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Review of The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism by Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi (Princeton University Press, 2023).

I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [libertarianism] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.

In his 1995 book Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, socialist thinker G. A. Cohen serves up a scathing critique of Robert Nozicks libertarian philosophy. Nozick made such a fetish of property rights, Cohen charged, that a millionaire could light his cigar with a $5 bill in front of a starving child and go home with a spotless conscience. After all, the childs suffering may be regrettable, but she has no entitlement to the millionaires five dollars no matter how much good it may do her.

Libertarians have a well-deserved reputation as the most zealous defenders of gloves-off capitalism. Along with Nozick, the canon includes gems like Ayn Rand, who infamously described businessmen as the real persecuted minority in the heyday of the civil rights movement, and Dickensian defenders of sweatshops. From Ludwig von Misess flattering words about fascism to the thinly veiled racism of so called bordertarians, many freedom-talking libertarians seem fine with authoritarianism as long as it protects property and the almighty dollar.

And yet, as Cohen himself observes, there has always been a strange but abiding attraction between the socialist and libertarian traditions.

In their new book, The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism, philosophers Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi showcase the many historic sides of the libertarian movement. This includes lengthy and candid discussions of paleolibertarian figures like the late Murray Rothbard (19261995) and Lew Rockwell (founder and head of the Mises Institute), whose blend of hyper-capitalist economics and hard-right social conservatism has frequently descended into open racism and homophobia.

But as self-identified bleeding heart or left-libertarians, Zwolinksi and Tomasi identify with a more radical libertarian past one that aligned with socialists on specific issues like the elimination of the military-carceral state, support for racial equality, and a wariness of the power of big business.

While Zwolinski and Tomasi trace the origins of libertarianism back to classical liberal figures like John Locke, they argue that primordial libertarianism as a distinct doctrine emerged in the nineteenth century in Britain and France through the writings of Thomas Hodgskin, Herbert Spencer, Frdric Bastiat, and Gustave de Molinari. As they put it, for the first time, libertarianism formed an intellectual system pivoting around six core ideas: individualism, private property, skepticism of authority, free markets, spontaneous order, and negative liberty. In Britain and France, libertarians staunchly opposed the aristocratic order, invoking everything from natural rights to economic efficiency to speed its extinction.

But as the century wore on and the workers movement rose to prominence in Europe, figures like Spencer directed much of their energy at a new rival: socialism. Support for toppling hierarchies dissipated into anti-egalitarian, revanchist defenses of market society. While few would go as far as Ludwig von Mises in offering apologetics for Italian fascism, Zwolinski and Tomasi acknowledge that early right-libertarians had an unfortunate tendency to invoke broadly evolutionary ideas in a way that seemed almost designed to invite uncharitable readings. This directly contributed to the ideological formation of what became known as social Darwinism. Spencers infamous comment in Man Versus the State is representative:

Generations ago there had existed a certain gutter-child, as she would be here called, known as Margaret, who proved to be the prolific mother of a prolific race. Besides great numbers of idiots, imbeciles, drunkards, lunatics, paupers, and prostitutes, the county records show two hundred of her descendants who have been criminals. Was it kindness or cruelty which, generation after generation, enabled these to multiply and become an increasing curse to the society around them?

With that kind of toxicity in the intellectual bloodstream, a certain kind of right-libertarian could easily fashion a xenophobic, racist libertarianism. Indeed, they still do. While Tomasi and Zwolinksi are more than willing to describe Spencers comments as offensive, they could stand to go further, particularly given the influence of such doctrines on contemporary far-right figures like Stefan Molyneux or Curtis Yarvin.

Interestingly, Tomasi and Zwolinski claim that libertarianisms trajectory was different in the United States, where libertarianism emerged out of the abolitionist movement with a deep antipathy toward concentrations of economic and political power that allowed elites to expropriate unpaid labor. They write:

Toward the end of the nineteenth century in America, socialism was regarded as not only compatible with libertarianism but as the most effective means of realizing freedom. State socialism was of course regarded by all libertarians as an unmitigated evil. But late in the nineteenth century, it was still possible for American libertarians to distinguish between voluntary and coercive socialism and to recognize the former as at least compatible with if not positively required by their creed.

Things began to change with the New Deal and the Cold War, when American libertarians often aided by a generous infusion of cash from the rich, as Tomasi and Zwolinski note soured on socialism and largely embraced the political right, often under the influence of European migrs like Ayn Rand, Mises, and F. A. Hayek. Many libertarians took up distinctly right-wing causes like opposition to labor unions and the welfare state. Barry Goldwater, the first major presidential candidate of the New Right, pilloried civil rights legislation as federal government overreach.

