The immorality of free and public education

As I travel across the United States to give talks and seminars on my books and political and moral philosophy, I am increasingly struck by the degree to which today’s college students believe that they are morally entitled to a free education. They think that this entitlement starts from the time they were born right up until the time that they graduate from college.

Since I never politicize my classroom and generally, as a rule, do not insert my political viewpoints into that space which I believe is a sacred domain where rigorous exploration and examination of great canonical figures from the Western philosophical tradition should take place, these campus visits give me ample opportunities to explore the philosophical and moral assumptions behind the idea that “free public education,” is the birthright and human right of all human beings. In a gentle but rigorous manner, I usually begin by asking students who press the issue privately with me on such visits, a few basis basic and fundamental questions. And they are:

Are the procreative choices that your parents made the moral and financial responsibility of other individuals? Or, do they not belong to your parents? When you become a legal adult at the age of eighteen are you not responsible for your own life and existence? Do we have a constitutional right to have children we cannot afford to maintain? Is it a form of child neglect to bring more children into the world than one can afford to support? When one has children, is it fair to expect one’s neighbors or compatriots to bear in the financial responsibility of raising them when they may have decided not to have any, or to have just one, or two, or just the exact number their budget can afford over the course of a lifetime?

Several students interpret the questions as hostile ones. This says more about the untrained and lugubriously sentimental nature of their sensibilities than it does about the probing nature of the questions themselves. Other students seem genuinely baffled that such questions could even be rationally presented to them. They are equally stunned that they are required to answer them. One student told a panel I was participating in that the right to a free public education from birth to college was an unassailable moral axiom, and that those who challenged such an axiom were heartless monsters.

So now we begin the question by posing it to the general public—the men and women of common sense. 

You who have sacrificed and planned your lives carefully and are already in debt and sending your own children to school, by what moral right would anyone dare tell you that you have a right to finance his or her college education? By what moral standard would anyone bring a child into the world and expect total strangers to assume the financial and moral obligation of educating that child?

Those on the far left will say that to do so is a social good. I have heard this sort of conceptual inanity repeatedly, and I have often asked for clarification. When asked what is meant by social good, left-wingers often mean “the public interest.” When asked to define the public interest, they fumble and mumble and twist themselves like linguistic pretzels into all orders of moral conundrums. Society is nothing more than the sum of each individual person. Therefore, any reference to the public good would have to first logically refer to what is the good of each individual person.

The answer to this presupposes the question: How do we know what that good is? One of the glorious achievements of this country, and one that has appealed to millions the world over, is that here we get to choose a conception of the good for ourselves. For some, it is having a family, for others it is pursuing a career or devoting one’s life to a specialized hobby, service to others, traveling—you name it.

There are as many conceptions of the good as there are persons to imagine them for themselves. And, in the United States of America, the state has no business imposing its or any conception of the good on you or deciding a priori what your conception of the good is. It leaves you free to choose your own notion of the good, so long as in doing so, you do not violate the individual rights of others. Any foisted notion of the public good on individuals means that a group of people has decided that their interests and their conception of the good should be the sum of the good of all members of society. It is an act of tyranny because it overrides your conscience and takes away your indubitable capacity to decide what the good is for you personally.

The cardinal sin of asking for anything for free in this life is that you abnegate your responsibility not just for maintaining your existence but, more importantly, of achieving your humanity. For we achieve our humanity in several ways. One is by exchanging goods and services with others. We affirm the worth of the other, and we respect the other by rewarding him or her for such services, and, in so doing, our agency is implicated in affirming our self-worth and dignity in the beautiful act of reciprocity. In reciprocity, there is a recognition of equality among each of us as individuals. Each ratifies the survival of the other through this reciprocation.

The demand for a free education is symptomatic of another moral problem in the United States. Those on the alt-left see self-reliance, initiative, and a commitment to one’s own life as, at best, hopelessly naïve—not for themselves. Oh, no, they have gotten where they are by the exercise of their own virtues. But the state apparatus and its system are so corrupt and stacked against the “marginalized” they believe, that the application of those virtues will always be possible for a Condoleezza Rice, or a Colin Powell, or an Oprah Winfrey, but not for the majority of those on whose behalf the case for free education is usually made: blacks and Hispanics in America.

