When Good Republicans Go Bad

Once upon a time, I was a good little conservative. I put in my time for the Republican Party. I defended the Party on every issue. I voted for every Republican candidate.

Today, I encourage people to not vote Republican in the congressional elections this November. I haven’t volunteered on any campaigns this year. My views have taken a sharp turn into the libertarian fringe.

So, what happened? How does a good conservative girl go bad?

There were many things that played a role, but the main reason is that I started homeschooling.

As I said in a comment on the last post, many of us go through life not realizing how controlling the government is until we want to do something out of the mainstream, such as homeschooling.

Since most of us went to public school and send our kids there, we never think much about it. The reality is that the government is set up (especially in Vermont) with the assumption that it controls your child’s education.

If you want to homeschool, you have to submit your curriculum for approval at the start of the year and then prove that the curriculum was followed at the end of the year. Then the state Department of Education nit-picks the enrollment at random.

For example, last year I was told that the math section was unacceptable for my second-grader, but the same identical math section was fine for my third-grader. When I called, I was told that they thought it sounded too hard for a second-grader. WTF? That’s why I homeschool, partly, because the ass-backward government doesn’t want to allow people excel.

Then there is the intrusion into private information. With the new homeschool law that just passed (which allows parents who are acceptable to the state for 3 years omit the curriculum, in exchange for requiring even more information in the assessment) the state decided it has the right to require parents to prove that they have custody of their children before they can homeschool. They actually sent me a letter asking why my husband and I have a different last name than the children. The state has no right to require that information.

Most people think that the state has an interest in making sure children are educated and therefore justified in requiring homeschoolers to jump through hoops every year. Part of the problem is that they do not understand what a hassle it is. It is stressful and it takes away from what we are here to do - educate our children. I have to spend time making the sure the state is satisfied instead of doing other things that would be more beneficial to my family.

More importantly, they don’t understand is this: If a law exists to “catch the bad people” by examining everybody, then that law operates on a presumption of guilt. In this country we are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. We are also supposed to have privacy rights.

Here is what I don’t understand. How can it be that when a woman wants to kill her child in utero terminate her pregnancy it is a constitutionally-protected, private matter, but if a woman wants to home educate her children there is no privacy and the state has the freedom to require whatever personal information it wants, including personal questions about family structure?

This is not just about homeschooling. This is a bigger issue than my inconvenience once a year.

Start looking at the different areas of your life and you will see that the government has its hands all over it. It might not matter to you if you are “normal,” but if you want to do something different, you suddenly notice.

Take gay marriage. Why is this even an issue? The government shouldn’t be regulating marriage. I remember when I was getting married, Bob and I thought it was kind of Big Brotherish that we had to get a marriage license. It is. And if we didn’t have to, then the government would not be able to say who can and can’t marry. Side note: since we got married in Massachusetts, we also had to get blood tests done before we married and the doctor had to fill out a paper for the state!

Once you start thinking about how controlling the government is, you will see it all over.

I have seen this website about the National Animal ID System many times on a Vermont homeschool message board and never though about it because it doesn’t affect me. You should read about it. The government wants to force even single animal owners to be identified with a premise ID and tag each animal with an ID. Then the owner must report every transport of the animal - to the vet, to the 4H show, etc. - and other activities, such as breeding, to a government phone number or website.

It is not just the Bush administration and their post-9/11-Patriot Act-surveillance activities, either. This government expansion has been happening for a long time. Power-hungry politicians of all stripes are guilty of it. The Republican Party used to oppose it, or so they said, but now they encourage it.

That is why I do not feel aligned with that party anymore, in addition to their out-of-control spending. That is why some of the left-wingers who read this blog find themselves in agreement with me from time to time. I am in favor of liberty over government control. That means that even with all of my conservative personal beliefs, I do not want anyone using the government to control people's personal choices, whether or not I agree with those choices.

So, that is the story of how I came to distinguish myself as a libertarian-minded, small-government conservative, instead of a rank-and-file Republican.