Though he backed down in his fight for free speech in Brazil, Elon Musk has put money where his mouth is to promote a political agenda that many U.S.-based conservatives appreciate. In buying Twitter and rebranding it X, he opened the platform to many previously ostracized and silenced people, and has received opprobrium from leftists to such an extent that, over the past week, the UK-based “Center for Countering Digital Hate” was discovered to hate X and Musk, with internal documents revealing their goal to “kill” X.
He also has interviewed Donald Trump, appeared at rallies with him, and has openly posted strong opposition to the woke, Neo-Marxist policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
But a recent call-in with Mr. Musk sheds light on the current limits of his political analysis – limits one hopes he will tear down, in order to get to the roots of many U.S. governmental problems.
The Vigilant Fox’s October 25 post offers the audio and key summation of Musk’s very appropriate, quite correct assessment of the poor outcomes of federally-subsidized, politically steered education, from local K-12 to government-loan-promoted college, and here are those points:
1. “Educational scores have gone downhill dramatically since the creation of the Department of Education, which doesn't make any sense.”
2. “If you're going to create a department and spend a bunch of money, you should expect things to get better, not worse.”
3. “The Department of Education at the federal level has pushed all sorts of propaganda on kids that has nothing to do with useful skills.
4. “Schools should be focused on teaching kids about the world and teaching them useful skills so that, when they graduate, they can do something useful. That's the whole point.”
5. With respect to college, he said kids will often “spend four years in college, not learn anything useful, and be saddled with a ton of debt. And what's the point of that? It doesn't make any sense.”
He also pointed out that much of the taxpayer money spent on "education" is actually spent indoctrinating children in leftist ideology, regardless of whether their parents approve, and regardless of whether it actually helps them become skilled workers or better citizens:
Elon Musk: "A lot of the money in education is actually for pushing propaganda instead of teaching kids the facts about the world.
— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) October 20, 2024
We definitely need to stop the propaganda in schools and teach kids skills that are actually useful."
🔥 from @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/jIsZWvFjS1
All of which is valid, makes sense, and exposes the practical degeneration of U.S. education under the Department of Education and, also, fed by unconstitutional college loans.
But that last part, the unconstitutionality of the system, is a key fulcrum point that Mr. Musk does not address.
It’s not sufficient to make valid points about the downward slide of educational quality, and it also contributes little to a deep-roots discussion of the problem to offer one’s personal observations that, as Mr. Musk says, “Schools should be focused on teaching kids about the world and teaching them useful skills, so that, when they graduate, they can do something useful.”
Unless one looks at the elephant in the room – that being the beast of government-run education – one cannot even allow for an understanding of the moral and economic fact that what is seen as “useful” should not and cannot be dictated by any political authority.
That determination is subjective, and must be left to parents and potential employers, not functionaries of the federal or state government. And since Mr. Musk does not explicitly espouse the elimination of the federal Department of Education, the unconstitutional roots of which only go back to the Carter Administration, Musk does not address the constitution or the deeper core of pedagogical corruption.
Donald Trump told Musk in August that he wanted to abolish the Department of Education and return the control of education policies to the states, so perhaps this also is something that Mr. Musk supports, but it is absolutely essential for Americans to understand that the reason to abolish the department is not based on its abysmal output.
The US Constitution has absolutely zero provision in it for a Department of Education, and, even if the Constitution were amended to allow for federal funding of education and the mandates the feds push onto schools (such as Title Nine), no politician or bureaucrat has any fundamental right to tell anyone, ever, that they must cough up money to pay for any education system.
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I often have mentioned to students that there is no “right” to a government-provided education, even on a state or local level. In short-hand, what that assumption means is that a child cannot educate himself or herself, therefore, supporters of the myth of government-run schooling claim that the government should tax people to pay for teachers to instruct the children. But if the government immorally claims the prerogative to tax person A, enslaving him or her for X number of hours a day to pay for it, and then hand out that money to educate person B’s child, i.e. pay for the teacher to teach, then why not remove the middle-man and force the teacher to toil for the state instead?
Obviously, that strips the artifice off the edict. It exposes the enslavement of taxation.
It also lets one see how such a system prevents parents from being able to decide what is appropriate for their child.
By forcing everyone to pay for a government education system, the bureaucracy forces taxpayers into the Tragedy of the Commons, which pits payers with differing ideas and goals against each other for supremacy over how the system will be managed.
So, hearing Mr. Musk discuss the practical outcomes might make one eager to hear a deeper measure of analysis, an analysis that looks at the reasons WHY those government systems never perform well, and those reasons are based on logic, economics, and morality.
Musk has provided fertile ground for further discussion, and he does appear to be willing to explore virtually any topic and to do so with respect for those who hold differing opinions.
As a result, one sees his recent, very adroit and correct observations as a good start, and one hopes he will continue the conversation, getting to the core of the problem: the immorality and unworkability of any government system telling people they must pay for it. At least more Americans might recognize the federalist system and work to return education to the states. That, itself, would be a moral improvement over the illegitimate DC-control grid under which we toil.
From there, people in each state can start their own discussions, and, perhaps, more decentralization and greater recognition of the immorality of government-run education will occur.
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