TAKE THE OFFENSIVE, Part X

How to weaken & destroy the main source of anti-freedom and anti-self-defense funding, improve public education, and put an end to government indoctrination centers.

By Russ Howard

The following is a paraphrased NRA Alert:

"The National Education Association, America's largest teachers' union, has long been a shrill proponent of restrictions on our Right to Keep & Bear Arms. On July 3rd, the NEA launched a drive to petition Congress for gun owner licensing, registration, "ballistic fingerprinting", mandatory storage, and waiting periods. No mention of targeting violent criminals or enforcing existing gun controls. The attack on law-abiding gun owners, mirroring Gore's platform, was not met with complete approval at NEA's convention. One teacher said, 'Rather than gun control, we need parental control & responsibility.' Another said, 'metal detectors are more useful than gun control to protect schools...(and) it would be better to control TV shows, video games & movies that promote violence.' NRA will watch any attempts to use public schools for a political agenda. To oppose NEA's petition, call 202-833-4000, write to 1201 16th St., NW, Washington, DC, 20036, or send e-mail NEA President Bob Chase at BobChase@nea.org. "

No wonder we're losing.

Bad enough that NRA management's grand Orwellian pre-emptive surrender strategy – Fight Gun Control with Gun Control – bleeds through the alert:

· Full enforcement of all gun controls.

· Metal detectors to enforce the NRA-supported "gun-free" school zones mandatory school defenselessness law. That'll stop mass shootings by psychos! Right.

· What's next? If gun control works so well in schools, why not "gun-free" homes? NRA says, "let's start by caving on mandatory trigger locks and holding parents criminally liable for child access to firearms."

· And, who knows, maybe even restrict the First Amendment as well. Such a deal!

But the real indictment of the alert, the really pathetic thing, is how it urges NRA members to write the NEA to complain.

Would President Reagan have insulted your intelligence by asking you to get on your knees, write Comrade Breshnev a letter, and whine about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?

The overpaid beltway dorks who "manage" NRA as a quasi-government institution might as well ask us to light candles, hold hands, and sing Kumbayah. Is this why we give Wayne LaPierre and his "Winning" Team $20,000-a-month salaries, $15,000-a-month tax-free "expense accounts", and who-knows-what other benefits? For the political equivalent of a reverse "pacification" program, where we pacify our own troops?

It's another example of NRA's sterile bee queen management. Waste our time, energy & money pleading with the sworn enemies of freedom. Keep us on our knees when we could be making a difference.

Any number of things would be more effective than getting on your knees and begging the enemy for mercy or wasting your time trying to "talk sense" to a committed leftist. Like penning a letter to the editor or writing your legislator. But much of that by nature is defensive. Defense is necessary, but the problem with always being on the defensive is that by and large the best you can do is not lose. Taking turf, new or old, is generally out of the question. Sooner or later, you'll lose more turf and never get it back.

To utilize our true potential as a movement, we must be flexible. Always question the "rules" of the game. Engage in "unconventional" warfare, jump outside the paradigm of our struggle and redesign it to our advantage, search for weak points, for opportunities to make the enemies of freedom pay for attacking our rights. Teach them, through pain, that it's not worth it. Often the most effective thing, while not neglecting the defense of your own primary issue, is to find & exploit other issues that serve as the enemy's Achilles Heel, to weaken him financially and destroy him politically, at the very least keep him so busy defending himself that he can no longer attack your rights.

There are fundamental struggles we should be part of, that will have profound, long-lasting benefits for the cause of liberty, that are not directly gun rights issues.

FIRST: IDENTIFY & FACE THE PROBLEM

The government school unions have long been one of America's foremost enemies – not only of constitutional liberty and decent values; but of decent-quality public education itself. Why?

· Government school unions spend vast sums of money to protect their monopoly, and to protect mediocre & incompetent teachers from being fired, from having to compete, or from being subject to performance-based pay. In the mammoth L.A. school district, something like 100 teachers were fired over a 10-year period for such behavior as rape, indecent exposure, etc., while not a single teacher was fired for incompetence.

· Much of the union money goes, both directly and indirectly, to elect anti-self-defense politicians and to promote gun control.

· The government school unions are the lifeblood of the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party is completely in their pocket. In fact, they're so powerful few Republicans are willing to cross them. The L.A. Daily News recently referred to their influence as a "reign of terror". Destroy the government school unions and the cause of freedom advances by light years.

