Molon Labe! (69 page)

Private schools are well and good for those families who can afford them, but what about poor families? Is it fair that they have no option but public education?

I don't buy that, Tom. People have an amazing knack for affording that which is important to them. I've seen so-called "poor" people with a DVD collection to rival my own. Satellite dishes and big-screen TVs in every mobile home. Poor people in America drive better cars than do wealthy people in many countries. If education is important, they will find a way to pay for it.

But what about those living on a fixed income?

Yes, well, who
fixed
it? Money comes from other people, who spend it only for perceived value. Why have a
fixed
perceived value?
Anybody
can increase their value to others. Instead of spending over 30 hours a week watching TV as a sedative, why not find some productive work? Learn a foreign language from library teaching tapes? Learn a skill?

But why should innocent children be denied the best education just because they were born to low-income parents?

And children born to wealthy parents have an
unfair
advantage? It's an advantage, but not an unfair one. Is it fair that low-income parents were born in America? Go visit the Third World and you'll see some
really
low-income families. It's not a matter of "fairness." Look, as human beings who can learn from history, we are capable of not making the mistakes of others, if we choose not to. This has been the backdrop of Western culture. Observe, learn, progress,
ad infinitum
.

My parents and my wife's parents worked hard, and they worked smart. They taught us to do the same, and we did. My wife and I looked for a mate with the same values and work ethics in order to further that through our children. A family's history — wealth or poverty — is not accidental, it is cumulative. It is mostly a result of choice, of sequential programming.

How much of all this is Nature and how much is Nurture? Nobody knows exactly, however
both
can be skewed in a family's favor. Over time, enough quality Nurture will improve Nature. It takes conscious effort and constant work, because the default is to remain lazy and stupid. Those who work hard and smart deserve to reap the benefits, which pass on to their children. That is not "unfair." That is Life.

If low-income families are not spending more time at the library than in front of the TV, then they are dooming their children to poverty. Being broke is a state of finances. Being poor is a state of
mind
. It is poor
thinking
which causes poverty, and government schools are the academies of ignorance. They are programming the masses to fail, and they are doing so on purpose.

But if the poor cannot yet afford private schools, what can they do?

Homeschool, of course. Even single mothers on welfare can afford to homeschool.

You are a strong supporter of homeschooling. Why?

First of all, it is the
right
of the parents. Even though the motto of UNICEF is
"Every child is our child,"
and even though Hillary Rodham Clinton believes that
"There is no such thing as other people's children,"
children are
not
the property of the State.

Secondly, homeschoolers consistently test in the 85th percentile — at a
tenth
of the cost of government schools. How the NEA can bitch about homeschooling with those results just astounds me.

Until America demands a separation of school and state, the private schools must operate at a severe disadvantage. Even though they do a better job at less than half the cost, parents are still forced to first fund the government schools. Those parents who cannot afford private schools have largely turned to homeschooling because it's affordable and it's effective.

An immigrant family from Honduras moved to Riverton, Wyoming about 15 years ago. Their home-schooled daughter just won the National Spelling Bee. In fact, homeschoolers have won it sixteen times in the past twenty years. It's wonderfully embarrassing! (laughs)

Columnist Vin Suprynowicz put it well. He once wrote that every experiment needs a control group. Regarding gun ownership and the daily bearing of arms, Vermont and Alaska are the control group for D.C. and New York City.

For the government schools, the control group is the homeschoolers. "Amateur" housewives are — regardless of their race, income, and even educational level — teaching their children better than the "professionals." By the 7th Grade, homeschoolers are two years ahead, and the NEA and AFT are going bat guano over this.

The homeschooling movement has saved a large remnant of children from the zombie academies and their dangerous environments. These several million children are the seed corn of the future — seed corn which
otherwise
would have been consumed, leaving us to starve years ago.

What about homeschoolers' lack of socialization?

Oh, you mean their lack of odd clothes, tattoos, and body piercings?

That they don't act like prison inmates? (laughs) That "lack of socialization" is a myth. Homeschoolers are highly involved in many things, such as scouting, church, sports, field trips, camping, gymnastics, etc. They're not missing out, and university studies have proven that.

Although there are no easy answers, the one unimpeachable fact is that
parents
generally know what's best for their own children. The only disagreement will come from those who want to cleave children from their families and grind out every spark of individual thought. I would rather see children taught to be Socialists by their homeschooling parents, than children taught to be
laissez-faire
capitalists by government schools. Although either case is pretty farfetched, that's how deep my conviction on this goes.

What do you consider the most outrageous thing about government schools?

That every school system today has its own "Dr. Mengele" ready and eager to forcibly prescribe some very sophisticated and dangerous brain-chemical altering drugs, such as Ritalin or Prozac. Pot would be less harmful. Not even prison inmates are drugged at the 30% rate of our schoolchildren.

Many so-called "ADD" or "hyper-active" children are simply bored and frustrated by their cud-chewing environment. I know I was! I believe that the current biointrusions on our schoolchildren will someday be looked upon with the horror that we now view ancient bloodletting.

