students, and a perception that young people will try hard to avoid detection, the Justices searched anxiously on Tuesday for a way to clarify — and perhaps to enhance — public school principals’ authority to conduct personal searches of the youths in their charge.

(…)

No more telling illustration of the Court’s mood emerged than Justice David H. Souter — whose vote would almost have to be won for student privacy to prevail – expressing a preference for “a sliding scale of risk” that would add to search authority — including strip searching — based on how school officials assessed whether “sickness or death” was at stake.

“If the school official’s thought process,” Souter asked, “was ‘I’d rather have a kid embarrassed rather than some other kid dead,’ isn’t that reasonable under the Fourth Amendment?” Stated in that stark way almost compelled agreement, without regard to whether a student singled out for a strip search was actually adding to such a risk, but was only the target of a classmate’s unverified tip.

Along with Souter, two other Justices whose votes might turn out to be crucial — Stephen G. Breyer and Anthony M. Kennedy — were plainly more concerned about the drug problem than with student privacy. Both of those Justices, in past cases involving students and suspected drug use, have suggested that students’ rights were not very sturdy.

You can read the full transcript of yesterday’s oral argument in the case here.

Given this, I find myself in agreement with Radley Balko, who says that the reports from yesterday’s oral argument are not encouraging at all for anyone who believes in civil liberties:

Can anyone think of a single incident in the last 30 years in which several children have died after ingesting drugs distributed by one of their classmates on school grounds? Before we let school principles go rummaging through the panties of underage girls, shouldn’t we be at least be able to cite a few examples?

It’s a little troubling to see how comfortable these old men (Ginsburg isn’t quoted in the article) seem to be with allowing school administrators access to the genitalia of school children based on nothing more than a hunch that they might be “crotching” some ibuprofen.

And Steve Verdon notes that the school officials could have exercised just a small degree of common sense:

The strip search was based on a snitch’s statements, something that should be taken with a shovel of salt. When you are down to the underwear and you haven’t found drugs on a student with no history of drug abuse, good grades, good attendance, and no other indicators of being a problem student maybe it is at that point that you should call the child’s parents and involve them.

I summed my own opinions about this story up last month:

I cannot imagine any circumstances where it should be acceptable for school officials to strip search a child. If there is some suspicion that a crime was committed, then the matter should be turned over the police — in which case she couldn’t have been strip-searched until she was actually placed under arrest.

It is, however, John Cole who comes away with the quote of the day on this story:

I can state that as someone with an IQ over room temperature, the fact that we are debating whether it is appropriate for school authorities to strip search kids is a sure sign that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong with this country and our sense of perspective, and I blame the war on drugs.

The fact that Supreme Court Justices, and likely a large segment of the American public, can’t recognize that makes it all even more troubling.

C/P: Below The Beltway

Maybe I don’t quite understand how tenure is supposed to work, but this idea that someone is entitled to a job regardless of how his or her actions damage the reputation of his or her employer (CU in this case) is asinine. Ward Churchill’s firing is not a First Amendment issue but a freedom of association issue (in this case, CU decided to discontinue its association with the professor).

The First Amendment protects speech from government reprisals. I suppose one could argue that Churchill’s employer was the State of Colorado (a wonderful example for why all higher learning institutions should be privately owned, operated, and funded) and therefore, was a government reprisal.

Local Denver attorneys and talk show hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman point out that Churchill took an oath pursuant to Colorado State law to uphold the U.S. Constitution. From their legal point-of-view, Churchill violated this oath when he encouraged students (on multiple occasions) to commit acts of violence against private and government institutions as well as private citizens. How can Churchill take an oath to a constitution he finds illegal and immoral, violate that oath, and still have legal grounds to remain employed by the State?

Beyond this, university speech codes, politically correct as they are, how is it possible to say that one professor could be legitimately fired for violating the prevailing P.C. orthodoxy while Churchill is entitled to a job despite praising the OKC bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Caplis, on his radio show, pointed out that if Churchill had said, for example, that female students on the CU campus deserved to be raped; his career would be over (and rightfully so). Few would be claiming his First Amendment rights were being violated by CU if these were his words.

Ward Churchill may not deserve to be prosecuted for his hateful speech but he doesn’t have the “right” to teach at CU either.

To Mr. Churchill I would just like to say the following:

Congratulations on your $1 civil rights victory (which you do not deserve); don’t spend it all in one place…asshole!

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 be so quick as to try to kill the program that affords low-income, minority children a chance at a better education. Their refusal to even give the program a fair hearing makes it critical that D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) seek help from voucher supporters in the Senate and, if need be, President Obama.