The problem is that these left-wingers see grit, honor, hard work, and self-reliance as American virtues, and ones that they possess. But, more specifically, unlike, say, conservatives, who tend to be individualistic and encouraging of universal self-reliance, left-wingers see such traits as “white” characteristics. Those traits reinforce whiteness in their minds, and there is a gnawing resentment towards those blacks and others “on the margins” of society who wish to appropriate those virtues for themselves. They cease being authentic in the minds of the left. A sizable number of well-meaning, but, in the end, racist progressives, need so-called marginalized peoples to be marginalized.

The point I am making once more is that left-wingers heed the call of blacks or any espoused socio-economic need by any group with glee because it places them in a permanent position of power, and as part of a managerial class over a needy set of entitled subjects whose interests they represent. The absence of independence, and the neediness of those who regard need as a justification for the creation of a special set of rights, simply reinforce how independent, privileged, and powerful they stand in relation to their socioeconomic inferiors.

Finally, when you demand anything for free, a demand that is so un-American one can hardly take the claim seriously, you are claiming a status of such impoverishment that you are holding yourself up as an object of pity. But, unlike compassion and mercy, pity is not an American emotion at all. Pity denotes contemptuous sorrow for the misery or distress of another person. And the contempt one feels is linked to a moral vice the other harbors: an unwillingness to exercise one’s agency in the relief of that suffering; a perception on the part of the pitied that the world is hostile to one’s initiatives, and that no action is possible—at least, action that would liberate one from the condition of hopelessness one is trapped in.

To present oneself as a life-long socio-economic supplicant is morally repugnant because it requires that one becomes an active participant in the infantilization of oneself, that one permits one’s creative agency to be  expropriated by others, and,  therefore, that one effaces one’s capabilities, and that one remains locked in a concrete-bound range-of -the moment mode of existence appropriate for animals, rather than see oneself as a being who must project a long-range future for oneself and plan one’s life accordingly.

Americans find it hard to endorse such standpoints because they assume a malevolence about the American universe that is untenable and empirically false. No doors are closed forever to anyone in this great country of ours. If your ethos and character disposition are set for achievement, if your will is wedded to a resilient and tenacious spirit, perseverance guides and drives your efforts, and, further, you rid yourself of the squalid self-defeating idea that you are entitled to the financial earnings of other people—that your parents’ procreative choices are the responsibility of other people—you will find a way to make it in this country.   

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UK: 'Let girls be girls, and boys be boys!': Piers Morgan stands up for protesting pupils at his former school after staff locked them out of classes ALL DAY for refusing to wear new gender neutral uniform

New policy driven by Communist thinking

Police and teachers have been criticised for locking school gates to schoolchildren who protested a new 'gender neutral' uniform policy this morning, leaving pupils to wander the streets of a Sussex town.

Angry pupils and parents protested outside the gates of Priory School in Lewes over the clothing policy for the new school year.

But teachers and Sussex Police officers locked the gates on pupils and refused admittance to girls in skirts - and according to one eyewitness officers were actually involved in selecting which students could enter and which would be barred. He said: 'It was like they were bouncers - they waved some through and stopped others.'

Piers Morgan, a Priory School alumnus, tweeted 'Let boys be boys and girls be girls' and local MP Maria Caulfield said it was 'political correctness gone mad.'

By lunchtime a group of around 50 pupils were seen wandering the streets of the town still holding their placards from the morning's protest.

Maria Caulfield MP said she would be speaking to Sussex Police chief constable Giles York and police and crime commissioner Katy Bourne. She tweeted: 'Very disturbed to see the school turning away girls from Priory school because they choose to wear a skirt and calling the police on them.  'This is not how we should be treating the young women of Lewes'.  She added: 'Calling the police on pupils is not the way forward'.

This afternoon Ms Caulfield told MailOnline: 'What has the world come to when girls in Lewes are excluded from school because they are not allowed to wear skirts.

'While I am a strong supporter of schools having a robust uniform policy, I support parents and pupils on this issue.  'It is ridiculous to send female students home just because they choose to wear a skirt. 'It is political correctness gone mad.'

