That’s not really the phrase I was looking for, but it was the closest my mind could come up with to describe what seems to be happening to many Republicans since Obama’s election. By this I mean that they all seem to have rediscovered the ideas of…liberty and limited government and constitution.
Odd, isn’t it?
We go eight years under a man who passed the Patriot Act, invaded several countries, passed No Child Left Behind, Real ID, allowed the torture of POWs, and started the first massive bailouts of Wall Street companies and Republicans cheered him on. I could go through and find a bunch of quotes from a bunch of conservative columnists, but instead, I’ll just quote my own mother. She’s a big neo-con, or was, and after 9/11 was pretty much convinced that every muslim is just waiting for their chance to kill Americans because they hate us for our freedom. She wanted Rudy Guiliani to win the presidency. In my visit in January (pre-Obama’s Inauguration), I blasted Bush bailing out all those companies and her comment?
“He just did what he had to do to save our economy! He’s a decent person!”
I replied that I know many decent people and not one of them has caused the death of millions, destroyed our civil liberties or any of the other things Bush has done.
I guess hapless Bushie just made some mistakes. But it’s okay. He’s a conservative.
Then Obama takes office and suddenly I get a ton of emails from my mom on how the Obama Stimulus and bailout package is going to ruin our economy. How the democrats are going to turn us into socialists! Gasp! Because we weren’t already 80% of the way there already. Then, after a while, I start getting emails from her discussing various aspects of Austrian economics, secession, and that sort of thing. She starts praising Ron Paul, when during his election, she was 100% against him and wouldn’t let my dad put a Ron Paul bumper sticker on his car.
She’s not the only one. Among a lot of conservative Republicans I know on facebook, they’re all suddenly completely against big government and want to work with the more libertarian leaning people to stop it.
I know, I know. This is a good thing. We could use the help. An enemy of our enemy is our friend, and all that. But…the problem is, they aren’t actually pro-liberty. They’re just faking it.
While it’s true that in New Hampshire, Republicans are slightly better than Democrats on pro-liberty issues (they have an average C rating for all the years data is available compared to the Democrats’ D rating), that does not a pro-liberty party make.
Ask them how they feel about ending the drug war. “Nooo…we can’t do that! Drugs are baaaad!” Or bringing home our troops from the 130 countries they’re currently in. “Nooo, we can’t do that. We have to protect America against terrorists!” Because terrorists are rife in Germany and Italy, I guess. Gay marriage? No! Because everyone knows gays don’t have rights. Abortion? Outlaw it federally! Privacy rights? That will lead to terrorism!
The only freedom they truly care about is their freedom to control your life instead of the democrats and I think they’re kind of bitter they have been so soundly trounced in the last couple of elections. And so, they’re returning to the message of freedom…as well as they can, anyway. But their message still seems a little confused. For one, they’ve turned on the Obama hate a little too strongly. I’m no fan of Obama, but good grief. For 8 years our president could do no wrong, now he can do no right? Hypocrits much? Twenty-eight states have bills affirming states’ rights and the constitutional limits of the federal government. Coincidentally enough, these bills have passed mostly in states that are controlled by Republicans. I rather doubt they would have been drafted much less passed were a Republican still in power.
I feel like I know too well how this is going to end. They’re returning to liberty because, as Ron Paul is so fond of reminding us, Freedom is Popular and if Republicans need anything at the moment, it’s popularity. But once they regain that popularity and regain that power, they’re going to once again forget about the Constitution, forget that individuals had rights, just like they did in 1996.
The only way this might turn out differently is if enough of them genuinely realize that freedom is what matters. As the bumper sticker says, it’s not left vs. right. It’s the state vs. YOU. Unfortunately, most of them seem far too partisan to realize this truth.
My husband and I have a running joke that revolves around the fact that Finland is always number one in every international study. PISA Study? Number 1. Least Corrupt? Number 1. Best social system in the world? Finland! Highest number of school shooting deaths per capita? Finland!
After reading the news today, (you can read a German account here) it looks like Germany has a serious contender looking to retake the number 1 spot: a 17 year old killed 17 people in a school shooting in the town of Winninden.