Last week, the Democrat-controlled House passed a spending bill that spells the end, after the 2009-10 school year, of the federally funded program that enables poor students to attend private schools with scholarships of up to $7,500. A statement signed by Mr. Obey as Appropriations Committee chairman that accompanied the $410 billion spending package directs D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to “promptly take steps to minimize potential disruption and ensure smooth transition” for students forced back into the public schools.

We would like Mr. Obey and his colleagues to talk about possible “disruption” with Deborah Parker, mother of two children who attend Sidwell Friends School because of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. “The mere thought of returning to public school frightens me,” Ms. Parker told us as she related the opportunities — such as a trip to China for her son — made possible by the program. Tell her, as critics claim, that vouchers don’t work, and she’ll list her children’s improved test scores, feeling of safety and improved motivation.

Sidwell Friends, of course, is the school that President Obama’s daughters Sasha and Malia attend. It’s also the school that Chelsea Clinton attended while her father was President.

Apparently, it’s good enough for the children of Presidents, but too good for the children of inner-city Washington, D.C.

The U.S. government and the banking sector are promiscuously loaning money to prospective students, and are fueling a bubble. Students are taking on huge loans, expecting to be able to pay them back thanks to the great job that lies in their future, thanks to their degree. However, as the number college graduates entering the market dramatically grows, the market clearing wage they can charge drops. An increasing number of graduates will find themselves trapped in the horrible circumstance of trying to repay huge loans from their low take-home pay.

This phenomenon will lead to huge unrest; at any given time 8 million U.S. citizens are attending college. Something like 90% of them have loans. We can expect that as their situation deteriorates, graduates will demand political action that will provide them with debt relief. And the politicians are almost guaranteed to react poorly.

The solution to this problem is for the government to stop providing subsidized loans. Better yet, the government might try to dismantle the disaster called public education, which has gone from spending $275 per student to $7,000 per student (figures in 2000 dollars) to achieve worse results. A free market educational regime would consist less of warehousing and more of useful education that prepares young people for professions that best suit their natures.

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 the preferred cavil of liberals and leftists since the 1940s.

Sadly, most of those making such imprecations don’t understand the true definition of fascism: a belief in the supremacy of the state and it’s leaders, over that of individuals; elevated to a level of blind enforced obedience and popular obeisance.

Fascism, for all intents and purposes, is the worship of the state, and of the “Dear leader”. Critically, when instituted it is always instituted by a majority, or a very strong minority, of willing subjects (I cannot call them citizens); who are looking for the government to “heal all their ills”.

Pledge of Allegiance Becomes Pledge to Obama

By Alan Gray, NewsBlaze

A parent in the Clark County School District of Las Vegas, Henderson area reported January 27th that his son, who is in 1st grade, came home yesterday saying that he didn’t want to go back to school anymore.

When asked why, the boy said that during the Pledge of Allegiance the teacher put up a large image of Obama next to the flag.

Thinking that the boy might be exaggerating, the man asked his son if he was sure, and suggested that by “large” he might mean an 8×10 photo of the president. The boy apparently said “No, it is a large picture of Obama and when we are done, the teacher turns off the image.”

The same thing was not done for President Bush last year.

After investigating this morning, the other parent reported that what the boy said was true.

At least three of the five classrooms have an overhead projector and as the children stand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the teacher turns on the classroom overhead and a full body image of Obama, with six U.S. flags behind him, comes up about 4 feet away from the flag that hangs on the wall. The screen is apparently around five feet by six feet.

In the image, President Obama appears to be staring straight out with no facial expression, just a serious look. All of the kids in each class faced the President, instead of the flag that hangs in the corner.

15 years ago, I swore an oath to defend this country, and our constitution. Not our president, or our government; but our constitution. The president is our commander in chief; but our loyalty, our duty, our honor; is owed to the constitution, not to the president.

10 days ago, President Obama swore a similar oath; not to defend our government, or our leaders; but our nation, and our constitution.

America is an idea, not a man, or a government. That idea is expressed, however imperfectly, in our constitution; and those of us who chose to serve, be it in government, or the military; swear to defend that idea.

Isn’t it ironic, how the only serious proponents of fascism today are militant islamicists, and western leftists; the very people who, in form at least, rail against fascism… which they are most often accusing US of?

“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 out the test results of a writing exam because 78 percent of the nearly 15,000 eighth-graders who took it blew it.

The state educrats decided that the test was flawed. They couldn’t blame the kids for being little know-nothings since that might permanently damage the darling’s tender little psyches and completely obliterate their self-esteem. And they obviously couldn’t blame the state’s public teaching corps since the teachers union could get the state’s professional public education administrative corps kicked out of their jobs.

