Purists with No Skin in the Game
On May 19, I posted an article that I wrote in 1980. It
was on how to defend private education against the state. You can read
it here:
Early in the morning on May 23, I received a letter from a stranger. Its tone was typical of a purist. It seems that I have sold out to the state.
I never receive such letters from published authors or experts in the field. But I have been receiving them for about 50 years from strangers with no background.
My problem is this: I am in several fringe groups. My audience of purists is large.
Here is his message:
With all due respect, sir, isn't this tantamount to tacitly admitting that the government has an interest here? Why do we play the game on their terms?How about we assert that they have no business regulating education and tell them to stick their regulations where the sun doesn't shine?No, it is not tantamount to admitting that the government has an interest here. But it surely is an acknowledgement that the state is highly interested. It is an admission that the state has power in this crucial area of life. It also has extreme negative sanctions at its disposal.
What I especially don't like about your dream is that we are only right if the courts agree with us, or get tired of us. We are not right in principle, according to this strategy.
Would any self-respecting dominionist or presuppositionalist defend his faith using the infidels' weapons and tactics? I don't think so.
I love your commentaries, but I think this time you are ceding too much of the playing field to the opposition. I know they have the power to crush us, if they so chose, but why not make them prove they have a right to regulate education at all? Why not make them prove they have superior rights to parents and churches instead of leaving the impression that they do by not challenging that assumption.
I have been opposed to all tax funding of education ever since I read R. J. Rushdoony's 1961 book, Intellectual Schizophrenia, in the spring of 1962. That was when I first wrote to him. Rushdoony made the case against all tax-funded and state-regulated education.
Anyone in 2016 who is unaware of this book, my support of it, and my hostility to all state education is an uninformed person.
But this man employs rhetoric that reveals him as a card-carrying member of a large organization, Jerks for Jesus. I have written about the organization for seven years.
http://www.garynorth.com/public/4868.cfmThen he upped the ante. "How about we assert that they have no business regulating education and tell them to stick their regulations where the sun doesn't shine?"
http://www.garynorth.com/public/7757.cfm
"We?" Who are "we"?
This sentence screamed: "I am single. I have no skin in this particular game." Anyone who treats the state in such a cavalier manner on this issue, anywhere in the world, is not just naïve; he or she is a fool. The state takes seriously its control over what future voters are taught, and where, and how.
So, I responded:
How many children did you raise?Within an hour, I received this.
Where did they attend school?
What curriculum did they use?
Can you answer my questions first? I don't believe your counter questions are relevant to the principles involved.As much as I respect you, I don't intend to hand you the terms of the debate.He had already handed me the terms of the debate when he sent the letter. I was just setting him up to lose it.
I love your commentaries, but I think this time you are ceding too much of the playing field to the opposition. I know they have the power to crush us, if they so chose, but why not make them prove they have a right to regulate education at all? Why not make them prove they have superior rights to parents and churches instead of leaving the impression that they do by not challenging that assumption.It is not a "playing field." It is a battlefield on which the state serves as judge, jury, and executioner, and does so with funds confiscated from its victims.
My guess: he is about 35 years old, and is still looking for some ideologically pure lady to propose to. He does not intend to get a marriage license. He will call the marriage a common-law marriage. Unfortunately, he will get no takers. He is a land mine with the trigger about three inches above the ground.
What about these areas of confrontation with state power? Has he surrendered?
Does he pay income taxes? Yes. He is salaried. That much I could tell from his signature file. His employer deducts the payments and sends them to the IRS.
Does he have a driver's license? I think so. He does not live in New York City. He lives in a part of California with no public transportation.
Where he has skin in the game, I suspect that he is a defender of extreme prudence. Yet he is ready to tell people with children ages 6 to 17 how to fight the state. "Do not acknowledge its authority over you," he says. "No compromise!" he says.
And when Child Protective Services arrives and takes the children away, he will say: "Good for you. You stood your ground." You ask: "But how do I get back my kids?" He then responds: "You don't."
In short, his is the traditional challenge: "Let's you and him fight."
CRACKPOTS IN OUR MIDST
These people are crackpots. They are found in every fringe movement.
They have lots of advice, but they have no skin in the game.
They know what others should do, and they are fast to tell them.
They have no influence. They have written no books. They probably do not have a blog, but if they do, it's ranked lower than 5 million on Alexa.
On forums of blogs with no subscription fee, these people are flamers. They are incapable of writing anything that a third party would publish, but they are ready to tell off someone who has written something that a third party published.
The good news is that these people are harmless, except to themselves. The bad news is that they speak in the name of whatever movement on which they reside on the extreme fringe.
If you start a blog, do not allow comments. You will attract crazies the way that flames attract moths.
Remember this rule: Bright lights attract large bugs.
This is not a good argument against working to increase your wattage. It is a good argument for a bug-zapper.
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