I cannot tell you how thrilled I am about all these proggie websites picking up on my comments about government schools.  Boy do they have their knickers in a knot … especially when I say that government education is one of the primary reasons why a person like Barack Obama could end up in the White House.

For some reason the progs are just beside themselves over the fact that I refer to our wonderful “public” schools as “government schools”  Let’s go through a checklist:

• Government own facilities?  CHECK
• Government employees?   CHECK
• Government administrators?  CHECK
• Government mandated curriculum?  CHECK
• Political control?  CHECK
• Government mandated attendance?  CHECK

What’s the problem here?  Why are they NOT accurately defined as government schools? 

What are these proggies really upset about?  Well, we are dealing with people who believe that America’s greatness comes from government.  Attacking government schools by calling them exactly what they are – government schools – is somehow a derogatory mockery of a system that they believe to be superior and unfailing.  It’s not entirely their faults … many of them probably went to government schools themselves and were indoctrinated for years to know and love government.  We are also dealing with people who do not understand, and therefore do not value, the concept of capitalism and competition.  Proggies love the government because they do not need to be personally responsible for the decisions that they make.  Government schools allows them to blame the system for their failures, rather than looking in the mirror when the only job they are qualified to do is ask “Would you like French fries with that?” 

School choice represents the crack in that Educational Berlin Wall, erected by Democrats and protected by the teachers unions, which is built to keep students from escaping.

Toss this into your bag-of-tricks when discussing school choice, vouchers or private education with your liberal friends: A paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that children enrolled in charter schools enjoy lower truancy rates and higher test scores than their peers.