At a minimum, I would think the citizens of a democracy would have to understand what a democracy is and why you want your gov't to be one.
And the same applies to libertarianism. If a significant fraction of your population is illiterate and otherwise uneducated, they are just fodder for the next demagogue trotting down the road.
Have you noticed that areas (such as Africa) where education barely exists, democracy barely exists?
Is it?
Constitution of the United States
Adopted by convention of States, September 17, 1787;
Ratification completed, June 21, 17881
PREAMBLE
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
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Amendment X.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Education at least used to be funded by the states. It can be argued that since the power to collect funds for education are not prohibited by the federal Constitution, the states and governmental subunits they delegate are empowered to do so.
I bristle not only at the economic implications, but at the thought of the State, monolith of incompetence, being charged with such a sensitive duty.
I would say the state should NOT do it. This idea is simply the pet of the teachers' union. What the state should do is collect the funds, then redistribute them to parents with the condition they MUST be spent to educate the kids.
What of police protection? If you don't or can't hire your own guards, you get none? So you are simply fair game for anyone who wants to kill you?
This is the basic problem with libertarianism and why it is not a serious political party: Too many of its believers are really anarchists. People would rather have a tyrannical gov't than none at all. |
