Therefore, I eagerly await the application of this principle – which I totally believe he holds – to his positions on welfare, health care, housing, labor policy, the environment, economic bailouts, entitlements, farm subsidies, taxes . . .

As much as I believe that opponents of school choice are mistaken, I’m trying be fair to their perspective and not throw around the charge of hypocrisy too easily.

First, nailing down what Obama has said about school choice (or almost anything, for that matter) is like trying to nail down jello. Before the Wisconsin primary Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that he was open to voucher programs and would be informed by the evidence. After winning the primary he quickly backtracked to the position he stated in the third debate, which was that he believed the evidence already failed to support the wisdom of government programs to pay for students to attend private schools. Now, believing that voucher programs didn’t “work” to improve average student achievement doesn’t mean that you oppose people (including yourself) ever choosing a private school. It’s not hypocrisy to oppose government payment for plastic surgery as ineffective for improving public health, while purchasing it yourself.

I never heard Obama say that choice diverted public funds from public schools (and as numerous studies have shown — public schools tend to be left with significantly more resources per pupil when vouchers are introduced). But even if he did, one could argue that voucher programs faciliate the transfer of funds, making it more problematic than individual, unsubsidized choosing of a private school.

Lastly, I don’t think the “Buy American” analogy works. Obama and other opponents of vouchers don’t have to be against people sending their kids to private school. They are just against people doing it with government assistance.

I think choice supporters are drawn to the hypocrisy charge because they (in my view, rightly) disagree with choice opponents about the justice of taxing people for an education, compelling them to attend school, and then assigning them to schools that rich people can avoid. I agree with you and other voucher supporters that this arrangement is not just ineffective educationally but also horribly unjust. Fair-minded voucher opponents also see this arrangement as unjust, but want to correct the injustice by improving the public schools to which students are assigned. I (and other voucher supporters) don’t see that as a solution, both because it is impractical and because it doesn’t fully address the individual wishes of families.

But I think we overplay our hand when we accuse them of hypocrisy. They have a different perspective on the way to correct the injustice of the status quo and we need to convince them to change that perspective.

We also care because it provides validation for our preferred education sector. We have a favorite brand and want to see the ultimate celebrity endorsement of that brand.

I was hoping they’d pick a charter school. Why? Because I like DC charters and would want the positive publicity to give them a boost. People on this blog hoped for private because they like private schools and want validation for that preference. Same for the public school holdouts like Jay Matthews and skuleboi.

In the end, I Hope ™ those kids get a school where they can be safe and learn and have a semi-normal childhood.

Which is why I got a C on my graduate paper on Plato. I proceeded to do an economic analysis on Laws – the trade restrictions, money system, property rights and the size of the bureaucracy.

Needless to say, my paper failed because I “refused to take Plato on his own terms” something I felt other philosophers (greater than I) had already done. Instead I choose to attack Plato on expected real outcomes not philosophical ones (which I saw as problematic since it seemed to me Plato believed only Philosophers understood and those who understood were Philosophers…unfortunately I lack the mental capacity to attack Plato’s logic as a massive tautology, but that is what it seems like to me).

On a side note, as a percentage of the population, Plato’s second best Republic would require a bureaucracy that is larger than the US government. I believe that would be a considerably problem since farm technology of the day was less efficient and required more manpower to produce food to sustain a human population (even one that was supposed to be static).

Savor the sweet, sweet irony!

And let’s leave Plato out of this. The Republic was not a proposal for what politics should really look like, but an allegory to illustrate a point about the human soul.

I find it scary that educated men and women see all the problems of this country as a systemic part of our country’s capitalist heritage – that outlawing private enterprise and voluntary transactions among adults will somehow enlighten us, makes us virtuous, or even intelligent citizens of democracy.

Eric Hoffer, a notable American philosopher once said “Nowhere is there such measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.”

But I think, since the time of Plato, that the reality is this: the most educated among us loathe and fear human freedom, seeing as how human freedom does not produce the democratic man, virtuous woman, or socially just society they prefer – however they’ve defined it.