Here is a statistic the NEA won't tell you: Over 90% of all infamous killer kids were taking, or had been recently taking, some form of government prescribed brain-chemical altering drug. Kip Kinkel had been on Prozac, for example. Guns are
not
the problem. Damaged kids are the problem, and it is the government school system which is doing the damage. Has anybody ever noticed that mass shootings never seem to occur in private or parochial schools?

What about the rights of parents who wish to keep their children in the current school system?

You're mixing what are actually two separate issues. If some parents desire Prussian-style education, then that's their right. They can start up a private school under that format if they wish. Nobody is stopping them.

However, no parent has the right to force childless strangers at gun-point to pay for schools, Prussian or not.

When you say "at gunpoint" are you speaking of taxes?

Well of
course
! Quit paying taxes and obese, D-student, pistol-packing agents of the State will eventually show up at your door. If you resist, they will evict you. Resist eviction, and they will kill you. Don't you know that all taxes are implicitly collected by threat of a gun? Pay or die. This is a cold, hard fact that Americans refuse to face. But, Tom, no purpose of government is so important as to justify making citizens homeless or dead.

No tax collector has ever put a gun to my head to collect my taxes.

I don't dispute that. However, you've been trained by the government to pay without a fuss — so, you do. (laughs) But haven't you ever resented some use of your tax dollars that you wish you could opt out of? Some U.S. military operation overseas, perhaps?

Only about three or four times a day.

Well, the cost of government is public knowledge. Why didn't you calculate what percentage it constituted of your income taxes and refuse to pay it on explicitly moral grounds? Even if it amounted to only $14?

My share of it wouldn't likely be worth the trouble.

The trouble of calculating the amount, or the trouble of standing up for your belief?

Probably both.

Well, then you help make my point for me. We suffer under a large central government which nips away at us one bite at a time, and we're too cowed to even quantify the injury, much less protest!

What if
nobody
were required to pay taxes? Who would pay then?

If we truly
desired
what we were paying for in taxes, then no coercion would really be necessary? In the free-market, we pay for a movie rather than sneaking in. We pay for a dinner rather than sneaking out. Why can't government compete for its resources like everybody else? Because folks don't like what the government is selling! (laughs)

No, taxes are a form of robbery to fund something that the victim would not purchase voluntarily. And to top it off, the thief proclaims that he is robbing you for your own good! I stand by our right to be governed solely by our informed consent. That is at the heart of libertarian politics.

This tired, old notion that nothing would get done but for government and taxes is horseshit. People want roads and schools and they will find some way to pay for them in the private sector.

I don't want to force anybody to be free, yet many Americans would force me to be a slave on their Washington, D.C. plantation — if they could. It reeks of closed-shop unionism. Join or else. They should have the decency to let others live their
own
adult lives as they see fit.

Such rugged individualism comes easy for a man of your race and upbringing, but it hardly seems appropriate for those disadvantaged members of our society.

Well, men of my "race and up-bringing" are at the helm of the socialist ship of state, so why didn't I go
that
direction?

Still, you can't deny that libertarianism makes much more sense for a white, wealthy entrepreneur than for a crippled minority.

Oh, which crippled minority do you mean?

I don't follow you.

Well, do you mean a crippled minority who has maintained his personal dignity and
works
for an honest living, or a crippled minority who blames the world for his condition and
votes
for his government check?

Uh, well...

Right. You see, it has nothing to do with race, education, or handicap. It has everything to do with
character
.

I know several wealthy, white businessmen so venal and conniving that I would not take their personal check. Conversely, I know a black woman in Sheridan with MS who founded what is now a thriving Internet biz and is one of the most honorable and industrious people I know.

Those with the mentality of a master or slave or thief — whatever their race or condition —
need
a socialist state. Those who value private property and hard work — whatever their race or condition — only wish to be left alone, and Wyoming is America's haven for them. They're long overdue for a haven. Today, they have one! We've proven that over the past two and a half years.

And we're not through yet. Freedom is always unfinished business.

Thank you again Governor Preston for this second interview. It's always interesting.

And for me, too. We're still waiting for you to visit us in Wyoming.

It's looking more and more inviting all the time.

For about 16,000 Wyoming Democrats in the southern counties, the January education initiatives were the last straw. Politically neutered, they had no choice but to pack up and leave for more hospitable states such as Washington, Colorado, and Oregon.

They were more than replaced by the 22,000 libertarians who eagerly moved to the nation's sole beacon of liberty. During what was clearly a very deep national depression, only Wyoming had any vitality and promise.

Meanwhile, the NEA and the AFT spend $14,000,000 in their propaganda campaign to derail Wyoming school privatization. If the public schools are abolished, children won't learn to read or perform simple math, the teachers' unions bellow.
"They're barely learning math or reading in the public schools
now
!"
was the countering opinion of most Wyomingites, who saw through the hysterical charges and threats.

Cheyenne, Wyoming

19 April 2017

Preston glances up at the sound of Tom Parks entering his office with a rictus of grief on his face. He's never seen his assistant and friend so shocked.

"Tom, what's wrong? Is it
Molly
?" asks Preston softly.

"No, sir, my wife's fine." He collects himself for several seconds and then says, "Governor, we just got word from Washington."

Preston frowns. "Oh, hell. What have they done
now
?"