Tom Ultican reviews the anguish of the libertarian CATO Institute, founded and financed by Charles Koch, and its efforts to refute the critique of vouchers by the Center for American Progress. CAP loves charters, hates vouchers. CATO lives the free market and embraces all forms of choice.
The libertarian ideology, he shows, is indifferent to facts. There is a libertarian Bible and a libertarian God, and his name is Milton Friedman, champion of free markets. If Friedman wrote something, it must be true, no further discussion.
“This ideology is a religiously held belief positing that private enterprise is always more efficient and cost effective than a government enterprise. However, privatized police forces, privatized prisons, privatized armies and privatized fire departments are clearly problematic.”
Friedman asserted that nothing had changed in American schools for 200 years.
Ultican asks:
”Let me get this straight, the father of vouchers believes teaching methods in America have not changed since 1795. Why did anyone ever listen to this blathering fool?”
Friedman’s fanatical followers treat his words as gospel. Privatization solves all problems. Except when it creates new ones, unleashing greed and rampant indifference to the common good.
Ideology tends to blind its adherents to facts or evidence.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The practitioners of the free market ideology believe that the quest for profits will solve problems of all kinds. This is an example from columnist Walter Williams, several days ago. It made my stomach turn.
http://walterewilliams.com/discrimination-and-disparities/
Your first sentence is a winner. From the same school of “magical thinking” I offer this from Mr. Michael J Petrilli, “The charter-school movement needs to stop alienating Republicans”—
[start]
So how to keep conservatives in the charter fold other than by tying the issue to particular politicians, especially one as toxic as Trump? One approach might be to boost the number of conservative and Republican voters who send their children to charter schools, but this is problematic for two reasons. …
A simpler, more direct way to boost conservative support is to remind people what made charter schools conservative in the first place. This means emphasizing personal freedom and parental choice—how charters liberate families from a system in which the government assigns you a public school, take it or leave it. Choice brings free-market dynamics into public education, using the magic of competition to lift all boats.
[end]
[ellipsis indicates material I omitted; click on link below for full text]
Link: https://edexcellence.net/articles/the-charter-schools-movement-needs-to-stop-alienating-republicans
If someone else had written that one of the maximum thinkers/defenders/splainers of corporate education reform would use a phrase anything like “the magic of competition to lift all boats” then he/she would be accused of going off the deep end.
Reality. Rheeality. What’s one of make of it all?
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” [Mark Twain]
😎
At its core, libertarianism (like Randian Objectivism) is rank selfishness in search of any justification that can support it. This is what the whole “free market” ideology that both these philosophies embrace seeks to legitimize, the freedom to selfishly take everything that they want without having to think about the common good or the needs of others. It will continue to flourish as a legitimate political and social philosophy as long as we celebrate the selfishness of the “successful” (i.e., ruthless) in the business world and hold this up as the highest ideal in our society.
Milton Friedman’s “ground breaking” essay supporting vouchers occurred in 1955, the year following Brown v. the Board of Education. It is clear that Friedman’s essay was a road map for those opposed to integration. Friedman crafted a nefarious means to continue segregation under the economic umbrella of the “free market.” More than a half century later, our government has been infected with racist, so called libertarian ideology. The saddest aspect is that the taxpayers are being forced to pay for this separate and unequal scheme under the guise of “choice.” At the same time, public education, which aspires to opportunity for all and equity, is being harmed and defunded in order to promote a racist agenda.
What continues to be confusing is how so called centrist Democrats can jump on the separate and unequal bandwagon, which is neither progressive nor democratic. We have seen Gates ally himself with the Waltons or Jeb Bush to undermine public education. What the corporate Democrats should do is take a look at the monstrous, segregative impact and the abject failure of their policies. They should also understand that their charter school promotion is not popular with the bulk of their base, and 90% of the children attend public schools and want to continue to do so. Greed is not only a conservative, libertarian value; it is a value of corporate Democrats that have lots of money, but not too many votes. Democrats should reflect on their actions before 2020.
If you are a billionaire or multi-millionaire (Kochs, Waltons, Dell, Gates, Forbes, etc.), then libertarianism makes sense. It is greed, avarice and selfishness on steroids. If you are poor or middle class and you espouse the libertarian gibberish, then you are a victim, sap and useful idiot. The GOP has embraced this toxic ideology with gusto, just look at all the red states that slashed taxes non stop on the rich and corporations, cut regulations and crippled the effectiveness of government. All in the name of choice and free markets. The libertarians gushed over Pinochet and his “free market solutions.” Hideous, vile and hypocritical. Trump has surrounded himself with many libertarians who are setting us up for another great recession or even depression.
“Why did anyone ever listen to this blathering fool?”
They listened to him because he got a fake Nobel prize.
Most people don’t realize what is referred to by economists and the mainstream media as the Nobel Prize in economics is not actually a Nobel prize.
https://www.alternet.org/economy/there-no-nobel-prize-economics
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-economics-nobel-isnt-really-a-nobel/
Friedman was the first recipient and the whole purpose of the award was to lend economics an air of credibility that it did not deserve.
It’s basically a joke from an academic standapoint and has been awarded to many people over the decades who were demonstrably wrong.
The economists who have the award and pretend that it is a Nobel prize are simply dishonest frauds.
I started watching the HBO TV series “Deadwood” recently (set in 19th century South Dakota; it ran for three seasons) and the Deadwood in that show is a Libertarian heaven with no police, no prisons, no jails, no laws, and no courts. Anything goes. I mean anything!
And anyone you don’t like, just kill them any way you want to and feed them to the Chinaman’s pigs.
My mother was born in Deadwood near the turn of the century (from 19th to 20th). Now I know why she ran away from her father and Deadwood when she was 14.
The Koch brothers could easily become the two brutal, rival saloon owners in that show.
Deadwood is where Wild Bill Hickock was killed over a poker game — shot in the back.
It seems to me the Koch brothers are more like Jack McCall.
Jack McCall shot Wild Bill in the back of the head halfway through the 1st season. Two of Wild Bill’s friends hunted Jack down and turned him over to the feds to try and execute him. Who is going to arrest the Koch Brothers for bribery, subversion and how many other laws that they have broken?