So the problem had to be the test itself. And when the test is bad, you toss the results.

Jim Lesczynski discusses one solution over at the Daily News: homeschooling.  Specifically, he dispels some common misperceptions about home-educated children:

I am always surprised when people ask me whether home-schooling is legal. Yes, I tell them, home-based education is permitted in all 50 states (although the degree of regulation varies greatly).

The most prevalent misconception is that home-schooled children lack socialization and are inadequately prepared for “the real world.” Not only is this untrue, but I contend that home-schoolers receive a far richer and more varied socialization than other students. This is especially true in a city like New York, with its museums, theater and multicultural population serving as the best training ground for healthy social behavior. And thanks to home-schooling support networks, home-schoolers participate in their own sports leagues, clubs and theatrical troupes.

The socialization myth is followed in popularity by the notion that all home-schoolers are religious fanatics. I do not know if that is true in other parts of the country – although I doubt it – but it is certainly not the case in New York City. My children are friends with other home-schoolers who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim and atheist. Their parents have myriad reasons for home-schooling – some have kids who are medically fragile, some want to build close bonds with their children, and others are libertarians who philosophically oppose government education. None of them has indicated to me that they don’t want their children to learn about evolution.

If home-schooled children routinely perform better than government-educated children, why do parents of home-schooled children have to pay for both the education of their kids and the education of the kids who go to government schools, too?

Obama calls his economic “recovery” plan the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan”. His plan calls for a series of new spending programs on everything from roads (to nowhere) to “green collar jobs” to another series of tax rebate checks.

Why is Obama’s plan terrible?

Obama’s plan is terrible for many reasons. The first obvious reason is that the country really cannot afford any new spending after blowing at least $8.4 trillion (in an overall economy of $13.8 trillion and shrinking) in bailouts for Bush and Paulson’s friends in the financial sector. The second reason is that very little of this new spending is actually permitted in the U.S. Constitution. The Federal government cannot “invest” in “green collar jobs” or any other type of jobs for that matter. The Federal government has no Constitutional role in education spending (which is another part of Obama’s “plan”). Thirdly, the areas where you can argue a legitimate duty of the Federal government, highway construction, is prone to abuse and wasteful spending through the earmarking process (which is the currency for corruption).

What about Obama’s tax cuts?

The tax cuts are probably the worst aspect of the plan. The left, including Barack Obama, were absolutely right to oppose the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and again in 2003. The Bush tax cuts were short sighted and were flawed economic thinking. Most importantly, the Bush tax cuts were paid for by borrowing instead of cutting spending. Which leads me to Obama’s tax cut plan which allows businesses to write off up to $250,000 in losses in 2009 and will give another rebate check of $500 for singles and $1000 for families. Obama suffice to say is not proposing any spending cuts (which are desperately needed if we are going to avoid a Weimar Germany-style financial collapse through hyperinflation) to pay for these reckless and irresponsible tax cuts.

Tax cuts are not good for individual liberty unless government spending is reduced along with it. Instead what usually happens is the LBJ-Bush-Obama economic theory which is we can cut taxes (temporarily) to appease the mob while we can borrow our way out of any financial shortfall the government finds itself in. When taxes have to be raised to pay for borrowing, the tax increases are higher than the money actually returned in the tax cut.

Overall the Obama “stimulus” plan is result of over 70 years of terrible economic thinking in the US which brought us “New Deal” type of mild socialism on the left and “supply-side” borrow and spend on the right.

The only viable economic alternative is the free market where role of government is limited to protecting the borders from invasion; enforcing laws protecting life, liberty, and property from force and fraud; and generally not much else. This is the only alternative to what’s facing us (lost liberty, hyperinflation, and the road to tyranny).

Why do totalitarian regimes demand that people publicly announce their loyalty and subservience? The answer is simple – the totalitarian regime typically does not have the people’s willing loyalty. Rather, they must compel the people’s loyalty. And, if they can’t have the real thing, a fake version is just fine. The forced loyalty oath is a sign of a unpopular regime, that fears the people because it acts in a manner that not in the people’s interest.

Is the forced loyalty oath ineffective? Are totalitarian regimes fooling themselves, making people say empty words that the people don’t believe? To the contrary, the forced loyalty oath is common because it is very effective, being one of the cruelest attacks on freedom.

The forced loyalty oath attacks the freedom of speech. With it, the regime seizes control of a person’s mouth, and compels that mouth to say words that its rightful owner wishes not to say. The monstrosity of the crime arises from the fact that it is through our words that we construct society. It is with our words that we build our bonds with our fellow men. We are social animals, we need to talk to our fellows for our basic sanity. That is why one of the cruelest punishments that men visit upon each other is solitary confinement. Seize control of a man’s words, and you have effectively imprisoned him in his skull. That is why I feel that the right to speech is second to the right to life.