Tomasi and Zwolinksi acknowledge that right-libertarianism remains the dominant strain of the tradition and they do a very good job summarizing its hegemonic forms but theyre keen to discuss the less familiar left-libertarian tradition.

In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick mused that if we take the libertarian position on natural rights seriously, slavery and Jim Crow constituted a centuries-long violation of the property rights of black Americans. Consequently, justice in rectification might require mass transfers of wealth to those whod been wronged. This would naturally be unpalatable to many right-wingers who ape libertarian rhetoric but also despise anything to do with racial justice. But as Nozick pointed out decades ago, this might be nothing more than mere prejudice inconsistent with the radical demands of libertarian principles.

Zwolinksi and Tomasi argue that even on issues like economic inequality and unionization, libertarians are more divided than it might appear. While some are comfortable with mass inequality and regard unions as a threat to private property, bleeding-heart libertarians tend to recognize that massive wealth inequality generates plutocratic control.

Some support redistributive measures and the labor movement. After all, unions can be viewed as free associations where workers cooperate voluntarily to raise the price of their labor. Similarly, workplace democracy can be seen as extending the libertarian skepticism of authority to the domain of private government.

Yet it is hard to see how things can go beyond intellectual overlap. While there is fruitful coalescence in the foreign policy arena see the cross-ideological, anti-interventionist Quincy Institute on most issues a political relationship is a nonstarter because left-libertarianism simply isnt a force in the real world.

In Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, G. A. Cohen chastised libertarians for not taking moral equality sufficiently seriously, or even regarding it as important. Most libertarians, if I can elaborate on the point, see nothing wrong with a world where billionaires can launch themselves into space while crushing labor movements back on Earth or, for that matter, with a world where the free speech rights of white supremacists provoke hot tears of outrage, but Black Lives Matter activists can be thrown in jail because their activism has damaged private property.

When they switch from describing to editorializing, Zwolinksi and Tomasi are eager to rebut this charge by pointing to a long history of organizing against oppression from the abolitionist movement onward. Bleeding-heart and left libertarians share the conviction that all are moral equals, and consequently are entitled to what Ronald Dworkin called equal respect and recognition of the importance of their lives. Yet, again, left-libertarianism is dwarfed in the actual world by its right-libertarian brethren.

And that much more influential, much-better-known strand of libertarianism has explicitly rejected the notion of moral equality remarkably, even as classical liberals understood it. These libertarians agree with Mises that:

Men are altogether unequal. Even between brothers there exist the most marked differences in physical and mental attributes. . . . Each man who leaves her workshop bears the imprint of the individual, the unique, the never-to-recur. Men are not equal, and the demand for equality under the law can by no means be grounded in the contention that equal treatment is due to equals.

Or they agree with Rand that there are demonstrably superior and productive people in society who are responsible for virtually every human advancement, who owe nothing to anyone else, and who are in eternal conflict with the looters and parasites that contribute nothing yet demand a leveling down of the creative individuals.

At their most egalitarian, right-libertarians defend market society and property on utilitarian lines, somewhat begrudgingly holding that equality under the law is a precondition for genuine competition. But more often, they echo Quinn Slobodians point about free marketers tendency to ascribe mystical qualities to the market and competition: whereas once the visible hand of God sorted out the deserving from the undeserving, now the invisible hand of the market does the trick.

These anti-egalitarian libertarians, echoing social Darwinian rhetoric, regard feudalism as unjust not because it threw up vast disparities of authority and power, but because those in power werent the deserving elite: they had received aristocracys entitlements due to law and inheritance. By contrast, capitalist competition demanded the constant winnowing of the excellent and rarefied from the common and mundane, something that left it vulnerable to the resentments and interference of the masses. As Peter Thiel put it in his essay The Education of a Libertarian, the higher ones IQ, the more pessimistic one became about free-market politics and the future of market society because capitalism simply is not that popular with the crowd. Thiel apocalyptically intoned that the fate of the world may depend on the effort of a single individual the entrepreneur who may create a new world of capitalist freedom safe from the interfering resentments of the mass.

