Denis Smith, former official in the Ohio State Education Departnent, describes here the commitment of the Founding Fathers of the nation and Ohio to “common schools” or public schools.
In our own day, however, radical libertarians—anarchists, in fact—have opposed the Founders’ vision and sought to replace the common schools with consumer choice. In place of the goal of equality of educational opportunity, these anarchists—such as Jeb Bush and Betsy DeVos—have promoted individual choice through privately managed charter schools and vouchers for religious schools.
The anarchists are repudiating our history and traditions in their efforts to eliminate any sense of social responsibility and they do so cynically, claiming that they are doing it “for the kids” who will be abandoned as the rich get richer and the poor get vouchers are low-quality schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Been listening to John Adam’s opera Doctor Atomic which has an excerpt of Leo Szilard’s July 1945 letter to Truman about the atomic bomb. Duty, responsibility and collective action were enabled by the living document the framers constructed for later generations, if later generations cared, that is. It is an appropriate footnote to the framers’ intent and fits here with Denis’s observations, “Many of us are inclined to say that individual Germans share the guilt for the acts which Germany committed during the war because they did not raise their voices in protest against those acts. Their defense that their protest would have been of no avail hardly seems acceptable, even though these Germans could not have protested without running risks to life and liberty. We are in a position to raise our voices without incurring any such risks.” (emphasis added)
Calling the radical libertarians anarchists is a perfect way to describe most conservatives today. DeVos and Jeb Bush reject the concept of the common good. They forward the interests of individuals over any sense of collectivism. Their guiding principle is self service, not public service. Why is wearing a mask in a pandemic a threat to democratic values? The radical libertarians have made a public health issue a political rally for individualism. In my red area, few people are wearing masks. Implied in that act is that their comfort is more important than other people’s health. That’s wacko individualism in practice! School choice is more wacko individualism, particularly because it undermines the schools most students attend.
Wearing a mask is not even uncomfortable.
It’s not discomfort these people dislike, but the idea that someone is telling them what to do.
The funny thing is they don’t just despise people telling them what to do but they also despise having science telling them what they should and should not do.
We tell people what to do all the time through laws and rules like wearing a seat belt in a moving vehicle. Sometimes it’s for one’s own good.
A lot of these people are science deniers.
Many of them follow the philosophy of Ayn Rand which purports to be “objectivist”and science-based, but is actually based on goofy juvenile ideology.
That’s true. I also think some of the resistance is a sense of short-sighted, selfishness. It will backfire if they go home and infect an elderly relative.
Ayn Rand claimed that “Altruism holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only moral justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty.”
But that’s little more than a straw man and not at all how evolutionary biologists define altruism.
“In evolutionary biology, an organism is said to behave altruistically when its behaviour benefits other organisms, at a cost to itself. The costs and benefits are measured in terms of reproductive fitness, or expected number of offspring.”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/
It is widely recognized by biologists that altruism is often advantageous to a group (and can even benefit an individual in the future) which is why it persists despite the cost to the individual.
It is widespread among animals and plays an important role in human, insect and many other “social” animals (vampire bats, for example)
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/11/151117-vampire-bats-blood-food-science-animals/
Denying the value — or even reality — of altruism is effectively denying science.
“Wearing a mask is not even uncomfortable.”
Sigh. Do you have any ability to take another person’s perspective? Just because you don’t find wearing a mask uncomfortable doesn’t mean other people don’t. I’ve had respiratory issues all my life and I can barely breathe in the damn things. And, less importantly, they make my glasses fog up and they rub the backs of my ears. I am hardly alone in hating the damn things, but you feel confident in proclaiming that masks aren’t uncomfortable.
For the record, Illinois requires masks while indoors in any public venue and outdoors where social distancing is not possible and I do comply with the law. I do not, however, wear one in any circumstance in which the law does not compel me to.
There is more than one style of mask out there, and some of them are designed to help not fog up your glasses. The better ones cost more. I should know. I wore glasses for most of my life and also have a woodworking hobby. Not wanting to fill my lungs and eyes with wood slivers and sawdust I wear masks. That is how I know there are masks out there designed to not fog up glasses.
A little discomfort to possibly avoid becoming infected by a lethal virus that might kill you and/or kill someone you love or do not know is worth the discomfort.
Dienne
You’re right I should have said not uncomfortable to me.
But i would guess that most of the people protesting mask use are not doing it because they find it uncomfortable because no one is forcing anyone to wear a mask.
Asking or suggesting is quite different from forcing.
If anyone does not wish to wear a mask , they are quite free to not wear one.
But they should be aware that they are not only putting themselves at risk by doing so but putting others at risk as well.
I have no problem forcing everyone, even toddlers, to wear masks in public. In fact, if it was legal, I’d volunteer for free to carry around a cattle prod and shock unconscious the selfish, self-centered, effed-up deplorable ignorant foolish adults and adolescents that refused to wear a mask during this pandemic for whatever reason.
And if the effed-up deplorable fools carried firearms to defend their alleged freedom to spread the virus, if it was legal, I’d have a firearm, too, and use it to hold them accountable.
No reason is good enough to allow someone to possibly infect others leading to deaths.
Freedom, BS.
Freedom that allows someone to go shopping maskless and infect others who get sick and might die is not a freedom I will support, ever. And it does not exist.
Simply wear a mask when you are in public. If you do not want to wear a mask, stay home, and do all your shopping online.
