School room without desks

Somebody sent me an e-mail message:

On the first day of school, [a school teacher] removed all of the
desks out of her classroom

[The students asked], "where're our desks?"

[The teacher said], "You can't have a desk until you tell me how
you earn the right to sit at a desk."

The final period of the day came and as the puzzled students found
seats on the floor

Twenty-seven (27) War Veterans, all in uniforms, walked into that
classroom, each one carrying a school desk.

[The teacher said], "You didn't earn the right to sit at these
desks. These heroes did it for you.

Snopes.com says the story is true [1], and attributes it to a speech by Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas.

The means and moral of that story are just plain wrong, on several levels.

The story does not state whether the school was public or private. In any case, government-controlled education is a cornerstone of totalitarian governments.

Another cornerstone is glorification of the warrior caste.

Another is manipulation of public opinion.

I checked just now, and the words school, education, etc., do not appear in the Constitution of the United States [3], the Bill of Rights [4], or Amendments XI through XXVII [5]. I've read those documents cover-to-cover, more than once, and do not recall the subject being addressed anywhere. Therefore, under the Plain Meaning Rule [6] and under the 10th Amendment, education is the province of the States, or the People.

I have a question for those of us who have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States:

When does your oath expire?

I suspect that the technical answer is "so long as you are legally bound to serve". As far as I'm concerned, mine expires when I die, or when I renounce my citizenship.

Beware of those who would use us as instruments against our Constitution.

Furthermore, the story implies that education is a right. EDUCATION IS NOT A RIGHT; EDUCATION IS THE RESPONSIBILITY, AND EXCLUSIVE DOMAIN, OF THE FAMILY. If families choose to pool their resources, find a space, and/or hire a teacher, that is their prerogative. Business people who choose to start a school should be afforded a fair and free marketplace to do so. But when schools accept government funding, they accept government control and risk becoming weapons against students, against the family, and against the People. Public education is the terminal case.

Fundamental rights are not "earned"; not by students, not by veterans, not by anybody. Fundamental rights are a gift from God [2]:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness.

The proper role of government is to guarantee those rights [2]:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

We exist, and have existed, in a hurricane of misinformation, disinformation, and FUD campaigns. We have but one defense [7]:

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the
only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson

If you've received the "School room without desks" message, please send this message to whomever sent you that. If you've forwarded the "School room without desks" message, please forward this message to whomever you forwarded that.

Sincerely yours,

David Christensen
Supporting Member, Constitution Party
793 S. Tracy Blvd. #231, Tracy, CA 95376
http://www.constitutionpartyca.org/
dpchrist@holgerdanske.com
(209) 830-8249

[1] http://www.snopes.com/glurge/nodesks.asp

[2] http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

[3] http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

[4] http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

[5] http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27....

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_meaning_rule

[7] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_jefferson_2.html