Some Random Thoughts While On Percocet

A reviewer in today’s paper said that “Deadwood”, HBO’s series, would soon be cancelled (HBO is the ‘F’ word network. They have a rule there that every sentence uttered must contain the ‘F’ word). While laid up, I watched every “Deadwood” program from several DVD’s. Although it is fiction, I think “Deadwood” gives a pretty revealing picture of the brutality and hopelessness of the lives led by the common man before the rule of law and the incredible prosperity of the American Dream came to fruition.

The rule of law means that a person’s fate when facing authority is to be determined by pre-existing rules and procedures – and not by the whim of some dictator or Imam. It is what our forefathers risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor for 230 years ago, and it is what our soldiers and most Iraqis are fighting for now. That this moral underpinning coincides with our need to defeat the Islamic terrorists and our need to keep the oil flowing helps when the barbarities of all wars occasionally seep through. To those who just can’t stand war, please just get the hell out of the way.

Our American children of today, the entitlement generation, have no conception that even the poorest of them have a higher standard of living than did most people who walked this planet for thousands of years. If anyone can be said to be at fault, this is the fault of my own generation, because we have stopped teaching our children our history; we have turned our schools into vehicles for questionable social change; and we have robbed them of the discipline they so desperately need.

Unfortunately we have gotten ourselves into a position where the only real hope for positive change is to compete with public schools by voucher-supported private schools. This will accomplish two things: 1. it will force public schools to change for the better in order to survive, and 2. it will provide a decent education to some disadvantaged children who are not getting one now.

The only problem is, just as the Democrats keep stopping us from developing domestic energy as they complain about energy costs and shortages, the alliance of public school unions with Democrat politicians is sabotaging attempts to institute voucher programs. Here is an excerpt from a recent article on the subject:

“The Education Borg”

”In Florida and Wisconsin, teachers unions crush educational opportunities.

Teachers unions keep telling us they care deeply, profoundly, about poor children. But what they do, as opposed to what they say, is behave like the Borg, those destructive aliens in the "Star Trek" TV series who keep coming and coming until everyone is "assimilated."

We saw it in Florida this month when the state supreme court struck down a six-year-old voucher program after a union-led lawsuit. And now we're witnessing it in Milwaukee, where the nation's largest school choice program is under assault because Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle refuses to lift the cap on the number of students who can participate.

Milwaukee's Parental Choice Program, enacted with bipartisan support in 1990, provides private school vouchers to students from families at or below 175% of the poverty line. Its constitutionality has been supported by rulings from both the Wisconsin and U.S. Supreme Courts.

Yet Mr. Doyle, a union-financed Democrat, has vetoed three attempts to loosen the state law that limits enrollment in the program to 15% of Milwaukee's public school enrollment. This cap, put in place in 1995 as part of a compromise with anti-choice lawmakers backed by the unions, wasn't an issue when only a handful of schools were participating. But the program has grown steadily to include 127 schools and more than 14,000 students today. Wisconsin officials expect the voucher program to exceed the 15% threshold next year, which means Mr. Doyle's schoolhouse-door act is about to have real consequences.

"Had the cap been in effect this year," says Susan Mitchell of School Choice Wisconsin, "as many as 4,000 students already in the program would have lost seats. No new students could come in, and there would be dozens of schools that have been built because of school choice in Milwaukee that would close. They're in poor neighborhoods and would never have enough support from tuition-paying parents or donors to keep going."” Wall Street Journal Editorial