Definition of oxymoron: Coercing kids to learn non-coercive

According to Douglas French, writing for the Laissez Faire Club ("Leave the world alone. It manages itself.") an Idaho state Senator wants to "require every Idaho high school student to read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and pass a test on it to graduate from high school."

Coercing people to learn about non-coercion? Can you say oxymoron?

Teaching non-coercion requires living it, and that requires a free market in education.

Every kind and size and philosophy of non-coercive government-liberated education and educational facility should be left alone to flourish or fail on its own merits as determined by free people in a free marketplace of ideas.

Flashback: Abolish Public Education: Privatize All Schools - Ron Paul Flashback: Abolish Public Education: Privatize All Schools - Ron Paul

We could then choose from for-profit schools, charity schools, religion-run schools, volunteer-run community-based schools, homeschooling, and even unschooling. The free market possibilities are endless, providing something for every wallet from traditional classrooms to storefront schools to the super rich école to corporate sponsored training centers to online distance learning to smart phone courses to competing McDonald's-style franchised schoolrooms from coast to coast.

And other ideas nobody has even thought of yet.

Someone could even start an organization that founds Ayn Rand Schools around the country much as Montessori Schools have been established to teach Maria Montessori's methods, assuming that Leonard Piekoff or someone doesn't have a government enforced copyright on Rand's name.

Libertarians would have little argument with anyone if they would just reject coercion and offer their ideologies on a voluntary basis.

Want to make Karl Marx or Adolf Hitler required reading in schools? Fine – as long as adult students and the parents of younger children choose their privately funded schools voluntarily and agree to the requirements.

Just don't force anyone to participate.

This works for everything else too.

Want social welfare programs? Great! Join with everyone else who agrees with you and create your own free market charitable associations. Millions of people would love to help their fellow down-and-outers by volunteering their time, money, counseling, hands-on assistance, advocacy and other efforts.

Just don't force anyone to participate.

Don't believe in for-profit companies or markets? Then develop your own systems of interaction like barter, moneyless gift exchanges, swap meets, voluntary workers cooperatives or personal services exchanges.

Just don't force anyone to participate.

How is it that virtually everyone in America understands the desirability of religious freedom but just can't seem to grasp the concept of applying that same freedom to everything else in society?

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