Ironically, such libertarians conform to Hayeks observation that illiberal conservative convictions boil down to a mythological belief that there are recognizably superior persons who are more deserving and so deserving of more. This leads them to see the market less as a utility-maximizing set of exchanges between free and equal persons, and more as a mechanism to ensure the recognizably superior persons wind up on top.

Zwolinski and Tomasis historical survey of the libertarian movement, warts and all, is uncommonly honest and comprehensive. Purely as exegesis, the book is without peer, and anyone who wants to know what libertarianism is should run, not walk, to pick it up.

If all, or at least most, libertarians were left-libertarians like Zwolinksi and Tomasi, socialists would have a lot more to say to them. Wed all be committed, on paper, to a world where freedom and equality were respected, even if wed have fierce disagreements on the best way to get there.

But it isnt clear that democratic socialists and mainstream libertarians will have much in common unless left-libertarianism vastly expands beyond intellectual circles. Until then, socialists will be forced to draw a line in the sand against those who reify and admire inequality for its own sake. To update a line from Max Weber, we must recognize in the Peter Thiels of the world one of the oldest and crassest human instincts: insisting on ones right to immense power and resources out of alleged superiority.

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Libertarians Weren't Always Apologists for the Rich and Powerful - Jacobin magazine

Many of the same political forces behind Februarys Rage Against the War Machine rally reconvened at the Independent National Convention, held April 3-5 in Austin, Texas. Participants included the Libertarian Party, the Peoples Party, 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard and journalist Chris Hedges.

Promoted by its founder, Christopher Life, as a venue to unite the independent political sector, the INC did not appear to draw more than 100 people and was constantly plagued by technical difficulties. It was, overall, a thoroughly right-wing and degraded affair.

Like the Rage rally, far-right libertarianism was by far the most dominant political and social element present at the convention. Nearly every panel featured a self-professed entrepreneur, libertarian, cryptocurrency promoter, anti-vaccine zealot, Republican politician or Texas Nationalist.

Life, one of the four moderators, opened the event by explaining that our independence is what unites us. He founded the One Nation Party USA in 2018 on the basis of a program that includes supporting Trumps tax cuts for the rich and backing the far-right Supreme Court justices that he nominated.

This is the second time Life has organized a coming together of independents in Austin, Texas. On March 14, 2022, he sponsored the first Independent National Union conference, which featured as its main speaker Robert Kennedy Jr., who is now primarily associated with the most intense opposition to vaccines. Kennedy Jr. has said that limited mitigation measures aimed at stopping the spread of COVID-19 are worse than the conditions faced by Anne Frank, the 15-year-old Jewish girl and famed diarist who died in a Nazi concentration camp in May 1945.

While Kennedy Jr. was not at this years event, anti-vaccine and COVID-19 denialism was present throughout. In addition to sponsoring the main panel of the event, Angela McArdle, the chair of the Libertarian Party, provided the INC Keynote Morning address.

McArdle is an anti-Semite who has worked to integrate the Libertarian Party with fascistic militias. Just last month she promoted German New Medicine (GNM) on right-wing commentator Tim Pools podcast. GNM was devised by German ex-physician Ryke Geerd Hamer as a Germanic alternative to mainstream medicine, which he claimed was a Jewish conspiracy. The now-deceased Hamer asserted that diseases were not real, and in a 2009 interview said that almost all Jews survive cancer without chemotherapy, and that AIDS is a Talmudic fraud.

In her short speech opening the event, McArdle denounced the deep state and, in an attack on COVID-19 mitigation measures, un-elected bureaucrats. McArdle repeated the mantra that the event transcended left-right politics.

The first major panel after McArdles speech was titled Independent Parties Working Together. It again featured McArdle, as well as Nick Brana, founder and chair of the Peoples Party. In their comments, both McArdle and Brana pointed to the Rage Against the War Machine Rally as an example for others to follow.

Just a month ago, we came together Brana said, referring to himself and McArdle, a party on the left and the right, and held the largest anti-war demonstration since the Iraq war. In fact, the rally was sparsely attended, attracting primarily an assortment of libertarians and far-right elements.

The entire event served as Trojan horse for far-right politicians and operatives to push their agenda on an unsuspecting, and mostly non-existent, audience.

On Mondays main stage, the afternoon seminar, titled Education/School-Choice Reform, featured Corey DeAngelis, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow at Reason Foundation, a Libertarian Party think tank. DeAngelis heads the American Foundation for Children, an organization that is bankrolled by former Trump education secretary and billionaire Betsy DeVos. Its aim is to defund public schools and transfer money to for-profit charter and religious schools.