And on Twitter there was an outpouring of anger and ridicule with one man who claimed to be a former officer saying a request to enforce school uniform rules would have been laughed out of the room in his days on the force.

Piers Morgan tweeted: 'Speaking as a former Priory student, I’d like to state that this is absolutely bloody ridiculous, and the protesting parents & students have my full support. 'This whole gender neutral craze is out of control. Let girls be girls & boys be boys.'

The Priory School in Lewes, East Sussex, forced all pupils to wear trousers in 2017 after 'concerns' were raised over the length of skirts - and to cater for transgender pupils.

It has brought in a fully gender neutral uniform and yesterday the head teacher warned pupils would be sent home if they are not wearing it.

Parents of older pupils are outraged at being ordered to purchase entirely new uniforms for their children to wear for just two and a half terms.

This morning the children waved placards outside the school gates protesting the 'pointless' and 'silly' policy and the waste of previously-purchased clothes.

The signs read: 'The fashion is the second biggest contributor to climate change' and '1000's of new clothes wasted'. Another read '£100 for 1 uniform for 9 months is not sustainable.'

The protest against changes to uniform rules meant dozens of girls were barred from entering the school after arriving in skirts.

Angry parents gathered at the gates said the school was being unreasonable.

Cressida Murray, whose daughter Libby organised a petition against the uniform change said the school is not listening to their concerns.

'They are hiding behind the gender neutral thing. This is just about not wanting boys to wear skirts.

'They are saying it's about girls rolling up their skirts but they've always done that.

Sheila Cullen, 57, said the school uniform policy had changed many times. 'They've got form for this, they've been doing this for years.'

Parents and teachers demanding answers from the school questioned the policy of making girls wear trousers.

The school warned parents that children still wearing the old uniform will be sent home from the first day of school today.

But furious parents of year 11 pupils have said they will send their children into school wearing the old uniform anyway.

Parents say they plan to protest at the school.

In a statement the school said: 'Priory School uniform is designed to be a practical uniform which encourages students to be ready to focus on their school work and activities.

'Our uniform also helps us to dilute the status placed on expensive clothes or labels and challenge the belief that we are defined by what we wear.

'Instead, we encourage individual beliefs, ideas, passions and wellbeing and an ethos of camaraderie that is reflected in this shared experience.

'We believe that a uniform worn without modification is the best way to ensure equality. We do not want children feeling vulnerable and stressed by the pressure they feel to wear or own the latest trend or status symbol. 

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Student Group Flags Top 5 Instances of Campus Censorship of Conservatives

Why bother with a liberal arts education? Some students at a Washington university wanted to know, but their school administrators canceled a panel scheduled to debate the question.

The cancellation, with no reason given, was one of the five biggest incidents of censorship of conservatives on college campuses in the past 12 months, Charlie Copeland, president of Intercollegiate Studies Institute, told The Daily Signal in a recent phone interview.

Here are the top five identified by Copeland as contrary to free speech and other First Amendment rights:

1. Liberal Arts, but Not Liberal Discussion

Students affiliated with ISI at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, which says it celebrates “a proud Jesuit liberal arts tradition,” planned a debate for last November on the importance of a liberal arts education.

Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a nonprofit organization that seeks to educate conservatives to become eloquent defenders of liberty, invited three professors to speak on a panel on the topic “Why Bother With a Liberal Arts Education?”

ISI said George Mason University’s Bryan Caplan would argue that the study of liberal arts isn’t important, and Clemson University’s Brookes Brown would argue that it is important. Utah State University’s Harrison Kleiner was set as moderator.

“This wasn’t a panel discussion where we had one opinion; it was going to be a discussion of the value, good or bad, of a liberal arts education,” Copeland, who also is a veteran Republican activist in Delaware, told The Daily Signal.

Yet, on Nov. 5, about three weeks before the scheduled event, the university informed ISI that it couldn’t approve the debate, without citing a reason.

“We don’t have any idea why they didn’t want the debate to proceed,” Copeland said in a phone interview. “And then they further asked for the names of the students and faculty involved, which we perceived as a blacklist, so we didn’t give them that information.”

