Just for a moment, I want you to imagine a world without public education.

From kindergarten to college, all instruction is done by private individuals or private companies. Some of them are religious. Others are secular. But all of them have in common the fact that they rely on the payment of parents - and not on the collection of tax dollars - to function. Keep in mind, this is all there is. Are you imagining it? Unless, I'm mistaken, most of you probably had one of two reactions: a) you could not imagine such a world, or b) you were outraged at the thought of it, infuriated by the suggestion that anyone should take away public education. The point I am trying to make is that, as an institution, the public school system has become a given for our culture. We may not like it very much. We may gripe about it. We may be disgusted by its flaws. But we cannot or will not fathom an America without it. All of the popular discussion about public education centers around improvement or refinement - we won't even mention the idea of doing away with it entirely. In the American psyche, education has risen to the status of a right. My question is: why? Why should we consider education to be a right? It is not enumerated in the Bill of Rights (the closest we could come to finding it there would be Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people). It is not mentioned elsewhere in the Constitution. So why do we consider the government obligated to provide some form of public education? As mentioned before, the right to an education is seldom disputed and seldom infringed upon. In fact, I would say that it is far safer than many of our other rights at the moment, particular our rights to freedom of speech and ideology. So what happened?

All of this, to me, is indicative of a deeper reality, a political philosophy that our nation has wholeheartedly adopted as its own. Allow me to explain. Suppose you were to suggest to a friend that public education should be abolished. They immediately protest. What do you think their arguments would be? That wouldnt be fair, Only the rich would be educated, Only whites would be educated, etc. Their arguments would all boil down to one, unifying theme: by getting rid of public schools, you would not be giving an equal opportunity to everyone you would be favoring some above others. Put in positive terms, the entire case for public education rests upon the supposition that a government is obligated to provide its citizens with all they need for the pursuit of happiness(for the purposes of this essay Ill call this the Benefactor Theory). If we were to make a syllogism for the public school system, it would look like this: Major Premise: The government should provide the things we need to be successful/happy/productive. Minor Premise: Education is necessary to be successful/happy/productive. Conclusion: Therefore, the government should provide education. Now, it is not the minor premise that I take issue with. Nor is it necessarily the conclusion (I havent yet formed an opinion on whether we should provide public education). It is the major premise that worries me. The Benefactor Theory goes against the ideas of government upon which the American people stood for two hundred years. Of course, the concept isnt a new one. In America, I would trace its history primarily back to the mid to late 1800s, and then, after that, to the New Deal.It was in the 1930s, as a response to the Great Depression, that the welfare program became a cherished institution and the government has continued to churn them out relatively unabated. By the time our generation was born, no one

questioned the assumption that government existed (at least in part) to ensure that people are given their basic necessities. But I think we do need to question it, for several reasons. The Benefactor Theory gives the government an enormous array of powers, powers that it was not intended to have, powers that can quickly become dangerous to the people (take, for instance, the increasingly popular Fairness Doctrine, or the myriads of government bureaucracies, or the expanding authority of agencies such as the CIA, NSA, and FBI). Moreover, it makes the people take for granted the idea of receiving help and assistance from the government. As a result they will be far less likely to question any government policy that offers some sort of benefit, no matter how harmful that policy may be (take the ongoing healthcare debates, for example). Above all, it cannot fulfill its own goal that of an equal chance for everyone. There are two reasons for this. First, because the Benefactor Theory gives the government the power and responsibility to decide what people need for a fair chance. Even assuming that the government is genuinely trying to do what is right, how can it make a rational decision about those issues? The people who comprise the government (and we must never forget, as my favorite blogger writes, that a government is merely a collection of individuals) are so far removed from the people whose needs they are trying to fulfill that their decisions will likely be ineffective. Not to mention the fact that no human being or collection thereof has the mental ability to govern the lives of millions of people as well as the flow of billions of dollars. Its not going to happen not on the scale that the Benefactor Theory suggests. Furthermore, how does one quantify a need? Who needs more financial aid the middle-class student whose parents have crippling debts, or the student from a low-income family? Who needs more medical insurance the elderly woman who is physically incapable of caring for herself, or the mentally-challenged man who is mentally incapable of

caring for himself? If we had an unlimited supply of resources, these questions wouldnt matter. But since we dont, since any attempt by the government to meet peoples needs will require that more resources be allocated to some rather than to others, all decisions of this kind will necessarily be subjective ones. And all of these arguments rest on the assumption that the government is trying to act in a benevolent way. If it isnt if, as often happens, the government becomes corrupt or power-hungry then the Benefactor Theory will merely pave the way for further abuse. Contrast all of this to the Constitutional concept of government. Im not talking about how weve practiced it, just about the theory. There, the nature of government takes on an entirely different role. You will notice that the Bill of Rights, with the exception of the sixth and seventh Amendments, consists entirely of negative rights that is, rights that restrict the government from doing certain things. In the system described by the Constitution the government is mainly a referee, an impartial judge that keeps disputing parties from infringing upon each others rights (I will call this the Mediator Theory). Its purpose is to ensure that no one is deprived of their equal protection under the law, not to ensure that all people have an equal lot in life with equal opportunities parceled out to them. If private citizens wished to do such a thing, then so be it they areentitled to set up whatever system they want to care for the less fortunate. But for the government to set up such a system was considered despicable (see Col. Davy Crockets speech, Not Yours to Give, on the link that Ill provide at the end of this essay). Why? Because it was considered an infringement upon the peoples freedom to choose how they wished to spend their time, effort, and resources. For the other major aspect of Constitutional government is its emphasis on voluntary action. If a private citizen decides to spend a hundred dollars of his own money on charitable cause, then thats all well and good. But

