A Confederacy of Dunces
by Robert Russo
If you think of how many times a political party has been misused, how often individuals have used it for their own purposes not in its charter, you get a clear picture of how misinformation leads people astray and accuracy enlightens them again. We Libertarians possess that truth, enough to pave a road all the way to an idyllic society. We are its stewards, but we often cannot agree on how to enlighten the public. I recently found out I was mistaken in my belief that the sciences have been monopolized by a single school of thought. (In archaeology for example, plundering and self-promotion are extinct, everything is clinical now and if you don't follow standard procedure you can't be an archaeologist.) Well I was wrong, Marxism is now being promoted in archaeology which makes my colleagues archaeological capitalists (and me a laissez-faire archaeologist). When your job is to rediscover lost bits and pieces of truth, every other institution wants control (geologists, historians etc.). The libertarian party is like that.
The Times-Dispatch reports today a plan called the "New Direction" on the desks of the Richmond School Board that would "give each student a personalized education plan".* This is what homeschooling does, recognizing that everyone has unique educational needs and trying to provide this en masse can't be done. Apparently some people have realized they are being denied this, but the school system not willing to refer them to another institution is trying to be all things for all people. This reform is a good cause if in the right hands, the problem is academicians don't know what they're doing. It's a sham, a points system not grounded in reality. Parents don't know what to expect because they are fed numbers and labels to mask whatever is really going on. Their request is naive. The reason the board seems to change its educational prerogatives like the flavor of the month is the members themselves have been fed rhetoric all their lives that doesn't mean anything. Staff writer Olympia Meola writes "the plan should address not just academics but behavior, responsibility, dress and conduct".* In other words slavery.
There is no way the board is going to take the parental role they have always prized out of the hands of parents, nor can parents get an institution to enforce their own objectives because everyone's is different. It is not knowing what the other is doing that allows this house to stand, on ignorance. If people were in the know every one of them would disapprove. This cycle of half-baked proposals will come and go as long as an institution purports something different from the truth.
This same disillusion happens to the major parties (like Bush calling himself a conservative). Let's make sure our party never makes the public feel they've been fed bad medicine. We libs are the historians of politics, digging up the lost principles of the founding fathers, at the mercy of whoever claims ownership of these moral artifacts and how they should be presented. It is human nature to be misguided by hearsay, so we have to be careful. I read this story at http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-11-13-0161.html.
*http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-11-13-0161.html
Richmond Liberty Poll: What is the first best thing the LP can do to spread its message?
1. Establish rapport in the community with residents and businesses.
2. Back Ron Paul's bid for the Republican primaries and then the presidency.
3. Court new ethnic groups, age groups and economic brackets and encourage them to vote.
4. Exploit the chinks of mainstream candidates such as scandals and sensitive issues.
5. None of the above.
Send your opinions to russo@richmondliberty.org. We welcome your input!