* Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive . . . . . those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C. S. Lewis

One of the most common arguments that school authorities use to justify public schools is that all children have a “right” to an education. Public-school apologists claim that all children have a right to an education, and that only the existence of a massive, compulsory, government-controlled public-school system can “guarantee” that right.

As I will explain below, the claim that all children have a right to an education ends up hurting the very children it was intended to help. I will therefore ask a seemingly shocking question – do all children have a right to an education? If they do, public-school apologists are correct in assuming that we need government to guarantee that right so no child gets left behind.

What is an economic right such as the alleged right to an education? A right means that a person has a claim on the rest of society (other Americans) to give him some product or service he wants, regardless of whether he can pay for it or not. For example, if we claimed that everyone has a right to a car, that would mean if someone couldn’t afford a car, government would give that person the money to buy it (the payment might be called a car voucher).

Similarly, if we say that all children have a right to an education, regardless of their parent’s ability to pay tuition, then only government can guarantee this alleged right. Government has to guarantee this right because no private, for-profit school will admit a student if the parents don’t pay tuition (unless the student gets a scholarship). If a private school doesn’t get paid for its services, it soon goes out of business.

Local or state governments can guarantee this alleged right in two basic ways. They can own and operate all the public schools and force all children to attend these schools, or they can give subsidies (vouchers) to parents to pay for tuition in the private school of their choice. Since most school authorities strongly oppose vouchers, that means they support only a government-controlled system of compulsory public schools and school taxes to guarantee children this alleged right to an education.

But government produces nothing by itself. Government gets its money by taxing us. To guarantee this alleged right to a product or service, government tax collectors must therefore take money from one person to give it to another. They must take from Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes. So, in effect, a person who demands food, housing, or medical care as an alleged right, is really demanding that government tax agents steal money from his neighbor to give him an unearned benefit he didn’t work for.

Education, like housing or medical care, does not grow free in nature. Just as someone must pay doctors, nurses, and hospitals for all the services they provide, someone must also pay for teachers’ salaries, textbooks, janitorial services, and school upkeep. Other than air, nothing that we need is free.

The average public school now gets over $7,500 a year per student, paid from compulsory taxes. To guarantee education as a “right,” local, state, and federal governments must tax all Americans to pay for public schools. All of us are taxed, whether or not we have school-age children or think these schools are worth paying for. So when some parents claim that their children have a right to an education, they are really demanding that their local or state government steal money from their neighbors to pay for their children’s education.

Here’s an analogy that might help clarify this issue. Imagine that your unemployed neighbor comes to you and asks you to lend him money to pay for his children’s education. You reply that, though you sympathize with his problem, your answer is no. He responds by saying that he is poor, points out that you have a big house and a job, and insists that his children have a “right” to an education. You say, “Sorry, my answer is still no because I need my money for my own children’s education.” Suppose that your neighbor then gets real mad, pulls out a gun, puts it to your head, and says, “I asked you nicely. I told you my children need an education. You have a job, and I’m unemployed, so you have a moral duty to give me your money.” Then he clicks back the hammer on the gun.

Does your neighbor have the right to put a gun to your head and steal your money because his children “need” an education? He has no such right. Nor does he, or any number of your neighbors, have the right to rob you by getting government to be their enforcer – by pressuring local governments to take your money through school taxes. Any school system that uses compulsory taxes is a system based on the notion that theft is moral if it’s for a good cause. No goal, not even educating children, justifies legalized theft.

It is only natural that all parents want the best education for their children, but do good intentions justify stealing from your neighbor? A mugger on the street who puts a knife to your throat and demands your money also has good intentions – he wants to make his life better with your money. One of the Ten Commandments says, “Thou shalt not steal.” It does not say, “Thou shalt not steal, except if you need tuition money to educate your child.” Since no one has a right to steal from his neighbor, no one, including children, has a “right” to an education.

