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Bryan Caplan complaining on X that Mason U is introducing mandatory Just Society courses; https://twitter.com/bryan_caplan/status/1760048714847064146
It looks Conquest's Second Law is still strong as ever. And I guess Caplan's libertarianism will ask for some intervention against it that will never work.
It's a public university, which means there's one thing which has a chance of working -- elect DeSantis-equivalents to the governorship and legislature and pass a law banning this stuff, then appoint a Rufo-equivalent to make sure it happens. However, that won't happen because Virginia has gone blue.
I mean, we did. We literally did exactly that. But the schools have decided to just flagrantly ignore the governor and the AG, tie things up in friendly courts for 4 years, and run out the clock while they hold our children hostage.
And thank god for that. University is voluntary, you can go to whichever one you want, and the 'students' are adults.
The idea that the government should step into that voluntary contract between adults to tell teachers what they can and can't teach or require, especially as relating to partisan political topics, is insane and disgusting.
(before anyone asks, yes, this applies to a university wanting to teach whatever awfulthing you think of as a counter-example, I would like the school to be destroyed socially and economically by private citizens/companies and social sanctions in that situation)
I agree with this, but also wish Republicans would just go ahead and wash their hands of the university system. These are Publicly Funded universities. Cut all state funding. Problem solved. Let them go and be as crazy as they want with student/donor money. But I certainly shouldn't be paying taxes to support the craziness.
Point 1, only 20% of their budget is state funding. That is still any state funding, true, but I feel like sometimes people act like they're entirely state funded and that's really seriously not the case.
Point 2, I think it's reasonable for the government to subsidize education without dictating what the education entails. You can trust the market to efficiently decide what type of education takes place between students and teachers, while also pumping money into the education sector because you think the economy benefits from more education happening overall.
Point 3, I don't want to pay for many aspects of our military, police, and prison systems, to name just a few. 'I shouldn't have to pay for things I dislike' has never been a cogent argument against government spending; it's a democracy, you can vote for what you want but everyone has to pay for everything that ends up in the budget. You don't get a line-item veto unless I do too, and if everyone gets one then we end up with no government at all, society collapses, and we get invaded by China or w/e.
To echo FC below, it does indeed feel like lots of people wanted this during the Obama years, when the War on Terror was in its twilight years and "our military budget is obscenely, unnecessarily huge and prevents us from having good healthcare" was a talking point on Tumblr. Lots of people would probably still want this now, even!
And in fairness, why shouldn't they? I figure the easy counterargument is that that's what our politicians are for; that we elect representatives and such precisely so that the demos can evolve its power to people who will handle the responsibility and hard work of haggling and negotiating. In practice, this doesn't satisfy the demos enough, for reasons.
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