The Levy issue represents the tip of a brewing iceberg of conflict caused by deeply entrenched ideas that simply don’t work.

Public Education is the process of gathering the resources of the whole to pay for a service to a subset of that whole for the benefit of the whole.

It is inherently a collective thing and violates the constitutional limits of a tax – that is, that the tax either be apportioned (everybody pays) or an excise (only those using the service pay)

The public school system, proposed by Thomas Jefferson in Virginia was back when there was no property tax, no income tax, and when individuals generally paid taxes voluntarily.

The system has morphed into a socialist form that violates the constitutional limits designed to prevent what we see happening now from happening.

Property taxes were not always there and in fact, we used to have “allodial” title to land instead of “fee simple”. An allodial title simply means that it cannot be taxed. This worked because only individual citizens could have that kind of title. All other owners such as corporations and trusts had to have a taxable “fee simple” title and so the corporations paid the bills while the individuals enjoyed liberty and unhampered prosperity.

Over time the corporations took over, as Abe Lincoln so eloquently warned us about:

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

—U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)

The idea and reason for public education was laid out in the Northwest Ordinance:

Article 3 of the the Northwest Ordinance of 1787:

Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

Morality is one of the main goals of public education – or so it was when it was conceived.

Basic morals simply include the golden rule – or as the Bible says – love thy neighbor as thyself.

Today we have a community that is aging, most of whom have long since raised their families and paid their taxes along the way to support not only public education, but the military, social security, student loans, all the regulatory agencies, congress, the supreme court, the CIA, NSA, DEA, DOD, NASA, FDA, EPA, OSHA, USDA, etc.

We took what they had left and purchased land here to get away from the high cost of government and hopefully retire in peace.

But now the prices of land have quadrupled, the government has gone mad printing money, and the cost of education has continually risen just as the value of our money has declined.

So this is the bind the electorate of this area finds itself in and indeed, the entire country and even the world.

The state of Idaho has a constitutional mandate to provide for public education but it has not met this requirement and the courts agree.

I very much doubt that anyone voting against the levy does so because they want an ignorant and imoral populace.

The simple fact is, the level of waste and corruption of government at all levels is reaching a breaking point. It is dividing the people into fighting each other for an ever smaller pie to go around.

This is the end of democracy that our founders predicted and why they hated that form of government. As soon as a minority figures out how to trick the majority into voting for spending for X, the war begins because inherently, these scheemes are theft – common but invisible, collective theft.

I personally have experienced education done right as I was fortunate enough to have my children educated in a private school. It wasn’t cheap for me to pay that bill, but it was far cheaper than what the public schools were spending per pupil and the quality of our private school was probably a factor of 3-7 times better IMHO. Meanwhile, I paid for public education too so I have paid twice.

The proposed charter school idea that was recently shared locally is on a similar track and these schools are prospering and popping up all over the country, costing less, doing more, with no tax dollars to help them get started. There are however strings attached to these schools.

Probably another key problem is the teachers unions that exist at every level of education and even at the national level. These collective power gatherers do have a purpose and use but there are absolutely no checks against their power that wields significant influence on government and the school system, even though their paychecks come from our taxes.

Our community is simply ahead of other ones on this issue because we have an aging populace with an independent spirit combined with massive growth due to the very attractive, relatively low-cost, of this area.

Boise is going through a similar growth spurt that is changing the power balances in the state largely due to lack of proper representation of the more rural areas.

This lack of representation is due to the absence of a truly bi-cameral house in the legislature. All representatives, county, state and federal, are elected popularly which leans our republic towards pure democracy.

The lack of city representation with the counties, county representation with the state, and the state representation with the federal government, is precisely what removes the “big boys” from fighting for the “little guy”.

It becomes you vs the IRS, or the state or the federal government instead or your city, county or state. This is the whole point of “federalism” – a hierarchy of entities that can deal with the one above it adequately.

The power is skewed towards the more densely populated areas and they tend to take control of the less dense areas. We see this happening all over.

To summarize, our problems with the school system is merely a reflection of our problems with democracy and is caused by a loss of the checks and balances put into place by our wise founders for our protections and prosperity.

I do not have a solution for this but I do see how democratic ideas are dividing us all into a civil war, destroying our churches, families, freedoms, prosperity and eventually our lives.

Reform must come locally first, as the decay at the top is insurmountable. We as a community MUST solve this problem and it will take a deep hard look at how we govern ourselves to meet that challenge.