Some might argue that I may be correct on this issue when it comes to adults, but surely we can’t punish innocent children for their parent’s failures? Just because parents are poor or unemployed, why should innocent children suffer and be denied an education? The answer to that question is one that many people find hard to accept, yet it is true – there are no guarantees in life, not for adults or for children. Good intentions to alleviate a problem do not justify hurting other people by stealing from them. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Moreover, if we agree that children have a right to an education because their parents are poor, then shouldn’t they also have a right to food, a bicycle, a nice house in the suburbs, and designer clothes? If poor kids (and all children) have an alleged right to an education, don’t they also have an alleged right to everything else that other kids have whose parents are well-off? Why not then say that anyone, poor, middle-class, or rich who has less money than his neighbor, has the “right” to steal from his neighbor? Where do we stop if some people can legally steal from others because they claim their kids need this or that?

The answer is, we don’t stop, and we haven’t stopped. That is why our country has turned into a devouring welfare state that is drowning in debt. When I use the word “welfare,” I don’t mean only for the poor. Rich, poor, and middle-class alike in America now claim the right to everything from corporate tax breaks and subsidies, to price supports for farmers, to Medicare, to rent subsidies for unwed mothers. When we let government steal money from taxpayers to give unearned benefits or subsidies to special-interest groups, we open up a Pandora’s box. We become a nation of thieves stealing from each other. Is this what we want America to become?

It is true that a free market does not and can not guarantee that all children have enough to eat or live in a comfortable house. Likewise, a free-market education system in which all parents have to pay for their children’s education obviously can’t guarantee a quality education for every child.

However, government-controlled public schools also can’t guarantee that every child gets a quality education. These failed schools can barely teach our children to read. Also, neither system can make guarantees because there are no guarantees in life, and because each child’s abilities, personality, and family background are so different that such guarantees are impossible. The real question, then, is not which system is perfect, but which system is more likely to give the vast majority of children a quality education that most parents could afford?

Public schools fail and betray millions of children, year after year. The only “right” the public-school system gives to school children is the right to suffer through a mind-numbing, third-rate education for twelve years.

In contrast, the free-market, while not perfect, gives us all the wondrous goods and services we buy every day, such as cars, fresh food, computers, refrigerators, and televisions. The superbly efficient and competitive free market gives us all these marvelous products at prices that most people can afford. Even the poorest American families today have a car, refrigerator, and sometimes two televisions in their homes. If we want to discover which system would give the vast majority of children a quality education at reasonable prices, I think we have the answer – the free market, hands down.

We therefore don’t need a failed public-school system to enforce an alleged right to an education, when there is no such right in the first place. Each parent should be responsible for paying for their own children’s education, just as they pay for their children’s food or clothing.

Finally, public-school apologists use this alleged right to an education to justify keeping the public-school dinosaur alive, in spite of these schools’ never-ending failure. Many public-school apologists who claim that children have a right to an education do so out of good intentions. They want to give all children a chance to get a decent education. But good intentions mean worse than nothing if they lead to dismal consequences. This alleged right to an education lets government bureaucrats have tyrannical control over our children’s minds and future.

The “right” to an education requires a massive government-controlled public-school system to enforce that right. But it is this same public-school system that cripples the education and lives of millions of children. So, ironically, the alleged right to an education is the worst thing we can offer our children.

Most low-income families don’t need government education handouts anymore in the form of allegedly “free” public schools. Parents today can buy quality, low-cost food in a competitive, free-market food industry full of grocery stores and supermarkets. In the same way, parents today can give their kids a quality education using low-cost Internet private schools and homeschooling.

Only when we reject the notion that all children have a “right” to an education will we get government out of the education business, permanently. Only a fiercely-competitive free-market education system can give kids the quality, low-cost education they deserve.

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“Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals – that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government – that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government.”

Ayn Rand

Maybe three percent of the adult population become addicted gamblers. Yet private gambling is illegal in most cities and states, except for government gambling schemes called lotteries. Less than ten percent of the adult population has a drug-addiction problem they can’t control. Yet all drugs are illegal for all adults in this country. Only a small number of men are sex addicts who can’t stop themselves from going to prostitutes. Yet prostitution, the combination of sex and free enterprise between consenting adults, is illegal in most parts of the country. The vast majority of adults who own guns use them responsibly and keep them away from children, yet gun-control laws are proliferating like weeds. Soon the 2nd Amendment will be shredded, and the right to possess guns, the right of self defense, will be taken from us.