The U.S. Constitution does not grant freedoms that allow anyone to run around infecting others with a deadly disease. And if a judge rules that they have the freedom to run around infecting others or getting infected, then I suggest we round up a posse of vigilantes and hang judge that makes judgments like that.
I was wrong about the not forcing claim.
But I would note that the people who are claiming discomfort from wearing a mask are going to potentially have a lot more discomfort if they get covid 19.
And if they have it and spread it to others, they are going to cause a lot of discomfort (or worse) in others as well.
I’m sorry, but I view these arguments against wearing a lightweight surgical, N95 mask quite unconvincing and selfish.
To say nothing of stupid, given the risk of not wearing a mask.
and the entire “I won’t wear a mask” situation says much about why national education mandates are very differently interpreted and implemented — standardizing is not only wrongheaded, it is impossible
Not sure the category “anarchist” alone is accurate regarding these militant white nullifiers of the public good. There are “right-wing anarchists” and “left-wing anarchists”; RW anarchists could also be designated “libertarian capitalists” while LW anarchists could be called “libertarian socialists.” Asserting, demanding, and defending a privileged position of class, race, gender, and sexual identity is a “right-wing” self-centered claim against social and economic equality generally distributed. Libertarian capitalists reject welfare and re-distribution schemes as well as programs that call upon them to tax themselves for the public good(wearing masks, social distancing, hand washing can thought of as individual behavioral taxes). LW anarchists or libertarian socialists accept the public good and consider that state authority should be minimal, not pervasive and billionaire-dominated as it is now, allowed to defend public welfare. Apologies for this too brief and inadequate distinction.
I too wince at the use of the word “anarchists” due to its historical meaning. These folks today bear little resemblance to Red Emma Goldman or Johann Most from a century ago. The classic European anarchist believed in a sort of Marxist transition in the face of ultra-capitalism to a sort of disintegrated society. Centralized government in Nineteenth century Europe always meant a bad deal for most working people, and the anarchists believed that the revolutionary fervor that would topple monarchies and powerful business interests that controlled the monarchies would collapse together in the face of so many workers. They expected a sort of utopian outcome that was de-centralized so that a single powerful person could not rule a nation.
Somehow that does not sound like modern yahoos crying for an end of government control. Libertarians mostly are either wealthy folks trying to get their hands on power by reducing the power of cooperative action to check their behavior or powerless folks who have bought into the post-Reagan antigovernment rhetoric in a big way.
Fascinating article and discussion. I’d like to suggest that Jeb! Bush and Betsy DeBoss are only anarchistic in regards to democratic governance and promoting the general welfare. When it comes to promoting their own personal welfare by invading the government, they are socialists. As a matter of fact, they’re welfare queens. They only want anarchy for others. For themselves, they want government to aid and protect them, their property, their businesses and their churches, and they want government to give them monetary handouts via their privately owned schools. With vouchers and charters, they are asking for government handouts, “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism (anarchy) for everyone else.”
Sound more like antichrists to me.
Come and listen to a story about a man named Jeb
A dumb politician, barely kept his family fed,
And then one day he was talkin with the Bets
And out comes a sound, ’bout as stupid as it gets
Grizzly that is. brown bear, Texas threat.
Well the first thing you know ol Jeb’s got a hair
The kinfolk said “Jeb move away from there”
Said “Sixteen hundred is the place you oughta be”
So they lumbered up the truck and they called on Betsy D.
DeVoss that is. Grizzly bears and charter schools.
Every once in a while, Poet, you make me laugh uncontrollably. That was dang high-larious.
Too funny! Hilarious imagery!
The Koch-DeVos led libertarian anarchists also want to do away with all retirement plans and force the working class to work to the day they die.
Correct! It’s called slavery with pay and some benefits tossed in. It’s not a life worth living.
Off with their heads!
Off with their heads is too fast, not enough suffering for the suffering they have caused and are still causing.
I am an advocate for drawing-and-quartering these fascist, billionaire autocrats that want to burn the U.S. Constitution and turn most of into wage slaves and anyone that cannot work gets to be homeless and starve.
What I suggest is using horses, one tied to each leg and arm, and then the four horses are motivated to run away from the guilty, greedy traitors at a gallop leaving the living torso behind.
After the arms and legs have been dragged through the dust and are out of sight, the executioner finishes the job while the guilty are awake and watching.
Thank you for pointing out that the privatizers are in indeed anarchists. “Libertarian” implies some shred of political credibility. These are destroyers who dismantle the institutions of government that have protected the poor and middle classes historically and that took years of blood and toil. They are indecent.
The ed reform echo chamber in Ohio have spent the last two years doing nothing but promoting private school vouchers.
They perform absolutely no work on behalf of the 90% of families in this state who use public schools, yet they utterly dominate state government. The saddest part is, most of them are on the public payroll. They return no value at all to 90% of schools and students, and we all pay them for it.
Go review the ed reform legislative record in this state and see if you can find a single practical or useful idea or program that is relevant to any public school student or family in this state- they accomplished nothing, other than jamming thru a massive voucher program and getting additional charter funding.
The ed reform record in Ohio consists of a series of endlessly changing gimmicky mandates they impose on public schools along with budget cuts for those same public schools. That’s the sum total of their contribution to public school students.
Our students would literally be better off if all of these people simply stopped coming to work. At least then we wouldn’t all be paying their salaries.