On Nov. 6, the university told ISI that another, more high-profile event sponsored by Gonzaga’s dean was scheduled the same night, and the school didn’t want such conflicts.

The university wouldn’t permit ISI to advertise on campus and didn’t provide any information on the conflicting event, Copeland said.

The students put on their panel discussion at a nearby hotel instead.

The censorship was “ironic,” Copeland said, given the university’s liberal arts background.

A few months later, he said, Gonzaga allowed a student-hosted campaign event for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to take place, with no issues raised by the administration.

Gonzaga provided this statement in response to an inquiry from The Daily Signal:

Gonzaga University hosts an array of speakers representing various political, religious and social perspectives each year.

With respect to the event proposed by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, our academic leadership reached out to ISI regarding the event to learn more about their plans. No acknowledgement or response was received.

As an independent, faith-based and nonprofit institution, Gonzaga University works every day to provide students with a broad range of intellectual thought, ideas and debate opportunities. We encourage our faculty and students to discuss the value of a liberal arts education–and they are well-prepared to do so.

Gonzaga also emphasized that the Sanders event was an informal, students-only gathering that occurred under conditions set by the school’s Student Development Division.

“Gonzaga University’s decision to host any speaker—past and future—does not imply endorsement of the speaker’s views,” spokeswoman Mary Joan Hahn said in an email.

2. Woke at Wake Forest

When some perceived a fake campus campaign poster at Wake Forest University to be racist, student Jordan Lancaster called out fellow collegiates on Twitter for overreacting.

Then she received death threats.

The phony poster in the campaign for student body president, the work of an unknown person or persons, read: “Build a wall between Wake Forest and Winston-Salem College.”

Salem College, Wake Forest’s rival, also in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, traditionally has had a larger percentage of blacks in the student body.

Wake Forest President Nathan O. Hatch sent a campus-wide email March 23 condemning the fake poster and announcing that a team led by the dean of students would investigate.

Almost immediately, [Jordan] was doxed, she received death threats, one student said explicitly that she would have the girl’s head, basically because ‘the other school is not going to be played with.’ All of these are characteristically threatening, by any definition, and yet there was no response about that from the administration.

The College Fix reported that Winston-Salem students recommended on Twitter that Lancaster be “fired and expelled,” and called her employer and Wake Forest with complaints.

Copeland said he thinks this outsized response was due to Wake Forest’s making a big deal out of the campaign poster in the first place.

“By the administration’s response at Wake Forest, creating a big racial incident out of that one comment, it all of a sudden became very touchy and polarized, and angry people started to respond,” Copeland said. “Whereas, had the administration just contacted the original student and told him it wasn’t funny, corrected his behavior, they likely could have solved the problem.”

“It’s an instance of when the adults in the room don’t act like adults. They allow angry members of society, on both the right and left, to overreact,” the ISI president said.

Wake Forest did not respond to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.

3. Notre Whiteness

Copeland recalled how Notre Dame University held a panel discussion on “whiteness” during which faculty members expressed frustration with skin color as an “oppressive political condition.”

The panel of four professors—three speakers and a moderator—was hosted in January by the mediation program of the Indiana university’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Copeland said he found this odd, since all speakers on the panel argued that whiteness is oppressive.

“I’ve been in mediation before. It basically means you have one person on one side and one person on the other side, to reach common ground,” he said. “There was no mediation involved. Why the Kroc Institute for International Peace was involved in this, I don’t know.”

During the question-and-answer session, the ISI president said, a European man stood up to ask a question.

“When he got to the microphone, one of the panelists, a faculty member, yelled out, ‘White power!’ and they took the microphone away,” Copeland said. “Now if you’re a white student at Notre Dame, how do you think that made you feel? Talk about oppressive.”

Copeland, who said some ISI students attended, said he found the premise of the panel of professors ironic:

Notre Dame is one of the most elite schools, and these people have reached the pinnacle of their career. They should be thankful, saying, ‘Look what I have achieved, it has allowed me to thrive.’ And instead we get moments like this, where they’re saying, ‘We are oppressed.’

Notre Dame did not respond to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.

4. Targeted at Michigan State

When a student representative at Michigan State University included his student government position in his email signature, his fellow representatives tried to remove him from the elected position in February.

