The rot in America is palpable; it oozes from the halls of our schools, drips like rancid water from the floors of Washington, and destroys the “unworthy.” In our uniquely American version of Reform, there is an implied “moral” component that allows its promoters to accumulate power for themselves. Under the “reform” banner, the United States has been transformed from a nation designed to restrain centralized power to likely the most concentrated control-mechanism of all time.
You may have already run afoul of this monster on the Potomac, this leviathan that has taken control of nearly every aspect of our lives, from taxes to laws to regulations; the “Federal” Government will likely have something to say about almost everything you’d like to do. And the great irony is that it has become the very antithesis of its name.
The issue here revolves around the concept of a “Federal Government.” Federalism was the central concept around which our Founding Fathers established this Government. It was the method our Founding Fathers used to restrain the central government. By creating a series of different governments, local, state, and national, each with its own distinct authority, provided limits to the concentration of power in the central government.
The most succinct description of what America’s founders were trying to accomplish was described by the Catholic Historian John Emerich Edward Dahlberg-Acton, or simply Lord Acton. He was a friend of such notables as UK Prime Minister Gladstone and perhaps the most significant American Historian of his time Alexis de Tocqueville. Acton was a great admirer of the US System of Government and saw this system of limited central Government as the best method to preserve liberty. After all, Acton said: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Acton saw that this American Federalism, which provided for only limited Governmental power at the National level, would have most of the significant political decisions made at the State level. Federalism was designed to prevent the concentration of power in a centralized authority, like a monarch or King. Instead, as much as possible, power and authority were granted to the people, and local governments were instituted to disperse authority.
I’m reminded of this goal of Federalism every time I drive out of my house. Down the street is an old one-room School House, the kind that dot this part of Pennsylvania. My neighborhood was settled shortly after the country’s founding, when iron ore was discovered here. It was in the early19th century when dozens of little towns and villages sprung up, the perfect place for a disperse government, for Federalism.
Each locality had its own schoolhouse. Schools were built by the local settlers, reflecting their pride in their new community. Not only did these new Americans build the school, they hired the teacher or conducted classes themselves, set the curriculum, provided the budget, and maintained the facility. Today, most former schools have been converted into private homes, each as lovingly cared for as before.
Here was Federalism at its finest. Local schools are run and provided for by the nearby citizenry.
A century and a half later, when I entered elementary school, that’s how things still worked in our country. Although, sleek new buildings had replaced the one-room School House, still, education was a local affair. The local School Board set the curriculum, determined which textbooks to use, and collected the taxes used to operate the school. My mother was even on the local PTA (Parent Teachers Association), and there was a real sense that the School Board and School Administration were anxious to implement many of the PTA’s recommendations. Federalism still held sway in America of the 1960s. And it was working, by the mid-1960s, the country had the highest standardized SAT scores, ever.
However, our Educational System was about to change.
Ten years before, in 1954, there came a Supreme Court Decision, Brown vs. The Board of Education, without going too far afield; this decision over-turned an earlier decision (Plessy vs. Ferguson) which provided for separate schools for different races or, in other words, segregation. The Supreme Court was reforming our education system. No longer was “separate but equal” to be permitted, schools would henceforth be integrated. The country saw this as positive Reform.
But, as is often the case, it wasn’t the initial Reform that has become the issue; it’s what the “Federal” Government does following the initial Reform that becomes problematic.
The fact that this took place in the deep South is essential in appreciating the dynamic. The South had been the center of segregation since the Civil War. And this dispute revolved around the schools in Little Rock, Arkansas (home of future President Bill Clinton). Although many schools in the South did comply and opened their doors for their new Black Students, the Governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, refused, openly defying the Supreme Court’s ruling.
US President Dwight Eisenhower was now in a difficult position. He couldn’t allow a State Governor outright to defy the highest legal authority in the nation. So, in the end, Eisenhower ordered the US Army’s 101st Airborne to Little Rock and provided safe passage to the new students.
I believe that Eisenhower did the right thing, the moral thing. It was “Reform,” as it should be done.
But our Federal Government received the the wrong message. To the Government Bureaucrats in Washington the Supreme Court Decision implied that local control of education should be severely limited. This was the first step in the Federal Government becoming the ultimate education authority.
Yes, local School Boards would still administer their schools, but only within the framework and constraints of the Federal Government. The nation’s citizens could not be trusted to have complete control over their schools. And little by little, the Federal Government has been removing the initiative and authority of local citizens to run their child’s education.
Although the US Department of Education has assiduously avoided directly mandating school curriculum, still left to the States, they do have four principal objectives: financial aid, data, and research, focus on “key issues,” and ensuring equal access.
Perhaps the most visible recent Reform has been the new interpretation of sex-based discrimination and a prime example of a new weaponized “reform.” Reform that no longer reflects the norms and values of a majority of Americans. The 1972 Education Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, known simply as Title IX, prohibit discrimination based on sex. Recently the Biden Administration has defined one’s “sex” to include the broadest range of gender options.
Today, according to the “Federal” Government, there is a literal alphabet of sexes. Because Title IX enforcement now comes under the purview of the “Federal” Government, they can prohibit any discrimination across this new spectrum of sexual behavior. And just like that, we have an all-new “Story Hour” for our prepubescent children, in which Sexual Provocateurs display their genitalia along with “Hansel and Gretel.”
Do you think most American parents would approve of this behavior? Put another way, do you think that if schools were still controlled locally, their curriculum would include providing Sexual Provocateurs close contact with elementary-age students?
It’s all a stunning example of how “Reform” has been weaponized. What began as a noble cause, the desegregation of education in the South, has now morphed into the libertine exploitation of our youth. Thus “Reform” has become so twisted that it is now corrupt.
