On Tuesday, Gus Van Horn posted on how academic freedom was being undermined in the universities. The kind of situation which bills such as Sally Kern's "Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act" seek to create in the lower grades at public schools seems to be already well entrenched in the institutes of "higher learning". Not only are students allowed to protest class assignments on religious and political grounds, but there have already been lawsuits.
This indicates to me that the religionists' strategy to compromise the teaching of evolution is part of a much broader strategy aimed at getting religious strictures enforced throughout the entire field of education.
http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2008/08/circumscribed-debate.html
Obviously the long-term solution would be to place education on a completely free and open market with absolutely no governmental involvement whatsoever. The question is: how do we get there?
Warm Fuzzy Idea, or Troublesome Tribble?
-
At *Ask a Manager*, Alison Green tackled a question about something that
sounded like an innocuous way to boost morale, but in fact achieved the
opposite e...
10 hours ago
Posts
> "The question is: how do we get there?"
ReplyDeleteThis is a stimulating question. It leads me to wonder: When any society became more free, at any time in history, did anyone have a plan for dismantling the oppression?
I do think there is polemical value in having a strategy for activists attacking statism and in having a plan for a step-by-step dismantling of a statist program. But I doubt that it is realistic to expect to follow it.
For discussion, I would suggest that just as statists cannot predict the particular consequences of their intervention, then likewise advocates of liberty cannot predict the sequence of events once the right principles are in place in a culture.
Perhaps an analogy to military campaigns is appropriate: You have a strategy, you pursue it, the enemy does something unexpected that is outside the strategic plan, and you take advantage of opportunities as they arise.