Copeland said that Sergei Kelly, a conservative student at MSU, had sent out an email to recruit more conservatives for student government, and included his position in the student legislature with his name.

Some students said they were afraid Kelly’s use of that signature implied that the student government promoted conservative values at the school in East Lansing, Michigan. Copeland said:

He had in his email signature line that he is a member of student government, ASMSU [Associated Students of Michigan State University], which I imagine most students do. Well, some progressive students viewed this as him using it in an inappropriate way, and so they came up with a bill to get him removed from his elected position. Which would be a little bit like [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi bringing a bill before Congress to get [Rep.] Mark Meadows kicked out of Congress.

Meadows, R-N.C., is chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers.

Though the motion to remove Kelly did not succeed, the student assembly did pass a rules change. An inappropriate act now is defined as “physical violence, personal attacks of a severe and/or pervasive nature, harassment and discrimination,” or—in response to this flap—“the misrepresentation of a constituency.”

Copeland pointed out that a student representative’s voting privileges already could be removed if the assembly finds that he or she has committed an inappropriate act.

“Because of the adding of that phrase, you’ve now equated physical violence—me punching you in the nose—as the same as my email saying I’m a member of student government,” Copeland said.

“The chamber defines that as a misrepresentation. It’s one thing to not hit somebody, but now I’m not even allowed to speak because the majority could say that in my speech I misrepresented my constituency.”

This kind of censorship is what leads to “tyranny of the masses,” Copeland said.

“The rules are in place to protect the minority, because otherwise the majority could rule all the time,” he said. “It would be tyranny of the masses. Many of those people who fought those civil rights battles years ago are now in charge today, and they are reinstituting rules that allow for the tyranny of the majority, and that is a dangerous place for this country to go.”

In response to The Daily Signal’s request for comment, Michigan State University said it does not have a role in overseeing student government, and that the student government’s decisions are not subject to the university’s jurisdiction.

The Associated Students of Michigan State did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

5. Closed Doors at Pitzer

Pitzer College in Claremont, California, prohibited some student journalists from attending a student council vote that previously was to be open to the public, Copeland said.

The Pitzer College Council, composed of students and faculty, voted in March to suspend Pitzer’s only Israel study abroad program, in an effort to keep American money out of Israel in support of the pro-Palestinian BDS movement, which stands for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.

The college advertised the March 14 vote as an open meeting, and when the Claremont Independent initially called the college’s Office of Communications, it welcomed the student journalists to attend, Copeland said.

“And then, when [the office] realized later it was a conservative student newspaper, they called back and said, ‘No, you cannot attend, it’s only for faculty, staff, and members of The Student Life staff,’” he said.

The Student Life is a publication funded by the student government.

The Claremont Independent published a story March 13, the day before the meeting, saying that the college had prohibited its editors from attending.

“They wanted to make certain that no external media attended. But [the Claremont Independent] is not external media—it’s an official club of the Claremont College Institute,” Copeland said.

The ISI leader suggested the student-faculty council actually withdrew the Claremont Independent’s invitation because it didn’t want a more conservative perspective in the room during the vote.

“They didn’t want somebody in there that would say, ‘This is a bad idea,’ and force these brilliant faculty members to defend their position,” Copeland said.

The Pitzer Faculty Executive Committee offered this explanation:

Due to limited seating for College Council, the Faculty Executive Committee (FEC) requested that attendance be limited to Pitzer faculty, staff and current students, and that reporters be limited to the official 5C paper, The Student Life. The Claremont Independent (CI) is privately funded.

FEC also excluded the LA Times and other papers that have inquired about attendance to the meeting, along with Pitzer alumni who have asked to attend. If there were any current Pitzer student-reporters for the CI, they were welcome as members of our community.

Pitzer’s senior director of communications and media relations, Anna Chang, said the Claremont Independent was informed after publishing the article that it could cover the meeting using reporters who were Pitzer students.

Both the Claremont Independent and The Student Life are staffed by students from all five Claremont colleges.

“As far as the claim that our student editors were invited to attend, I can only go off what our student editors told me, and that was that they were banned from attending,” Copeland said.

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