This is government by and for the stupid. This is a tyrannical government punishing 95 percent of the American people for the actions of the other 5 percent who can’t control their addictions. What corruption of justice allows the rights of the vast majority of decent, law-abiding citizens to be violated because a small number of people can’t handle their sex, drugs, or gambling addictions? Why do politicians we elect presume they can destroy our rights because some people are idiots who can’t control themselves? What right do they have to punish you and violate your rights because of the stupidity or illegal acts of others? They have no such right.

Mankind fought for over a thousand years in England, starting with Magna Carta, to create and defend fundamental legal principles that protect liberty against government tyranny. The English achieved two crucial legal principles that were enshrined in English common law, and later American law. These principles are “mens rea” — no crime without intent, and “actus rea” — no crime without evidence of a criminal act.

Law-abiding gun owners are just that, law-abiding. They use their guns for sport and self-defense. When anti-gun laws control and restrict our right to bear arms, such laws are unlawful punishment against law-abiding citizens who have no intent to commit any crime, and where there is no evidence of any crime committed.

Also, gun-control laws violate another fundamental legal principle fought for over the centuries — no one should be punished for the actions of another. A man should be held responsible only for his own actions. Yet gun-control laws directly violate this self-evident rule of justice. They punish and violate the rights of the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners for the acts of gun-owning criminals or a few mentally unbalanced teen-agers who shoot their fellow students in school cafeterias.

Extend this outrageous principle and see where it leads. Suppose ten percent of us are hamburger, fatty-food addicts. We can’t allow that, of course. Therefore, all Burger King restaurants must be shut down. Because some people are too “weak-willed” to eat the “right” foods, government must “protect” all of us from our own stupidity. These hamburgers addicts must be protected from fatty foods that could lead to heart attacks. We should not have the right to decide for ourselves what food we want to eat. The ninety percent of us who eat hamburgers without getting heart attacks must be punished for the acts of the ten percent who do get heart attacks. Having a heart attack becomes a crime by this principle.

Suppose fifteen percent of young males are irresponsible and get their teenage girlfriends pregnant, which government prosecutors consider an outrage not to be tolerated. We must therefore pass a law that forbids all teenagers under the age of 21 from having sex. We will have sex-police SWAT teams roaming college campuses and breaking down dormitory doors. We must also forbid sex before marriage. The vast majority of teenagers who practice safe-sex will be punished for the actions of the irresponsible minority, and punished without any evidence of any crime committed.

Thousands of people are killed by drunk drivers each year. To prevent this, we must bring back alcohol Prohibition. More than 100 million adults in this country should be prohibited from drinking wine or beer from this day forth because a few thousand people are stupid enough to drink and drive. The vast majority of Americans who drink responsibly and moderately must be punished for the small minority who can’t hold their liquor and drink while driving.

A small minority of parents beat and abuse their children. To prevent this, all parents should be forced to go through a parent-training course before being allowed to continue being parents. If they don’t, their children will be taken from them and put under the “benevolent” care of government social-service workers, who will, of course, care for your children better than you do. The vast majority of parents who love and care for their children will have their rights violated and children ripped from their homes because of the irresponsible actions of a few parents.

If there were no compulsory education laws and no public schools, a small minority of parents might not “educate” their children, either because of stupidity, indifference, lack of money, or other reasons. Because of this, the vast majority of parents who would educate their children must be punished by being forced to send their children to government public-schools that waste twelve years of their children’s life and turn them into illiterates.

These examples show the moral obscenity and consequences of laws that violate the precious legal principles of “mens rea” and “actus rea.” Today we are awash with such laws, written by politicians who have not the foggiest notion they even exist, or who have utter contempt for fundamental legal principles that protect our liberty against their power-lusting agendas.