While most people recognize that that the freedom of speech is the right of every person to say whatever he or she wants to say, they often forget that it also includes the right of every person to not say things that he or she does not want to say. Forcing a person to say what he does not want to say is as bad as gagging him and silencing him.

We can decry pictures of children standing at attention wearing the red scarf of the Young Pioneers uniforms or the shorts of the Hitler Jugend as adults order them to pledge their undying loyalty to a state that plunders them and enslaves them. However, the sad fact is that while many Americans who would condemn other nations in a heartbeat for demanding such false displays of loyalty are supporters to a systematic version of it being practiced here at home.

Every day, millions of children living in the U.S. are compelled to utter the following words:

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation under God, indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for all.”

Allegiance is a state of loyalty or devotion. A declaration of allegiance is not something to be taken lightly. It is a modern form of a declaration of fealty, the oath that a person took under feudalism that bound him to obey his lord’s commands, even unto death. The oath these children are ordered to make is loyalty not to any idea or set of principles, but to a flag, a symbol of the state. Change three words, and a Cuban child could utter it in devotion to Castro, a North Korean to the government of Kim Il Sung, a Scottish child to the British Queen or a French child to the Republic. This emptiness did not go unnoticed to the public who demanded that politicians correct the matter. They did not want to give it any principle that would challenge the legitimacy of the state, so they decided to add a loyalty oath to God to distinguish it. Of course, God is conveniently very lax in enforcing such oaths and so no practical impediment to the power of the state. Furthermore, I am told that the champions of adding a religious component to the oath carried the day by arguing that no “godless communist” could take the oath, marking them for ostracism.

It is not surprising that public schools make this demand of children. From their inception in 1642 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, U.S. government schools have had on main purpose: to indoctrinate children in the religion or mores that the state feels most useful. Useful skills like reading and writing, critical thinking, knowledge of the arts and sciences are all secondary to the goal of indoctrination. In the case of Massachusetts, the schools were originally intended to induct the children into the state’s official version of Protestant Christianity rather than the heresies of their parents. In modern times, the religion is not some strain of Christianity, but rather the worship of the state. One can see this in the original version of the pledge, which is short and to the point:

The details of the pledge are damning. The person who makes it is claiming not only loyalty to the state, but a loyalty that is devoid of any principles and irrevocable under any conditions.

The change to add “under God” does nothing to lessen the totalitarian nature of the pledge other than to make the laughable claim that the state is subservient to God.

The United States was originally founded as a nation of conscience. We can see this in an odd passage early in the Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation, signed in 1794. This was the treaty which reestablished diplomatic relations between Britain and the United States of America. In it the U.S. government made the following pledge towards British subjects remaining in the former colonies after the British Army evacuated it:

“All settlers and traders, within the precincts or jurisdiction of the said posts, shall continue to enjoy, unmolested, all their property of every kind, and shall be protected therein. They shall be at full liberty to remain there, or to remove with all or any part of their effects; and it shall also be free to them to sell their lands, houses or effects, or to retain the property thereof, at their discretion; such of them as shall continue to reside within the said boundary lines, shall not be compelled to become citizens of the United States, or to take any oath of allegiance to the Government thereof; but they shall be at full liberty so to do if they think proper.”

Every few years, some organization sues a school district because it compels children to state the pledge with the clause “under God”. These suits invariably claim that it violates the clause in the U.S. Constitution forbidding the establishment of a state religion. Unfortunately, these lawsuits miss the main point. The human rights violation is not that children are forced to pledge their loyalty to God – t is the fact that the children are forced to make any loyalty oath at all!

The pledge of allegiance is not compatible with a free country. Written by a socialist who sought to indoctrinate children with the idea that they should be servants of the state, it opposes the very principles underlying the Declaration of Independence. It is the duty of every patriotic American, whose loyalties are to those principles rather than some flag or body of men, to oppose it. Let the enemies of freedom distinguish themselves by compelling people to take oaths against their will. Let us once again embrace freedom and expel the rotten pledge of allegiance from our schools.

Argument #1: Churches could be forced to marry gay people.

Argument #2: Religious adoption agencies could be forced to allow gay couples to adopt children; some adoption agencies would close their doors as a result.

Argument #3: Those who speak out against gay marriage on religious grounds will be labeled “intolerant” and subjected to legal penalties or social ridicule. Careers could be threatened.

