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[Sil Greene <quack AT ibiblio.org>]

Alan MacHett wrote:
.:Michael Best wrote:

.:
.:> Is the public school system "left" or "right"?  I don't know.  But
.:> my general idea is that most laws are restrictive at least to some
.:> people. Let's look at the public school system again.  Laws that
.:> forced racial integration of schools allowed blacks to attend
.:> schools they previously did not have access to.  But it also
.:> restricted the ability of whites to choose to send their kids to
.:> an all white school.
.:>
.:
.:...??!
.:
.:I'm not even going to touch that.
.:

I will.  Michael's trying to argue that the existence of public 
education, and the fact that he pays taxes that fund public 
education, restricts him to using public education.  I call BULLSHIT.  
Michael, Alan, and I all pay into the same public education funds with our 
taxes.  I don't know about the other two, but I don't have kids.  So 
there's no economic disincentive to keeping your kids out of the public 
system; EVERYONE pays those taxes.

Back to the racial issue.  If you want your kids to go to some 
all-cracker school, and you want it badly enough, you can, like 
everything else in this world, find some way to afford it.  Stop whining, 
trade the Lexus for a 15-year-old Honda, stop pouring your paycheck down 
the Cable/Satellite TV drain.  Presto, you can now afford to send your 
kids to the KKK's Boarding School For Wayward White Kids Of Pudd'nHead 
Parents.

This was a discussion of restrictive laws, and this example doesn't fit.
Racial integration did not make it illegal for anyone to send their kids 
to an all {white,black,yellow,red,magenta,fuscia,cyan} school if they 
wanted, or hell, STARTING one if they chose.  It just said that the 
government-provided public schools weren't going to be among those.

--S