We are awash because, to their utter shame, the Supreme Court has repeatedly let Congress get away with violating these fundamental legal principles of common law and legal decency. The Supreme Court, over the last 70 years, has become a chief villain in this matter because they should have been protecting us against government tyranny. Yet, many of their decisions have ripped-away the sanctity of “mens rea” and “actus rea”, along with other fundamental legal principles that protect our liberty.

It is understandable, and common throughout history, for a powerful majority to become tyrants who punish minorities for “aberrant” behavior. History is full of horror stories of majorities stealing from, murdering, and torturing minorities they don’t like or agree with. It is the story of human nature at it’s worst.

But what are we to make of a society where a small minority, backed by Big Brother’s guns, now has the right to rip away the rights of the vast majority? What kind of society allows the small number of stupid or careless people that have existed in every society, to destroy the sacred legal rights of the vast majority? It is a society based on the vicious moral notion that “man is his brother’s keeper.” It is a society where this principle has been elevated to the overriding rule of government and the controlling mechanism over our lives. How so?

Every social program, every entitlement program, including Medicare and Social Security, is justified today by this evil notion that men are their brother’s keepers. The swarms of vulture-lobbyists descending on Washington asking for new programs, new handouts, new subsidies for their constituents, all tell their Senator or Congressmen that their constituents “need” the help, “deserve” the help, that they have a “right” to this help.

What are their demands based on? Group whining. If some group is suffering from some temporary economic problem, “it is not their fault,” spout the power-hungry liberals. The group’s problems are not caused by their apathy, laziness, incompetence, poor decisions, lack of foresight, or lack of perseverance. No, it is bad luck, Nature’s fault, or past injustices by other groups. It is everyone and everything else’s fault but their own. Whining is in, personal self-responsibility is out.

If a man didn’t have the common sense to save for his retirement, we need heavy taxes for a Social Security system to “support” him in old age. If farmers had bad weather this year, we need food price supports. If young teenage girls can’t control themselves and get pregnant, we need aid-to-dependant-family programs. If government regulations strangle the health care industry so health insurance is too expensive for millions, then we need Medicaid to pay for poor people’s health care.

If anyone is having a problem in life, why, it is everyone else’s moral responsibility to fix the problem. Our lives, our precious time, our hard-earned money is now mortgaged to any special-interest group who whines loud enough that everyone else owes them a living. That is what our liberal-fascists in government say — “we’re all our brother’s keeper, and brother, if you don’t want to “contribute” voluntarily, why, government will make you.” How? Through strangling taxes and regulations.

Our politicians say if most Americans are not moral enough to help their fellow man voluntarily, then government must step in and see that this alleged “moral law” is obeyed. Government is the highest judge of what is right or wrong, the highest judge of how we should behave, isn’t it? If we leave these decisions to weak or selfish men and women, why, the poor suffering special-interest groups would never get help. So government has to impose the “moral law” on all of us.

To do so, they violate our must fundamental legal rights. They strip away our property rights and our right to resist government orders. Through “creative” lawmaking and “creative” Supreme Court decisions that uphold the “public interest,” government has stripped us of fundamental legal principles mankind fought for over a thousand years to protect us against government tyranny.

Hence, we have the cannibal “entitlement-state” America has turned into. Compassion turned into compulsion. Government agents point legal guns at our heads and say, “be compassionate or go to prison for tax evasion.” Compassion at the point of a government gun. “Man is his brother’s keeper,” enforced by prisons, SWAT teams, taxes that loot forty percent of our paychecks, bureaucrats who strangle us with regulations — by America turning into a police state.

When the immoral notion that “man is his brother’s keeper” is forced on us by a tyrannical government, a country and its people lose their most precious possession — liberty. When we exchange our liberty for a mess of potage from government handouts, when we expect government and our “brothers” to protect us from every ill-wind life throws at us, we end up degenerating as human beings.

We also end up hating our “brothers” who presume the right to steal the bread from our mouths. We end up punishing law-abiding men for so-called “crimes” they did not commit, did not intend to commit, and for which there is no evidence of a crime. We end up punishing law-abiding men for the actions of others. We end up destroying a once free country.

© 2009 Joel Turtel – All Rights Reserved

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