It was Ronald Reagan who warned of the scariest words. “We’re from the government and we’re here to help” ought to terrify us. I’m sorry to report many who see themselves as conservative seem to have lost sight of this wisdom. “Conservatives” and liberals now argue over what we’re going to spend “our” money on. Once upon a time a conservative was someone who understood it’s not our money. It’s this guy’s money and that guy’s. That the one who owns it ought to decide how to spend it. There’s no need to debate how to spend the money when it belongs to the one who decides.
It doesn’t surprise me that there are “conservatives” out there celebrating the recent law by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt. A draconian education bill. Governor Stitt, an outspoken Christian, along with the Oklahoma legislature, decided no one can graduate from an Oklahoma high school without either being accepted into a college, a trade school, or the military.
Granted this bill doesn’t involve perverts dancing in front of school kids. There are no lessons on sodomy in health class. It doesn’t teach students to hate America. It doesn’t teach them New Age meditation techniques. All it does is use the same power of the state that liberals use to force feed liberal garbage to force feed “conservative” garbage. It maintains the core belief of liberal political theory- we know better than you and will make you do as we wish. It just changes, however slightly, who “we” is.
Before you speak in defense of college, trade school or the military, before you warn me about aimless youth, keep in mind that such isn’t the point. Were the government to pass a law requiring us to eat our veggies, the wisdom of eating veggies has nothing to do with it. Government overreach is the point.
It is wicked, foolish, and ill-conceived enough that the state is involved in education at all. All education is necessarily and inherently discipleship, and will strive to pass on the ideology of whomever controls the purse strings. But to say to young men and women who have survived that process, “We’re not finished with you until you secure one of these three options” is just plain tyranny. Far worse than the kind that inspired our forefathers to throw off British rule.
That there are thousands of “conservatives” that would cheer on this horror tells us how far we have fallen. “We know better than you and will make you do as we wish” is never conservative. No matter what they want to make us do, no matter what you want to make them do. A conservative recognizes that the biblical calling of the state is to exercise the power of the sword (Romans 13). It is someone who doesn’t want to be making decisions for other people.
Until we get this right, our political battles are just so much rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.
Thank you again RC. Your perspective on the state is useful to me.
Thank you sir.