Letter to the Editor
An Educator’s Take on the Illinois Budget Crisis
One of the signs made for the April 1 day of protest at NEIU to resurrect public education./Photo by Mary Kroeck
April 5, 2016
Public education is dangerous, especially for the working classes. It gives people ideas, like that equality is a practical goal. It teaches them how the system works and makes them think they can participate in its governance. It shows them the beauty of knowledge and gives them the skills to enjoy it. It makes them more difficult to manipulate.
This is why we Illinois citizens should accept the governor’s refusal to fund higher education. Gov. Bruce Rauner came into office planning to break the unions and push the privatization of public education. If we do nothing, the first state schools to close may be the ones that serve African-American students (such as Chicago State University) and Latino students (such as NEIU). If we do nothing, universities all over the state will close, lose their accreditation. They will then be ripe for takeover by for-profit companies and testing factories.
This is good. There are too many educated people in our state. Please, do not tell your state representative and senator to release the school funds they are sitting on. They might override the governor’s veto if they had the courage and your support, and that would be a terrible thing. Especially for the ruling classes.
-Kate Kane, Professor of Communication, Media and Theatre
Andrew Slater • Apr 11, 2016 at 1:56 am
Professor Kane,
Equality is not a practical goal. Every country that has made equality it’s foremost goal — e.g. North Korea, the Soviet Union, communist China — have ended up massacring or starving it’s citizens.
Equality has never been an American value. Equal opportunity has.
Here is what I wish you knew:
Equality is the kind of goal that requires ever-expanding government and police coercionThis is because human beings resist conformity — the essence of being equal. Most of us live to breathe individual freedom. To unleash our talents, our creativity, our innovative spirit, our superior ideas — things which equality renders mediocre when we all are made to act with no incentive to be better.
I wish you understood this.
One of the most important differences between Democrats and Republicans is how each regards the role and the size of the government.
Maybe you should not read any further, because I am going to discuss for those who already know of the personal folly of forcing equality, the rest of the consequences of it.
The make everyone the same requires a lot of force. The liberal theory is that you just make Government bigger and more powerful. That just enough force will make people equal. But it never works that way.
Democrats (usually liberals) believe that the State should be the most powerful force in society. Among many other things, the Government should be in control of educating every child, should provide all health care, and should regulate – often to the minutest detail – how businesses conduct their business. In Germany, for instance, the Government legislates the time of day stores have to close. In short, Democrats believe there should be no power that competes with government. Not parents, not businesses, not private schools, not religious institutions, not even the individual human conscience.
Republicans (usually conservatives), on the other hand, believe that government’s role in society should be limited to absolute necessities. Such as national defense, and being the resource of last resort: to help citizens who cannot be helped by family, by community, or by religious and secular charities.
Prof. Kane, Republicans understand that as Government grows in size and power, the following will inevitably happen:
1. There will be ever-increasing amounts of corruption. Power and money breed corruption. People in government will sell government influence for personal and political gain, and people outside of government will seek to buy influence and favors. In Africa and Latin America, government corruption has been the single biggest factor in holding nations back from progressing.
2. Individual liberty will decline. With few exceptions, such as an unrestricted right to abortion, individual liberty is less important to Democrats than to Republicans. This is neither an opinion nor a criticism. It is simple logic: The more control government has over people’s lives, the less liberty people have.
3. Countries with ever-expanding governments will either reduce the size of their government, or eventually collapse economically. Every welfare state ultimately becomes a Ponzi scheme, relying on new payers to pay previous payers, And when it runs out of new payers, the scheme collapses. All of the welfare states of the world – including the wealthy European countries – are already experiencing this problem, to varying degrees.
4. In order to pay for an ever-expanding government, taxes are constantly increased. But at a given level of taxation, the society’s wealth producers will either stop working, work less, hire fewer people, or move their business out of the state or out of the country.
5. Big government produces big deficits and ever increasing and ultimately unsustainable debt. This too is only logical.. The more money the State hands out. The more money people will demand from the state. No recipient of free money has ever said, “Thank you, I have enough.” Unless big governments get smaller, they will all eventually collapse under own weight. With terrible consequences, socially as well as economically.
6. The bigger the government, Professor Kane, the greater the opportunities for doing great evil. The 20th century was the most murderous century in recorded history. And who did all this killing? Big governments. Evil individuals without power can only do so much harm. But when evil individuals take control of big government, the amount of harm they can do is essentially unlimited. Republicans fear Big government. Democrats fear Big Business.
But, Prof. Kane, I need to tell you: Coca-Cola cannot break into your house or confiscate your wealth. Only Big Government can do that. As irresponsible as any business has ever been, it is only Big Government that can build concentration camps and commit genocide.
7. Big Government eats away at the moral character of a nation. People no longer take care of other people. After all, they know the government will do that. That’s why Americans give far more of their money and volunteer far more of their time to charity than do Europeans at the same economic level.
Without the belief in an ever-expanding government, Professor Kane, there is no Democratic Party.
Without a belief in limited government, there is no Republican Party and there is no prosperity, individual liberty. Without limited government there is less invention. Less of everything really.
That is why it makes no sense to vote Democrat. It always has made no sense.