Chapter 4: Homeschooling For Liberty

If you are a father or mother, Mark Steyn sounds more convincing than John Galt. Offspring are our time machines, extending the reach of our values into centuries we will not live to see. Unless an outside agent initiates force to change the natural order of things, children normally carry forward the passions of their parents. Normal teenage rebellion is such a terrifying anomaly in the history of mankind, that Old Testament law considered it to be a capital offence.

When the Prussian government implemented the first truancy laws in the early 1800s, they had to march weeping kids away from their families at bayonet point. This definitely violates the zero aggression principle. Imagine a commodity of so little value that the government cannot even give it away; recipients must be forced to partake. And why the application of force? Because the state needs its docile taxpayers and cannon fodder. With characteristic thoroughness, the Prussian state decided to turn 94% of its children into those who simply followed orders. Another 4.5% went into the “talented and gifted” programs, receiving an education designed for the janissaries, the professional servitors of the state: accountants, preachers, lawyers, professors, physicians, and so forth. The children of the ruling elite, the remaining 1.5%, received a traditional education designed to impart flexibility, creativity, and rigorous thinking skills.