The Constitutional Liberty Movement

Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

Theme-Song And Education Policy By The Constitutional Liberty Movement

Saepe Errans, Numquam Dubitans

Eadem Mutata Resurgo

Every great movement — political, religious, economic, social, moral — is carried on the wings of a song, sometimes several songs, but always one in particular. This song reaches into the depths, de profundis, and brings to ecstatic expression that which it is there. Examples abound. A movement’s song is its carrying wave, its power in being. Without a song a movement shrivels.

The Constitutional Liberty Movement needs a theme-song, something that fills the function of For What It’s Worth (Stephen Stills, 1967, debuted by Buffalo Springfield) in today’s context, but with multi-generational impact, and fresh and forward, pretty and thrilling, not brooding, cynical or melancholy.

It has to be singable a cappella. Instrumentals must be non-essential. It has to work a cappella spontaneously. It has to start easily by a group extempore. And it has to breathe, to exercise the lungs, make them work, fill and refill to their depths, which is the glory of the German Chorale and slightly less so the French Metrical Psalm, which together bore the power of the Reformation. The Star-Spangled Banner and Ein’ Feste Burg ist Unser Gott(1) fit this description. But something fresh is needed, and uncorrupted by egoistic mangling at sporting events, which are driven by blood-lust.

Breath is Life. Life is Breath. The glory of the bagpipe and the pipe organ is their breathing, their great volumes of air sustainment.

The Constitutional Liberty Movement needs such a song written this century or late in the last. We need a theme-song, one that makes us breathe. Ladies and gentlemen, get busy. Or listen/see about one and write it down. Don’t talk about it, write it. The basis is the lyric, the poem. The tune is secondary and arrives to match the lyric.

Anyone who doesn’t know that the poisonous presence in American society is its system of education doesn’t know a damn thing worth knowing. So here’s a proposed policy goal of the Constitutional Liberty Movement, along the lines of expanding liberty:

1- Reverse the economics of the system of education: instead of students/parents paying schools/teachers for a student’s education, have schools/teachers pay students/parents for a student’s education, to include the full cost of supporting the student and the learning process they undergo.

The customer is always right. Today, students/parents are customers, buying and extorting, and schools/teachers are retailers, selling and fleecing. Each destroys the other. In classical education, a teacher supports their students entirely while they are their students. The teacher, being the “customer,” the one paying for the student’s education, is in the power position, which is as it should be. The student has to learn or be gone.

This reduces the number of “students” — a good thing; students only abide — and causes them to work hard at learning, a task for which they have this one chance in life, and one chance only, no matter what the nature of the system of education. The result is concentrated learning and multiplied creativity, which, with love as its final fruit, is the goal of education per se.

Pedigreed numbers do not a thriving society make. Learned persons do. Pedigrees are born and bought. Learning is earned and lived.

2- Task parents with homeschooling their children through age nine (9), to include reading, writing, arithmetic and self-driven adventures. Require of parents homeschooling sufficient for their children to begin the schooled study of philosophy, theology, science and mathematics at age ten (10) followed by either classical liberal arts or classical vocational training starting at age twelve (12), per the child’s inner necessity.

Include for students past age nine (9) opportunities (1) to jump ahead in the ordinary age-to-content expansion and (2) to change, once, from one track to the other at age fifteen (15) or sooner should the student desire or their teachers commend and the student accept it.

3- Remove the compulsion of schooled education past age nine (9), that is, past the obligation of parents to homeschool their children in reading, writing, arithmetic and self-driven adventures.

4- Make all schools/teachers (except homeschooling parents) not employed by a private school institutions/employees of a state government, paid by taxes on all citizens who have no offspring or whose offspring are not currently enrolled at a state or private school. Eliminate school districts.

5- Close the federal DOE and end federal funding of education except for the National Service Academies. Privatize academic research and development or let it cease to exist.

There is a policy agenda for the Constitutional Liberty Movement, expanding liberty at the root of tyranny, which is academe. Get that done and the rest will self-correct and self-heal.

The Constitutional Liberty Movement can build freshly what descendants recall fondly in poetry, sound and sight as They Don’t Make ‘Em Like That Anymore. It has to or fold. A new song would make and reverse the economics of education.

Footnotes

¹^{Ein’ Feste}^{Burg ist}^{Unser Gott}^{was composed by}^{Martin Luthe}^{r to celebrate the failure of the}^{Ottoman Turkish Mohammedans}^{at the}^{Siege of Vienna}^{in 1529. The mighty castle (German}^burg^{) that is God, Luther points out, held against the enemies of The Christ, namely, Mohammedans. The}^{Siege of Vienna}^{was a draw militarily, although the Mohammedans had to quit the field and their project. At the}^{Battle of Vienna}^{in 1683, the Mohammedans were decisively defeated by a Christian alliance led principally by}^{King John III Sobieski of Poland}^{. In 1798 Mohammedans lost their pretense of inviolability when their territory was successfully invaded first by French forces (}^Napoleon^{) and then by English (}^Nelson^).