the government has no right to appropriate public money for any purpose other than the maintenance of those institutions necessary to carry out its duties as defined by the Constitution. Of course, none of this is new.In our own age we know both theories by the names of Liberalism (the Benefactor Theory) and Libertarianism (the Mediator Theory). But I could not use those words to begin with. Had I done so, your minds would be miles away from the theories themselves, fixed instead on people, policies, scandals, soundbytes, and the like. And that is exactly what I did not want. Im not concerned about the movers and shakers of each movement. Im not concerned about ousting any particular party from office in fact; Im not concerned about any party at all. What concerns me is the prevalence of what I have called the Benefactor Theory, the prevalence of Liberalism. Make no mistake the line of demarcation is not between Democrats and Republicans. Both of them are infected (to some degree or another) with the ideals that I have been denouncing. And it is my belief, because of all the reasons enumerated above and more, that those ideals are potentially destructive to our nations political health. Now, one might ask how the Libertarian way of doing things is any different from the Liberal. I am happy to make a reply. Let us return to the example (for it really was only an example, a feint to draw your attention to what I have called a deeper reality) that I mentioned at the beginning of this essay: public education. A strict Libertarian would say: Get rid of it. It is not the governments role at least it is not the federal governments role to provide education for people; the Constitution never gives it those powers. Furthermore, who is the government to decide what our children should or shouldnt learn? Shouldnt that decision rest with the parents of those children? Shouldnt schools be an association of people coming together voluntarily to learn whatever subjects they deem to be most productive? And shouldnt

the schools themselves have the freedom to decide what they teach, whom they admit, and at what price? Of course, the immediate (and understandable) response is the one that I mentioned earlier: That isnt fair! which will probably be followed with something along the lines of, That will exclude those who dont have the money to pay for education, or those who dont have the natural ability or desire. The answer to that second objection is fairly simple: thats perfectly okay. If a person isnt gifted in what we would call books smarts, then why should they expend their energies towards them? Why not put that energy into learning a trade, or getting a job, or doing any of the other things that they will inevitably be doing after their required time in public education is through, instead of making them spend fruitless years in the pursuit of knowledge that will do them no good? And if the student has no desire, then that is their prerogative. Why should we force them to learn when they would rather be ignorant? Let them pursue their own path in life. If they succeed, then God bless them. If they fail, then that, too, is their prerogative. It is the answer to the first objection, however, that really cuts to the heart of what Libertarianism means. In response to the cry of, What if they cant afford it? the Libertarian replies, Then let their community help them. Let those private individuals who have both the desire and the means make whatever contributions are necessary to help the less fortunate obtain an education. But let those contributions be made willingly, from people who are making a conscious decision to support this or that cause. And that is somethingI think we often look over. Weve become so dependent upon government assistance that we ignore our own ability (read: our own responsibility) to take personal action and make personal sacrifice for our ideals.

And this, in turn, seems to vindicate the governments claim that it needs to expand (so as to meet everyones needs), and so on, so forth, in an exponential and dangerous cycle. There is still, however, an objection that I have not yet addressed and I think youll see why in just a moment. An intelligent person, having read the Libertarian position above, might respond, Thats all well and good, but do you really believe that people will do that? Do you really trust them to make education available for everyone in their communities, or to help provide affordable medical services, or any of the other hundred things that need doing in our society? Your whole philosophy seems to ignore the fact that people are naturally evil and flawed. To which I respond: yes, yes they are. And that is the strongest, most compelling argument I could imagine against the Liberal idea of government. The ideas own proponents admit that people are inherently flawed. This, they say, is why we need a strong, central government to curb our natural tendencies towards doing the unjust thing. But it is this very reality that, in the end, defeats Liberalism. For the whole philosophy rests upon putting vast powers in the hands of men. And yet we have just admitted that men are flawed and corrupt. Why would giving them power change any of that? If they are corrupt, then why should they be entrusted with authority? To take evil men, with all their anger, greed, lust for power, and errors of judgment, and to put those same men in positions where they directly influence the fate of millions, is nonsensical. And so, in the end, the struggle is not really about public education vs. private education. Libertarians themselves are not agreed on this for myself, I would only say that I am far too close to the situation to have a reasonable, unbiased opinion. What really matters are the broad philosophies contending for acceptance in our nation, of which the debate over education is

merely a manifestation. Neither of them are perfect. I would never claim that Libertarianism is an infallible road to the Promised Land. It has its problems the same as any other human idea, and those problems need to be addressed and overcome. But in the end, it is and always will be a much more reasonable and much freer system than its rival, because it disperses power into the hands of many, disputing parties rather than into those of a single, unified entity. And that is the question that we all must ask: whom would I rather trust? The government, the institution made up of a small number of corrupt men wielding vast amounts of power? Or the people who, though no less corrupt, do not have the authority necessary to carry out any large infringement upon the rights of their peers? There will always be exceptions to both rules, but on the whole these are the principles that I believe should guide our political ideals. For far too long we in this country have chosen to take the former route. This is my call for us to renounce it, to put the Benefactor Theory to a timely and well-deserved rest, and to start down the rougher (but more rewarding) road of limited government.