One of the few things about the Chinkvirus pandemic that has given me amusement is the panicked reaction from the Education Establishment against homeschoooling — you know, the dread fact that children’s education has slipped from their grasp and back to (where it really belongs) the parents.
Of course, the screaming and wailing is all utter bollocks, as City Journal‘s Max Eden explains:
It would be useful to know how homeschooled students perform academically compared with their public school counterparts. A 2017 literature review, focusing only on peer-reviewed articles, found that the majority of studies showed positive academic, social and emotional, and long-term life outcomes. Bartholet dismisses much of this literature, noting that it tends to focus on a not necessarily representative sample of homeschoolers who “emerge from isolation to do things like take standardized tests.”
Eden takes this apart for the nonsense it is:
James Dwyer, co-organizer of the event, has declared that “the reason parent-child relationships exist is that the state confers legal parenthood. . . . It’s the state that’s empowering parents to do anything with children. To take them home, to have custody, to make any kind of decision about that.”
Such sentiments would horrify most parents, and Bartholet’s proposed ban on homeschooling would never win at the ballot box, as she knows. She laments how the Constitution “with its negative rights structure is an anomaly, outdated and inadequate by the standards of the rest of the world.” But she expresses hope that litigation campaigns may lay the groundwork for an eventual national ban. It wouldn’t be the first time that coordinated progressive litigation has yielded profound, counter-majoritarian policy change. With elites like Bartholet and her colleagues pushing their vision of family subordination to the state, homeschool parents have good reason to be on guard.
Yeah, that damn antiquated Constitution and its “negative rights structure”. For those of you either ignorant of or impatient with academic-speak, what this foul woman means is that she would prefer a constitution which lets the State tell the citizens what they may do, as opposed to our Constitution which says that government may only do this and that, and the rest is up to We The People.
Her preference is always the default position with statists, tyrants and dictators.
Were it not for that “negative rights structure”, I’d suggest that Bartolet be punished or at least censured for wanting the State to take parents’ rights away; but there’s that annoying little First Amendment thing which affirms her inalienable right to utter anything she wants — even dangerous bullshit like this.
And I have the right to call it “dangerous bullshit”, protected by that same outdated principle. And the right to tell her to fuck off and die.
Whenever I see something like this: “It’s the state that’s empowering parents to do anything with children. To take them home, to have custody, to make any kind of decision about that” I append “and I, of course, will be an elite within the state and will have the authority to tell YOU what to do”. They only put forward such ideas because THEY intend to be the ones in charge, once someone tries to exert authority over THEM they sing a different tune.
How such people manage to live a long life and die of natural causes instead of festooning lamp posts pour encourager les autres gives lie to the idea that freedom loving Conservatives are inherently violent. When the world comes to its senses and elects me Benign Dictator For Life such people will be put into positions appropriate to their abilities, mucking out stables. Because if you’re gonna shovel shit, you might as well accomplish something. (For the record, I intend to hold the title of BDFL only for as long as it takes me to unfuck the world and put people like the above in their appropriate place, at which time I will retire and let everyone live a life of Liberty and Prosperity. Don’t make me have to come out of retirement.)
Oh, and while she certainly has the right to SAY such things, once she begins ACTING on those ideas and attempts to infringe parental authority, that’s when the parents have the legal and moral right, nay duty, to fuck her shit up with extreme prejudice. Let’s hope that come the day there’s a lamp post handy, because drawing and quartering is messy.
Here we have another example of conservatives playing by Marquis of Queensbury rules while leftists play Calvinball. It is a recipe for defeat. You call it dangerous bullshit. I call her a domestic enemy. My solution, however, is not violence but splitting the country. She would still be an enemy but not a domestic one.
Here is the feminazi harridan. She could be Fauxcahontas Warren’ sister.
https://cdn.cnsnews.com/styles/article_big/s3/2020-04/bartholet%2011.jpg
Her ilk is the reason we’re breeding strident idiots in our universities.
She looks way too dark to be related to Lily-white Lizzie.
That’s just the Cherokee coming through.
…and BTW, Val: I’ll thank you not to post links to pics like that. Good grief, if that doesn’t frighten men into celibacy, nothing will.
Damn, you got that right, she looks like Beetlejuice and Whoopie Goldberg had a love-child.
Bartolet must really resent it that she missed her chance to be Romania’s Ed-Czar, because the system she seems to admire was in place under the Ceaușescu’s, who were properly rewarded by the People after the Soviet Union fell – and she was there, they would have done the same to her.
“….the Constitution “with its negative rights structure is an anomaly, outdated and inadequate by the standards of the rest of the world.”
Then how does the statist cunt explain people trying to come to the USA from living in “the standards of the rest of the world” outnumber by several orders of magnitude the people leaving the USA?
Eden pointed out how she cited generalities without supporting data, and as a tenured professor, she should know better. But she’s not teaching; she’s politicking.
“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.”
― Lord Kelvin
James Dwyer, co-organizer of the event, has declared that “the reason parent-child relationships exist is that the state confers legal parenthood.”
If this is true, in the absence of a State, there is no legal parent-child relationship. And all legal parent-child relationships would date back only to the establishment of the State. I have no problem with that, because in the absence of a State, there are no laws at all. At least, no secular law. God’s laws are dependent on no human polity.
But the bond between parent and child is arguably the strongest bond known to humanity, predating all States. The State can only legally acknowledge this reality, or attempt to deny it. Laws which defy reality have a poor track record. American parents are unlikely to cooperate with some progressive devshirme.
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” ― H.L. Mencken
I have been tempted many times, but I guess I have become a curmudgeon and I may possibly tip over the edge into uncivilized behavior on occasion…
I haven’t been thus tempted since… what time is it?
If it’s been more than 30 seconds, either you’re asleep, or you’re getting mellow in your dotage.