Argument #4: Schools will teach students that marriage is between “party a” and “party b” regardless of gender. Schools also teach health and sexuality and would now include discussions of homosexuality.

Argument #5: There will be “serious clashes” between public schools and parents who wish to teach their children their values concerning marriage.

Argument #6: Allowing gays to marry will restrict or eliminate liberties of “everyone.” (Example: Photographers who do not want to work at same sex weddings)

Argument #7: If Prop 8 fails, religious liberty and free speech rights will be adversely affected.

My response to these arguments is that we should be advocating for more freedom for everyone rather than restrict freedom of a group or class of people. The state should recognize the same contract rights** for a gay couple as it would between a man and a woman. To get around the whole definition of marriage issue, I would propose that as far as the state is concerned, any legally recognized intimate relationship between consenting adults should be called a “domestic partnership.” From there the churches or secular equivalent to churches should have the right to decide who they will marry and who they will not (just as they do now).

Rather than subject an individual’s rights to a vote or either party forcing their values on the other, we should instead advocate freedom of association and less government in our everyday lives. Somewhere along the way, we as a people decided that the government should involve itself more and more into the relationships of private actors. The government now has the ability to dictate to business owners quotas of who they must hire, family leave requirements, how much their employees must be paid, and how many hours they work (among other requirements). For the most part, businesses which serve the public cannot deny service to individuals for fear of a lawsuit.

A return to a freedom of association society would remedy arguments 1, 2, 6, and 7 from this ad. As to Argument #3, the anti-gay marriage folks are going to have to realize that in a free society, they are going to have to deal with “social ridicule”*** or being called intolerant. Anyone who takes a stand on any issue is going to be criticized and called names. In a freedom of association society, an employer would have every right to decide to layoff individuals who hold views or lifestyles they disagree with.

While we’re on the subject of intolerance, perhaps we should take a moment to consider if people who would deny equivalent rights which come with marriage are intolerant. This ad is exactly the same as the previous ad except that the words “same sex” and “gays” have been replaced with “interracial.”

Believe it or not, there was a time in this country when there were such laws against interracial marriage. Those who argued against interracial marriage made very similar arguments to what the anti-gay marriage people are making now. Today most of us would say those people were intolerant.

Intolerance aside, Arguments 4 and 5 can also be answered by reducing the role of government in our lives. What the “yes” people should be arguing for is a separation of school and state. While we as a nation are trending toward more government involvement in K-12 education, those who do not want the government schools to teach their children the birds and the bees or enter into discussions of homosexuality can put their children in private schools which share their values or home school. School Choice is the obvious answers to these concerns.

Prop 8’s supporters have turned the whole idea of individual liberty on its head. They claim that in order to preserve the rights of the greatest number of people a minority of people necessarily must sacrifice their rights. This is absurd and dangerous. Perhaps it is this complete misunderstanding of individual rights among Californians which contributed to Prop 8’s passage.

When explained properly, the rights of life, liberty, and property is the easiest concept to understand.

Hat Tip: The Friendly Atheist

Posted Elsewhere:

Dan Melson @ Searchlight Crusade has written a very thought provoking post on this issue. Some of his arguments I agree with, others I don’t but all of his points are well argued.

*The Mormon Church among the strongest supporters; it seems ironic that a group which once promoted plural marriage is now advocating for marriage consisting of “one man and one woman.”

**Don’t even try to give me that tired slippery slope argument that “If we allow the gays to marry, what’s next? Will we then allow a man to marry his dog/cat/goat or an inanimate object?” Only an adult of sound mind can enter a contract; an animal or an inanimate object cannot.

***I’m not quite clear on what they mean on this point. Are they saying that people who disagree with them should not be allowed to criticize them or call them names? Does this mean that since Prop 8 passed they won’t have to deal with being called intolerant or subject to social ridicule? It seems the anti-gay marriage folks are trying to have it both ways on free speech.

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 landmark deal, the states have received $79.2 billion of the settlement and another $124.3 billion from tobacco taxes, but have spent only about 3 percent of it — $6.5 billion — on tobacco prevention and cessation programs, the groups said in a report.

…

No state currently is funding tobacco prevention programs at the levels recommended by the U.S. government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and only nine are funding such efforts at even half the recommended level, according to the report.

You know, if it weren’t for the colossal waste of money, the vilification of an entire industry, and the potential for anti-smoking legislation to continue sweeping the nation, I’d find this pretty funny. Watching the anti-tobacco forces — who have made a living out of getting their way through government force — impaled on the double-cross of their own “friends”, is full of delicious dramatic irony.

It’s almost as funny as the idea that all this lottery money is “for the schools”.