Not fear, but hope. And no.

While a good start at a rebuke, your post ultimately fails. The political environment, and educational policies, of the state capitals of those states may not have led to the abolition of public schooling in 1980 or so, but what about today? Have we reason to think that that is a valild fear for today’s political climate in those states?

It might not be, I’m no expert on any of them, but it’s at least possible.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_for_the_2008_presidential_election

You mean Kucinich, Dodd, and Gravel put together? Or individually? According to wikipedia, Paul has raised $7.5 million in the 3rd quarter of 2007, as compared to Gravel’s $131,000, Kucinich’s $1 million, and Dodd’s $1.5 million.

Of course, which is why there was no public school system in those states until the creation of the Department of Education in 1980.

You can love it all you like, but there’s still going to be more truth to it than you want to admit: Whatever fond hopes the campaign ‘reformers’ may have of pruning public discourse into some beautiful topiary, the only purpose the incumbent politicians actually crafting the laws have is making life harder on challengers and pesky critics.

They’re not regulating money. They’re using money as a handle to regulate speech. And they’re doing it because they don’t LIKE the speech.

What’s so hard to understand about this? Regulation by incumbent officeholders of the efforts by people to oust them from office is a conflict of interest so stark, so all consuming, that there is simply nothing to be gained from it that’s worth the risk.

Even if you could rightly call a 100% probability a “risk”.

He is the ONLY Republican who is anti-war. He’s stridently, militantly anti-war.

Among Democrats, we have Kucinich, Dodd, and Gravel, as anti-war candidates, and I’d bet their fundraising success is similar to Paul’s or exceeds it.

Paul is running a single-issue campaign. Giuliani keeps saying “9/11, 9/11” all the time, and Paul keeps saying “Get out of Iraq” all the time. Most people don’t agree with Paul’s radical destroy-the-government policies, so he’s focussing on the anti-war aspect, and getting lots of support that way. Smart guy.

I highly doubt it. Not just the excerpt above, but your whole comment.

But suppose (for the sake of argument) they do do away with public schools altogether – isn’t that what democracy is all about? If they want different kind of schools (like, say, the Amish), why shouldn’t they be able to have them?

“Stop hitting me”
“Stop defending yourself”

As long as the Republican is the aggressor. This is how Republicans view politics.

The strong Federal system probably lowers the number of crazy experiments, but it makes all of us victim to them with no choice but to leave the country when they do happen.