The Sullivan County NH Republican Committee

Tag: history

  • The Joys of Open Enrollment

    In the recent Claremont SAU6  deliberative session, a seemingly innocuous warrant article on Open Enrollment was defended by progressives and the administration as essential.  When (recently sworn in) Councilor Cogswell described the evils of true Open Enrollment in utterly socialist terms, I smelled a rat.

    His description of not letting “our” money leave Claremont was particularly telling.  Who exactly is contained within his “our”?  It certainly does not include parents and kids. But I suspect “our” does include the pension fund administrator and the SAU administration.

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  • Locke, Lenin, and Local Power: Claremont’s Test of Consent

    When citizen consent is limited to elections, institutions that look democratic can operate like disciplined clubs, which is why elite circulation and oligarchic drift need counterweights.

    Two classic blueprints for political organization still shape local government. John Locke’s account of democracy treats office as a revocable trust grounded in majority consent and limited powers. Vladimir Lenin’s democratic centralism permits internal debate before a decision, then enforces unity afterward. Claremont’s School Board and City Council are not Bolshevik cells, yet when consent is expressed only at the ballot box, both bodies can tilt toward centralism in practice. The remedy is not theatrical outrage; it is better channels for consent and friction against agenda monopolies.

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  • SCGOP News Update

    Introduction & context: the fight re‑ignites

    For decades, New Hampshire’s education funding regime has been controversial: the state provides a base adequacy subsidy per pupil (statutorily determined), while the bulk of school costs fall to local property taxpayers. Carsey School+2NH Journal+2

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  • The Dumbest Meme Ever

    There are very few memes that are as dumb and insulting as this one.  It works because people conflate Antifa with being antifascist and therefore being pro-democracy, albeit while having a very hazy notion of what the term democracy means.  An old friend, whom I have known for more than half a century, posted this on their Facebook feed the other day, and I was genuinely shocked, as her father, like mine, was a combat veteran of World War II.  So, I guess it’s time for a quick history review.

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  • The Liquidation of the Kulaks and the Politics of Redistribution: An Ethical Comparison

    The Kulaks and Stalinist Redistribution

    In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Joseph Stalin initiated a campaign against the so-called kulaks—peasants accused of being wealthier than their neighbors. The label itself was fluid; it could encompass anyone who owned a few more cows or harvested a little more grain than the village average. The state cast these modestly prosperous farmers as class enemies. Their land, tools, and homes were seized in the name of “social justice,” and millions were deported, starved, or executed in the process.

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  • Vouchers and the Vision of the Un-Anointed: A Rebuttal to Andru Volinsky

    by Kevin Tyson

    Introduction

    In his polemical essay against school vouchers, Andru Volinsky trades on well-worn tropes: that public education is a pillar of democracy, that vouchers threaten social equity, and that the Civil Rights Movement should be invoked to shield the status quo. Yet this rhetorical sleight-of-hand obscures deeper truths. Public education in America was not built to emancipate but to domesticate, borrowing heavily from the Prussian model of enforced conformity. Furthermore, the moral panic about vouchers ignores the lived reality of urban black families who have embraced school choice for decades. This essay offers a counter-narrative grounded in historical realism and contemporary experience, demonstrating why vouchers represent not a retreat from equity, but its most faithful realization.

    Prussian Conformity: The True Origins of American Schooling

    Public education in the United States was not born in the spirit of liberal pluralism. It emerged from the coercive ambitions of 19th-century statecraft, modeled explicitly on the Prussian system. Horace Mann, enthralled by the Prussian ideal, advocated for a uniform, centralized education system aimed at inculcating discipline, not inquiry. The goal, as historian John Taylor Gatto noted, was not enlightenment but obedience. American schooling became a conveyor belt of ideological conformity, designed to assimilate immigrants and minorities into a state-sanctioned mold.

    Urban Education and the Flight from Failure

    By the late 20th century, the promise of public education had curdled in America’s inner cities. In cities like Detroit, Baltimore, and Chicago, public schools became synonymous with dysfunction. Graduation rates plunged, violence surged, and generational poverty hardened. Faced with these grim realities, families—especially black families—sought escape. From the charter revolution in New Orleans to voucher programs in Milwaukee, urban parents voted with their feet. A 2023 survey found that 79% of black parents supported vouchers. These were not ideological libertarians—they were mothers and fathers desperate for a future their neighborhood school could not provide.

    The Civil Rights Hypocrisy: Cloaking the Present in the Past

    Volinsky’s argument descends into bathos when he invokes the Little Rock crisis of 1957 to denounce vouchers. To equate the parental choices of black mothers in 2025 with segregationist backlash in 1957 is not only absurd—it is offensive. Malcolm X warned of the white liberal who ‘poses as the friend of the Negro’ while obstructing genuine progress. In The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell describes this impulse as the hallmark of an elite that believes itself morally entitled to rule regardless of results. The black families embracing vouchers are not pawns of white supremacy; they are the repudiation of it. Their choices reflect autonomy, not acquiescence.

    Conclusion: Funding Children, Not Systems

    The voucher debate reveals a profound disjunction between a system designed to condition loyalty and a society increasingly demanding liberty. Volinsky champions the former, draping a failing institution in the shroud of moral rhetoric. However, school choice is not an experiment in privatization—it is a reassertion of educational sovereignty by the families who have been most betrayed. Vouchers are not the enemy of democracy. They are its overdue extension.