An Open Letter to James Lindsay
Preface
Today the American Sun released a piece of mine attempting to find a solution to the right’s perennial problem of infighting. Taking Father Alexander Schmemann’s response to Metropolitan Philaret’s Sorrowful Epistle, as a model for how disagreements are to be handled, while highlighting Schmemann’s own emphasis on following the canonical procedure of addressing concerns and disagreements, instead of making final judgements unilaterally (FED! FED!), I tried to provide a way around the admitted goal of various NGOs, who have confessed in Nature Journal that they are intentionally manufacturing infighting on the right. To understand the context in which I write this letter, I ask that you read my American Sun piece first.
It is one thing to tell, it is another to show, so in the interest of showing, I would like to publicly address what James Lindsay has Tweeted in regard to school choice. This is an issue close to my heart, being a school choice activist, and an evangelist of spigot pointing. In the spirit of Father Schmemann, I want to make explicit the following, without which this letter would be null,
-I take you to be a legitimate voice on the right, and a friend of America. If I did not, I would not be writing a letter to you.
-I do not think myself a court, or any authority capable of rendering judgment. If I did, this letter would be a school master admonishing a student, not one peer disagreeing with another.
-In writing this letter, I am raising a concern I have with what you have said, in hopes that either you will see my position, or that this conversation will make its way into the larger right’s discourse, and that this broader community can pass judgment upon our stances (assuming we do not come to an agreement), a judgment that I (and hope we) will take as binding.
As I said in my American Sun piece, the right does not have a canonical structure like the Church does, nor is it as united as the Church, so the last bullet point gets a little fuzzy when it comes to our mutual assent to the larger community’s judgment, but I feel the need to write you, and try my hand at “canonical disagreement.”
Letter
Dear Mr. Lindsay,
I was recently shown one of your Tweets rejecting school choice, where on April 18th you said “When did a government check become a conservative policy? New entitlements aren't conservative. When did wealth redistribution become conservative? If you have three kids, you get ~$24k of government money but didn't pay anything like that in taxes. Socialist.” Elsewhere you have expressed concern that as soon as an institution receives a subsidy, that it becomes subservient to the whims of the government. Are conservatives, in advocating subsidies, not following suit of the left, with their wealth redistribution schemes, and, despite the rhetoric, ending back with a government controlled education system?
These are serious concerns you bring up, and ones that are too rarely treated with the proper respect. Many would simply call you a “lolbert”, without knowing that Albert Jay Nock, a Georgist economically, had very similar concerns, and was quite right in his assessment that as political power grows, social power wanes. Regardless of the economic views of a rightist, he will affirm some view of “organic society”, meaning that he either despises, or at the very least do not prefer, top-down meddling in local affairs. Furthermore, when the tentacles of the left have reached into so many of our institutions, it would seem only natural that federal subsidies would let the beast into private and homeschools. If government money is paying for it, do they not have a say in what is being taught? These are weighty issues, and cannot be cast aside.
First, let me paint the situation from my point of view, and then assuage what concerns you have. Public schools have been declining for a long time. Most high schoolers have never read Milton, Dante, more than two complete Federalist Papers, the Adams-Jefferson correspondence, do not understand Shakespeare’s allusions, and cannot define the modern European countries, let alone ancient Europe. Instead of producing young men and women who can speak, write, and argue well, most public schools pump out candidates for specialization, who can do little outside their niche, lack significant development of the virtues, let alone basic social skills. There are exceptions, both in terms of students and schools, but exceptions prove the rule.
Not only is the general level of education declining, but public schools are quickly becoming, if they are not already, indoctrination camps for the left. Trans ideology is the norm, young white boys are taught to hate themselves, and Christianity is professed to be the religion of oppression. Combined with drug use, a culture of narcissism edged on by social media addiction, and what can only be described as an animalistic dating world, normal graduates can only but be the products of God’s good grace. We are subsidizing the indoctrination of our children with our own earnings, and face imprisonment for refusal. Exit strategies are limited due to money, and are only available to the better off, or those willing to take a substantial hit in quality of life. Hence, to give children a chance at a quality education, and to prevent them from being convinced to self-mutilate in the name of “gender affirmation”, told they are evil because of their skin color (which has resulted in a handful of suicides), and taught to forsake Christ, I can only but support legislative attempts to provide an exit strategy.
Having staked out why I believe school choice is a necessity, let me address the two main concerns I have seen you raise.
First, you seem opposed to conservatives advocating for subsidies at all, as this would constitute wealth redistribution. Defining who and who is not a conservative can be tricky. I take it that someone like Russel Kirk has a pretty good claim to being its exemplar, but many disagree. Yet, if an American conservative means anything, it would be hard to argue that he does not wish to conserve the American system as it was envisioned by its Founding Fathers. They were not infallible, but to paint them, or their system, as “socialist” would bring us outside of conservatism, and land us somewhere around Moldbugian Neo-Reaction. Typically, it is assumed that in the beginning, America was more or less lassiez-faire, and only later did the government get seriously involved in the economy (either because of greed, or to stop greed, depending who you ask), yet this is false.