At the same time as DeAngelis was hawking parents rights, the upstairs stage had a panel titled Texit & State Sovereignty, which featured three members of the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM). Speakers for TNM, a far-right secessionist movement, included Kyle Biedermann, a former Republican member of the Texas state House; Daniel Miller, the president of TNM; and Matt Frazier, another member of TNM and cryptocurrency snake-oil salesman.

Biedermann attacked Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton from the right, denouncing them for not declaring an invasion along the Texas-Mexico border. That should be done right now, Biedermann said, adding, Texit would make that happen As a sovereign state we will take care of that border. Texas could take care of that border.

Miller agreed with the former Republican state representative, adding, We obviously know there is an open border crisis. The source of the border crisis is the federal government. The best people to govern Texas are Texans, not the 2.5 million people that make up the Washington District of Criminals. The only way to secure the border, have a sensible immigration policy, is to become a self-governing nation and set our own policy.

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One of the moderators of the event, Trent Pool, praised the border policy of Israel as an example to be followed.

At another panel, Diane Sare, an adherent of the fascistic Lyndon LaRouche cult, talked with Christopher Life and his sibling, Benjamin Life, about Art & Movement building. Sare referred to the ongoing political kinship between herself, McArdle and Brana, noting that together they were offering classes on political interventions. Sare, backing Trumps false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, said the interventions were needed because, In these times, when we cant be certain that votes are being counted fairly, how do you get your Congress to change?

Journalist Chris Hedges was brought in as the featured speaker on the second day. As was the case in the Rage rally, Hedges function was to represent the left in the ostensibly left-right coalition.

In a panel on Ending the Forever Wars, Hedges reiterated many aspects of his Rage speech, reflecting on the costs of war and the obliteration of civil liberties. Seeking to ingratiate himself to the right-wing audience, Hedges claimed that the media silences opinions on both the left and right that challenge capitalism.

The faux unity continued into the evening during the keynote address delivered by Hedges.

In his speech, titled Reclaiming our Country, Hedges called for a left-right coalition to wrest power back from corporations and the billionaires. Hedges said this could be done by organizing workers and supporting mass strikes, the one weapon workers possess that can cripple and destroy the billionaire classs economic and political power.

While Hedges took a left tack in his speech, what was more significant than what he said was the forum in which he said it. Hedges homily, delivered to a crowd of far-right nationalists, right-wingers and libertarians, had the character of a Salvation Army preacher delivering a sermon to a brothel.

When Hedges first made his turn to the far-right prior to the Rage event, he justified his new orientation as a temporary alliance made under extraordinary circumstances due to very real threat of nuclear war. He wrote before the February rally that he was participating in the event because the rally was not focused on anything but ending the war, and should these right-wing participants organize around other issues, I will be on the other side of the barricades.

Hedges appearance at the Independent National Convention, a thoroughly right-wing affair aimed at promoting a unity of the far-right, reveals his previous demagoguery as empty, and his new orientation to the right wing as more than a fleeting arrangement.

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The Independent National Convention '23: A reactionary political freakshow, part two - WSWS

In the past couple of months, Americans have suffered disastrous consequences from deregulation initiated during the Trump administration: in transit, the East Palestine derailment threatening the lives and livelihoods of thousands; in banking, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that are still roiling financial markets.

The good news is that despite the overall deregulatory bent of the last administration, the Biden administration has been strengthening antitrust enforcement, plus there have been bipartisan efforts, led in the House by David Cicilline (D-RI) and Ken Buck (R-CO), to strengthen antitrust protections and curb the growing power of Big Tech.

Those bipartisan efforts were stymied thanks to intense lobbying from libertarian-leaning tech companies, think tanks, and advocates, with Big Money funding from the donor network of libertarian oil billionaire Charles Koch, whose influence over antitrust legislation goes back decades. As the new GOP-helmed Congress contemplates reforms, its already clear that party leaders like Jim Jordan (R-OH) and libertarian Thomas Massie (R-KY) who are recipients of Koch cash themselves are planning to do Big Techs bidding and delay or kill regulation and let the companies continue accumulating market power.

From privacy concerns around consumer data to predatory pricing locking out small businesses to the flood of disinformation on social media, Americans have become aware of how much market concentration the big four technology companies have achieved. Americans of all political parties agree that Big Tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google have too much power and need to be reined in. President Biden has made promoting competition and ending monopolies a cornerstone of his economic agenda, but he can only do so much facing Republican obstructionism in the House. While congressional action has stalled, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are working to fully enforce existing antitrust laws.