But that’s making light of a very serious and very sad situation. I can’t imagine how scary it would be to have this happen to me or one of my loved ones, it’s bad enough to read about it in the news. In the aftermath of this shooting, surely the same questions will be asked around the world: Why do kids keep shooting up their schools? What can we do to prevent it? Does Germany need stricter gun laws?
I can answer the first question very bluntly: Because school sucks.
Okay, too blunt? Allow me to expand on my answer. While school sucks, it does not suck 100% of the time for 100% of people, but the vast majority of attendees experience its suckiness at some point during their school career. For a small minority of attendees, school does suck 100% of the time and they are offered no way out from this misery. Add to that a pschopathic personality and you have Columbine, but I wouldn’t say that all school killers have some sort of personality problem. The vast majority of them are probably having a miserable time there and a miserable time at home. So they decide to end it all and take a few others with them.
Germany being Germany, it adds a few special ingredients to the school shooter phenomenon. The most notable is that in Germany, you do not merely have the right to go to school, you have the duty. Schulpflict is written into the basic law of Germany that from age 6, all children must attend school. There is no exception written in for homeschooling or independent education for children experiencing difficulties–all education must take place inside a school. It’s popular among homeschoolers to blame this on Adolf Hitler so as to discredit it and make it seem like a nazi thing. That’s completely false—mandatory education as it’s known today originated in Prussia and spread to the U.S. (beginning in Massachusetts) in the 19th century.
How does Schulpflict relate to schoolshooting, you might ask? Simply because there is no way out for someone who is miserable. The German system allows for zero flexibility and is designed, according to Wolfgang Drautz, to prevent “parallel societies.” In other words, all square pegs will be pounded into round holes.
You start school at age 6, your work then and your teacher’s recommendation will determine whether or not you go to Gymnasium or a Realschule of somesort. Gymnasium will determine if you go to university.If you go to a Realschule, you can then go to a Berufhochschule where you learn a trade and become an apprentice or later on a Fachhochschule, which is equivalent to a community college in the US. You might, as an adult, be able to go back and get a Gymnasium degree and then go to college via night school. But for most, your entire life is set out for you by the system. If you don’t fit in the system….
I get the feeling the school-shooter in Wenninden didn’t fit in the system. One kid at the Gymnasium I attended in Germany shot himself the day before graduation (not while I was there). I asked my host sister why and her reply was something along the lines of, “he had a shit life.” He lived in a system where he had no choices and was unhappy with the options presented to him, hopelessness set in…and he killed himself.
While children in the United States can get alternative education, be it long-distance education, private tutoring or homeschooling, for the vast majority, no alternative to traditional schooling is presented. For the majority of 7th and 8th grade, I could not fall asleep Sunday nights because each time I breathed I felt a tight, panicky feeling in my chest. I dreaded going to school because I feared my peers. Some of my friends had turned on me and made it their goal to make my life as miserable as possible. I didn’t think of killing myself because I didn’t know that was an option. My parents were otherwise distracted and wouldn’t have offered a way out aside from talking to the administration–a solution that usually brings more ridicule. I had no choice but to keep right on going and to keep putting up with it.
My point is that school shootings are simply a by-product of the system. We take kids and lock them away for 12 years and tell them what they must learn and how. They are not allowed to do anything that might distract from this and are banned from working until age 16 in most places, thus keeping them economically enslaved to their parents, to the state, and to the schools. Most people who find themselves unable to quit a job they hate consider suicide. In this recession, people who are losing their jobs, their homes, and are becoming financially insolvent are killing themselves because they see no way out. Some of them might even go on rampages. And yet we act surprised when minors do the same?
The answer is not stricter gun laws because it is not the guns that are the problem. Germany already has ridiculously strict gun laws, which were made stricter after the Erfurt school shootings. What we need are looser schooling laws. Allow children to seek out alternatives. Allow children who are miserable in school and are not reaching their goals in life to drop out. Allow them to get jobs. Allow them time to choose, time to make mistakes and time to learn. Allow them, simply, to be free.