One of the first acts of Congress was to pass a series of contracts in 1798 with Will Whitney for between 10,000 and 15,000 rifles, with the expectation of him developing an interchangeable parts process. Of the Founders, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were the most public supporters of the venture. Jefferson, the Francophile he was, was encouraged by visiting factories in France who produced firearms in a similar manner to Whitney, factories also subsidized by the government. You can read about Whitney’s factory in depth here, which covers not only the rifle contract, but also the history of the cotton-gin.
As early as 1798 we see the government subsidizing industries it finds vital, in this case for national defense. The American system, that I would assume to be still pure as of 1798, allowed the government to fund private industry that it deemed integral to its interests. Seeing subsidies are sourced from the tax-payer, the early American government was involved in what you call "wealth redistribution." Does this mean early America was socialist? Of course not. Governments, by their nature, have the power of the purse, and, taken in conjunction with the words of Russel Kirk, “the realm of politics and the realm of morals do not exist in separate spheres, Comte notwithstanding; the state exists to enforce a moral system, to redeem men from the impulses of the flesh and their ignorance. And morality, in turn, must be supported by the sanction of religious faith, or it cannot stand”1, governments use this power to enforce a moral order.
Now, it might be said that government subsidies, even if justifiable from a conservative standpoint, and even if it does not imply socialism, should only be done when the government is run by good men, because bad men will use subsidies to sink their hooks into every industry, and control them by the threat of pulling funding. Before getting to my preferred response, I have some familiarity with private schools that benefit from school choice bills. To name drop the really good ones would do harm, but those with only one toe in the world of private, alternative, or Christian education, will be able to easily locate quality schools. Despite benefiting from school choice bills, despite the apparent leftist hegemony, they remain true to their principles, and teach everything you want your child taught (while also leaving out the garbage). I dare to say this about a number of charter schools too, but here I need to be extra careful about painting targets. When it comes to actual examples, the problem you worry about Mr. Lindsay, is not as universal as you may fear. There are leftist private and charter schools, I do not deny this, and while this tends to be internal to the school’s administration (unfortunately a lot of Catholic schools are self-admittedly leftist, and take this as a badge of pride), I am willing to grant that it has something to do with bullying via the purse. Yet, granting this, I can safely say that this concern is nowhere near as widespread as an observer might abstract. Euclidian geometry, no matter how perfect, no matter how logical, does not apply to all surfaces.
Even yet, there is always the worry that, though today the sun be out, the next might see rain. What if all the good schools benefiting from school choice bills get subjected to federal dictate in the future (assuming the states would be okay handing off that area of their domain)? This is, though I highly doubt its plausibility, is a possibility. There is a solution to this, and it goes by the name of the 45K Plan. Quoting from this blog’s policy page,
“For proper education teaching virtue and the love of God, let the state funds allotted to students for public education be given to families so they can then use those funds to either homeschool their children or enroll them in a private or charter school. On average this amounts to $15,000 a year per student, and on average this is higher than the tuition of private school. No new taxes are needed, as this money is already in the system, but will just be distributed differently.”
Not only would this be the most generous allotment for school choice in American history, and since most private schools are less expensive per year than their public school counterparts it would allow young scholars to attend any school of their choosing, but since families would receive the money directly, schools would not be subject to government regulation, since they would not be receiving one cent from the taxpayer. Depending on how the bill is passed, it might be possible to limit how parents might be able to spend their 45K Bucks, but the strong version of this bill, the one I prefer, is to simply send a check in the mail, with a letter advising parents to use it for their child’s education, but allowing them to spend it how they wish. Some parents will use it for schooling, others for booze, still others for building a business, but, as much as I do not want to admit it, no safety net will prevent bad parents from being bad parents. Even under the current arrangement, parents spend their children’s money on all sorts of things, and keeping the status quo, no matter how unfortunate, is a small price to pay for complete educational freedom.
Mr. Lindsay, I do not write this as a “refutation” of you, or to make myself appear smart, but to address what I see in your recent statements. You have valid concerns, ones that cannot be taken lightly, and those that do, do so at the expense of their own prudence. Yet, concerns are just that, and ought to be hashed out in public debate, considering their possible solutions. You jump straight into accusations, which I will chalk up to the nature of Twitter, but accusations, even if for effect, cause division, and, worse yet, imprudent policy decisions. Thus, as one peer to another, I ask you to consider what I have to say, correct me where I am wrong, and should we not come to an understanding, submit this to the larger community, accepting their judgment.
Your brother on the right,
Withered Rose
Kirk, Russel. The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot. Salem, New Jersey. Regnery Publishing, 2019. 308