The tech companies, think tanks, advocates, and Koch network continue to fight these efforts. A far-right founder of the notoriously obstructionist House Freedom Caucus, Jim Jordan is now chair of the powerful Judiciary Committee which oversees antitrust policy. In January, he named Thomas Massie as chairman of the Antitrust Subcommittee, ignoring precedent and bypassing the more senior Ken Buck, whom many had presumed would lead it. Jordans move was not unexpected though, as he opposed Bucks antitrust regulatory approach in favor of a more libertarian one.

Jim Jordans ties to the Koch brothers date back to at least 2008, when he became the first member of Congress to sign onto the No Climate Tax pledge, an initiative of the Koch advocacy group Americans for Prosperity. Koch Industries PAC has donated $60k to Jordan since 2011 the maximum allowed for each of the last six elections and he has been a featured speaker for at least one of the secretive Koch donor retreats.

Thomas Massie has been a recipient of Koch cash since he assumed office in 2012. Like Charles Koch, Massie earned both his bachelors and masters degrees from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and also like Koch, Massie is an avowed champion of deregulation, having sponsored bills to abolish both the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency.

A recent, fawning profile by the New York Times claims that Mr. Massies politics are very much at odds with the interests of the Republican Partys traditional donor class and leadership and notes his resistance to the influence wielded by corporations and interest groups over our policymaking without noting the funding from Koch (a long-time member of the traditional GOP donor class) or the high scores Massie has received for his legislative votes from Americans for Prosperity.

While Charles Koch is most commonly known for his oil interests, he also has a large stake in Silicon Valley his son Chase runs the venture capital arm, Koch Disruptive Technologies, launched in 2017, the same year his political groups began partnering with Big Tech on public policy fights in DC.

Though Massie is hailed as an anti-establishment contrarian by The New York Times author, his voting record advances the agenda of a libertarian oil and tech billionaire whose primary concerns are juicing corporate profits and deregulating industries his companies already dominate.

But its easy to see why Massie would want to cultivate an anti-establishment, anti-corporate image: its popular with the electorate. GOP voters overwhelmingly support antitrust regulation. In a 2022 poll, 73% of Republican voters said that Big Tech companies are not regulated enough, and 85% of them agree that Big Tech companies have become too powerful, are destroying competition, and are abusing consumers through monopoly behavior.

These popular antitrust policy ideas supported by Republican voters are met with lip service from Republican leaders. Look instead at their actions. Jim Jordans public rebuke of Ken Bucks antitrust work in the last Congress, and naming instead Thomas Massie to lead antitrust policy negotiations, are clear signals that Jordan intends to stall congressional reforms in the tech industry as long as the Republicans hold their House majority.

When the next big disaster unfolds due to deregulation, dont be fooled. Republicans are deflecting blame by attacking the Biden administration as insufficiently populist, but the seeds of the East Palestine train derailment and Silicon Valley Bank bailout were sown under the Trump deregulatory regime and more broadly by the anti-government ethos of the GOP and its Big Money donors.

To Think Tanks and Advocacy Groups:

To Jordan and Massie:

Koch Disruptive Technologies:

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How Koch Cash Is Bankrolling the Effort to Kill Big Tech Reform - Exposed by CMD

Vermont Business Magazine Nationally renowned scholar and political columnist George F. Will is the featured speaker at the Ethan Allen Institutes Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration at the Doubletree by Hilton in South Burlington on Wednesday, May 31. The topic of his talk is Why Conservatism is Important in a Place Like Vermont.

Information on sponsorships and reservations may be found atwww.ethanallen.org. The social hour with cash bar begins at 6:00pm and the dinner at 7:00pm.

George Will, described by theWall Street Journalas perhaps the most powerful journalist in America, is widely regarded as one of the most influential conservative/libertarian journalists and commentators in the nation.He was awardedthe Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977 and has been awarded sixteen honorary doctorate degrees.

He continues his half-century long career as a member of the Washington Post Writers Group and his columns are syndicated in more than four hundred newspapers. Over the years he has appeared many times on ABCsThis Week, NBCsMeet the Press(52 appearances), Fox News, and many other national platforms.

