Home Schooling, Christchurch Rebuild, and that Tyrant's Call - The Common Good

Stupid me, I just assumed it as axiomatic home-schooling your children would be a right in every Western country. It still is in New Zealand, thankfully, indeed, I have a sister who has home-schooled her two well-adjusted boys through all the age groups to polytechnic; and one of those boys would have definitely fallen through the cracks of a state school system which could not have provided him the time he required, which his mother could.

But of course I was wrong on my initial assumption: it’s not axiomatic at all. This is a topic at the centre of this blug. I was gobsmacked to read the below story via Fairfax this morning.

 A German family who say they were persecuted for home-schooling their children have failed in a last-ditch bid to stay in New Zealand. 

The Schoeneich family's second attempt to gain refugee status, this time on humanitarian grounds, has failed and they now face deportation. 

Home schooling is illegal in Germany and the family claims they would face fines, loss of custody and possible imprisonment if they returned

(Snip)

After fighting with education officials in Germany - including receiving more than $6000 in fines - the family came to New Zealand in 2008 on temporary visas.

If you are not free to educate your own children, then what freedoms do you really have? What type of society do we have when the state takes over the parenting to this extent? Although the principle here is deeper, and attaches as ever into the huge tentacles of the Western surveillance state. Noting first that I’m an atheist (humanist), on principle I am in full agreement with the Schoeneichs’ reasons for wanting to home school:

The parents, Andrea and Gerno, decide to home-school their children on religious grounds, believing the German state education was socialist and conflicted with their strong Christian beliefs.

(Snip)

Home Schooling New Zealand principal Todd Roughton said he felt for the Schoeneichs, who should be able to control their children's education. "They are being denied by the state." 

Home Schooling New Zealand provides support for parents teaching about 750 New Zealand children at home a Christian "world view". 

Roughton said state schools - in New Zealand and Europe - imposed a world view that was morally abhorrent for many Christian families. "If we were obliged to put our kids in a state school, we would leave the country too." 

Why would countries criminalise home-schooling? Because the Western surveillance state now demands it is the alpha and omega in the lives of every individual; the state will bend the minds of the young to its state-centric view of the slave state, regardless of what parents think, regardless when parents know better for their own children: the individual is being exterminated by the state, again, and ‘this time’ the state has largely won. Classical liberalism as the founding ethic of a free West, is not only lost, it is commonly reviled from the front of the classroom. I only need to copy the pertinent part of my by-line above:

When was the last time you heard even a lone voice from the Fortress of Legislation in Wellingrad use either of the words liberty or freedom? I haven't heard those words for at least twenty years. If this is the free West, doesn't that strike you as odd? The West was built on a classical liberalism that has been subverted and defeated by Antonio Gramsci standing at the head of our classrooms, and he won because he caught the hearts of the children, and was able to make the first imprint before they were capable of critical thinking. That was why Comrade Antonio, founder of the Italian Communist Party, said the free West would not be beaten by the gun, but slowly stamping the minds of the impressionable young. The enemies of the free society didn't need AK 47's, just 'enough' progressive teachers in a state school system to preach the Big Brother State in everything.

And how did the state win? It was so successful this time because it appealed to a human’s better nature: the common good, a doublespeak ethic it imprints onto the minds of the young. Emoting over thinking, again. I’ve had another demonstration just yesterday of the muddled thinking coming from our state schooled minds that ludicrously derides individualism as selfishness now, and preaches the state in all things to pursue the common good, by sacrificing the individual’s pursuit of happiness to it:

Tweeter (regarding the current situation with the Christchurch earthquake rebuild):

"“Remember that this is for the greater good of the city.” No comfort to those of us being screwed by the Government"

My initial reply:

Hey, you're turning libertarian :) Every tyranny in history justified itself on common good. Only individuals have rights.

Tweeter’s reply:

ha! If I believed it were for the common good, then I might have more time for it

The Tweeter seems completely oblivious to the contradiction between their first post and the last. I asked her to define ‘the common good’ for me, but received no reply. For the record, as I said in my tweet, the common good has been the battle cry of almost every tyrant throughout history. The common good has been so important, apparently, that hundreds of millions of individuals over the twentieth century had to be exterminated or killed by the state for it. Rights cannot attach to a collective, when you try to, you open the gates to tyranny and atrocity. That same common good is currently being used in Christchurch to usurp private property rights on a breath-taking scale. Just as the common good is used as the excuse to steal the property and effort of productive individuals while making those individuals victims to a department of state with literally the powers of the true Orwellian police state. To be meaningful, and cause no harm through the force of state, rights can and must only attach to individuals. A society must only base itself on protecting the smallest minority: the rights and property of an individual (and especially from the abuse of state). But now I’m talking about a free and peaceful world so far from the one we have, it’s depressing, so I wish my readers a Merry Christmas, thank you for reading, and though I oft times wonder why I do this, I hope you catch my blug again in the New Year (albeit, posts will be spartan through to the end of March).

Footnote:

There is also a secondary issue of immigration in this story: the libertarian view on that is as long as the Schoeneichs’ sign up to not using the welfare state, and they do not seek to force their views, etc, on others, then they are welcome to stay in New Zealand, as is anybody on this basis.