We should not underestimate the powerful role that public — that is, government — schooling plays in the current economic crisis roiling American society. From the first grade through the 12th grade, most American children attend public schools. Several hours a day under government tutelage for twelve years is a very long time.
One of the ironies of public schooling is that the students have no idea that their minds and mindsets are being molded into a certain direction, one that is likely to remain fixed for the rest of their lives. Yet, that is the primary reason that government officials wish to have control over the education of the children in a nation: to mold their minds in such a way as to make them good, little citizens when they grow up, ones who believe in and support the doctrines and dogmas that state officials promulgate.
Adolf Hitler, a fierce believer in public schooling, put it well when he declared,
“When an opponent declares,
‘I will not come over to your side.’
I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already….
What are you? You will pass on.
Your descendants, however,
now stand in the new camp.
In a short time they will know nothing
else but this new community.’”
One of the biggest public-school success stories is with respect to economics. How many students in public schools are exposed to the libertarian economic philosophy of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, and Frederic Bastiat? I’d venture to say only a very small percentage. I know this: throughout my own time in the 12 years I attended public schools and the four years I majored in economics at a state-supported college, I never heard those names or even a mention of Austrian economics.
Instead, I was subjected to such standard claptrap as Keynesianism and how Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal saved free enterprise. It wasn’t until after I graduated from law school that I discovered Mises, Hayek, and the free-market Austrian paradigm. I then spent years educating myself on real economics, not the pseudo economics that is taught in public schools and state-supported colleges and universities.
Those who look to Barack Obama or the U.S. Congress or the federal government for salvation from America’s economic woes are looking in the wrong direction. Those people are the problem, not the solution. It is their policies that are bringing ruin to our nation. They are the ones who have the quest for power, and it’s that quest that is the root of the problem.
Throughout history, the counterweight to those who thirst for power has been a citizenry who loves liberty. The lovers of liberty have ensured that those who love power have had their love of power restrained and constrained so that it could not do too much harm to the nation. That’s what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were all about — to protect us from the likes of those who suffer from a severe love of power.
As Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress argue over how much more money they’re going to spend to “revive” the U.S. economy, how many more banks and financial institutions they’re going to bail out, how many more regulations they’re going to impose on American businesses, and how much they’re going to raise taxes, the American public remains dumb-founded. While people seem to have a sense that something is amiss, they just don’t know what it is. For much of their lives, it was ingrained in them that the Industrial Revolution was a horrible thing, that the gold standard was an antiquated mechanism, that regulations were needed to keep people safe, that free enterprise failed in 1929, that the Federal Reserve keeps the monetary system stable, that the New Deal saved free enterprise, that Social Security monies are kept in a fund, that government spending stimulates the economy, that savings are bad and consumption is good, and that welfare programs help the poor and bring prosperity to society.
It never occurs to most people that all this is intellectual junk and that the reason they so easily fall for it is because of their mindsets that the state formed during their most formative years. In fact, the government school system is so successful that most people honestly believe that it’s essential to a free society, notwithstanding its coercive, military-like, indoctrination environment.
Yet, freeing one’s mind from the years of state indoctrination, while difficult, is not impossible. I’m proof of that and so are most other libertarians. Many of us attended public schools and state-supported colleges and we have been able to free ourselves of what the state did to us. If we could do it, so can everyone else. And that’s what’s needed for us lovers of liberty to take our country back from the lovers of power.