Institute President Myers Mermel said that We invited George Will because of his eloquent advocacy for the fundamentals of a free society: individual liberty, private property, competitive free enterprise, limited and frugal government, strong local communities, personal responsibility, and expanded opportunity for human endeavor, which are the principles of the Ethan Allen Institute. Were thrilled to be able to bring such a distinguished national opinion leader to Vermont for our 30thAnniversary observance, on a topic that Vermonters will find intriguing.

John McClaughry, co-founder of the Institute, says I have enjoyed and learned from George Wills writing for almost fifty years. He is widely recognized as perhaps the most profound conservative/libertarian political philosopher in our country today. His insights on Americas founding, its principles that have sustained us, his immense grasp of our history, and his assessment of our prospects for the future will be valuable, unforgettably delivered, and leavened with his trenchant sense of humor.

Wills academic background includes B.A. Trinity College, M.A. Oxford, and Ph.D. Princeton. He has taught political philosophy at Michigan State, University of Toronto and (twice) Harvard. He has authored 16 books, most recentlyAmerican Happiness and its Discontents.

The Ethan Allen Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization founded in 1993, has long been Vermonts leading voice for its Mission to influence public policy in Vermont by helping its people to better understand and put into practice the principles of a free society.

Earlier EAI anniversary celebrations, all held at todays Doubletree by Hilton (formerly the Sheraton) Emerald Ballroom, have featured P.J. ORourke (10th), John Stossel (15th), Governors Jim Douglas and Tom Salmon (20th), and Mark Steyn (25th).

Excerpt from:
George Will to highlight Ethan Allen Institutes 30th anniversary ... - Vermont Biz

To the Editor:

I have read several letters to the editor regarding a recent RTC letter apparently mailed to all residents of Lyme and Old Lyme and Id like to share a third perspective on the matter which I hope and expect will appeal to the majority of our citizens the all-too-often-overlooked-and-forgotten Moderate voters. However theyre registered, they vote with their own minds and have no misplaced loyalty to one party or the other.

I felt compelled to participate in this conversation because there are myriad parties sharing very biased opinions and while speaking under the guise of wanting whats best for the towns, finish their statements with telling us what to think and for whom to vote in November. I would say ignore them all and instead listen to friends and associates you know and respect.

For the sake of time, Ill focus on the dog whistle of parental rights. In my experience the term dog whistle is cut from the same cloth as any other strawman fallacy wherein someone misinterprets what you said and ignores your intent and replaces it with their contorted version and then attacks that instead.

People who invoke the term parental rights have different things in mind and different aspirations, said Neal McCluskey, the director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. My general impression when I see people invoking parental rights, its been connected to a general idea that parents have been cut out of decisions made by schools.

Parental rights is being represented as a dog whistle for banning books and censorship and anyone who utters the phrase should be summarily ignored. This is beyond ironic. The idea of dismissing anyones opinion based on opinion, perspective, or association is the type of bias we should all be fighting against.

The antithesis of parental rights is parental apathy and school districts that lack parental interest have suffered terribly because of the inevitable trickle-down of apathy, disinterest, and lack of motivation experienced by students when their parents leave education to the educators.

We have the greatest teachers in Region 18 and are lucky to have them. I have dealt directly with many of them on a variety of topics and venues and have personally observed their excellence. I have made a point to stress my personal belief that the purpose of school is to educate rather than indoctrinate and to my eye, the faculty, and staff overwhelmingly agree with this perspective.

Strong communities are built when everyone is involved and works together. Parental rights do not negate teachers being free to teach in their own style they only keep the door open so that parents can remain involved in the education of their children. We should avoid at all costs the idea that one group or another is prohibited from expressing their perspective due to dog whistle words/phrases or group affiliation.

It has been my experience that when people have questions and are allowed to ask them, they find the answers to be quite agreeable. When those doors of communication are closed, the rumor mills take over and the worst and most sensational ideas take over the conversation.

There will always be ideas, classes, and curricula being taught in school with which we will disagree but after school, well have co-workers, bosses, and supervisors with whom well disagree too. The purpose of school is to prepare us for working together in spite of difficulties and to learn to disagree pleasantly, respectfully, and productively. Children should be taught to think, not what to think.

Lets keep things simple and look at people based on the content of their character above all other elements. Im sure if we do that earnestly and honestly, well all find that we agree with each other far more than were being led to believe.

Steven WilsonOld Lyme, CT

Wilson, a Republican, is the chair of the Lyme-Old Lyme Board of Education. His letter is not a statement of the board as a whole.

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On 'Dog Whistles' and 'Parental Rights' - CT Examiner