· Because government unions are run by committed leftist ideologues, because parents have little effective control, and because of the nature of government institutions, many government schools increasingly serve as ideological, spiritual, and even sexual indoctrination centers, whose daily mission is to brainwash kids with anti-American, collectivist, socialist, and even racist propaganda, give condoms to kids as young as 11 and urge them to be "open minded" and "explore their sexuality", get kids to snitch on parents who own guns and on "abusive" parents who dare spank as a form of discipline, pressure parents to put "hyperactive" kids on dangerous mind-altering drugs, punish kids who support the 2^nd Amendment, protect violent bullies from expulsion, and generally undo the influence of such subversive institutions as families, churches, synagogues, & Scout Troops.

· Money is not the problem. Ten years ago, per-student spending was three times what it was in 1960, pupil-staff ratios had dropped in half, and government school teachers made 50% more than the average worker, yet performance steadily worsened – to the point that in Los Angeles, government school teachers were twice as likely to send their own kids to private schools as the typical parent.

· Since then even more money has been thrown at the problem. Next year California will spend well over $8,000 per student, more than most private schools. The more money we throw at government schools, the worse they get.

· Of course, there are many good teachers who support constitutional liberty, but they do not control the government school unions, and they never will.

VOUCHERS & EDUCATIONAL CHOICE

Various educational choice plans have been proposed in the past 40 years to improve public education. The debate has primarily been around vouchers, which would take some of the per-student money now spent at government schools and let parents spend it at the school of their choice. Private & home schooling would expand, kids would get a better education, and the worst government schools would have to compete, shrink, or disappear. The better government schools need not fret. Parents happy with their schools can leave their kids where they are. California's current voucher initiative would give private schools new protections against government meddling, and, of course, no private school would be required to accept vouchers.

Other plans have been proposed, such as David Barulich's innovative concept where parents would actually be paid bonuses based on standardized tests of their kids' performance. From here on I use the term "vouchers" loosely to describe any educational choice plan that lets parents direct taxpayer education dollars to the school of their choice – government, private, or religious – or that rewards parents based on the educational progress of their children.

To see how vouchers harness the power of competition and free enterprise to improve education, consider this analogy to the current government system:

Suppose the government taxed everyone heavily to support a government-run car manufacturing system, and gave everyone a new car every few years. None of the workers could be fired, their pay depended solely on seniority, and so performance-based pay was strictly forbidden. If you didn't like the quality or style of your "free", one-size-fits-all government car, you couldn't just take your money to another car company like you can now, because they'd already have your money. Few but the wealthy would be willing to cough up another $20-$50,000 for a "private car". So you lobby the government to improve quality and offer the style you like (good luck!). The answer would always be some version of "we need more money" (fewer workers per car, higher pay, nicer buildings, etc.). Every decrease in quality would be hailed as evidence that not enough money was going into car making. Imagine what cars would be like.

Naturally, the government school unions are adamantly opposed to vouchers, accurately perceiving them as a threat to their reign of terror. The unions spent something like $16+ million to kill California's 1993 voucher initiative, outspending proponents by an order of magnitude. They killed it by a landslide at a time when few citizens understood the concept. But times have changed. Polls show dramatically increased understanding and support for vouchers, and new voucher initiatives will cost far more to kill.

THE OFFENSIVE

It's time for the self-defense civil rights movement to support tuition vouchers:

1. Vouchers will improve public education by enabling parents to send their kids to better schools, by forcing government schools to compete, and by giving parents an alternative to government indoctrination centers.

2. Even if voucher initiatives lose, government school unions will be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars fighting them, money that would otherwise be spent directly or indirectly fighting for gun control and against freedom. Ideally, voucher initiatives should be run in EVERY primary, soaking up government school union money that would otherwise be spent in general elections.

3. Once vouchers begin winning, the government school unions will be destroyed, taking with them the anti-freedom groups' biggest financial base.

4. Vouchers will not hurt good teachers. The current system demoralizes teachers by not rewarding excellence. Educational Choice helps good teachers by restoring safety (violent students can be expelled), cutting red tape, encouraging innovation, shifting money from bureaucracy to teaching, creating jobs, and promoting systems that reward excellence. On the other hand, bad teachers will have to improve or get other jobs.