Sic Willie: “Extremist”

FITS’ PROPOSAL TO PRIVATIZE HIGHER EDUCATION IN SOUTH CAROLINA DRAWS JEERS

Last week this website reiterated its belief that the Palmetto State’s costly, duplicative system of higher education should be privatized.

“It’s past time that all of our government-funded institutions of higher learning pursue their destinies as private institutions,” we wrote.

This strikes us as an eminently sensible reform, unless of course you believe that there is some entitlement to a college education – or that a college education ought to be a core function of government.  It would also save South Carolina taxpayers literally billions of dollars each year – money that could be pumped into our state’s free market economy.

Anyway … our argument rubbed the editors of the uber-liberal SC Schools Report the wrong way.  In fact the publication ran a big story decrying our “extremism.”

Referring to FITS’ founding editor Will Folks as “a prominent Columbia-based political blogger and one of the state’s loudest voices in favor of private school choice,” the site ripped our suggestion as “another example of extremism and bombast associated with the private school choice movement in South Carolina.”

The article goes on to refer to Folks as a “grenade thrower,” “talented writer” and “terrific self-promotor.”

To which we can only say “check, check and check, baby.”

Anyway, the author of this post – who quickly shifts from defending South Carolina’s underperforming colleges to defending its worst-in-the-nation government-run K-12 schools – is correct in describing Sic Willie as talented and terrific.  It would have been nice had he consulted any number of women (including S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley) regarding Sic’s legendary lesbian-quality oral skills … but we won’t quibble with his assessment of our founding editor’s professional abilities.

Where we beg to disagree, however, is the author’s claim that Sic and other school choice supporters haven’t offered an alternative to the status quo “solution” of pouring more money into a failed monopoly that continues to produce diminishing returns in spite of an ever-escalating investment.

Specifically, SC Schools Report claims that “propagandists” like Folks have “failed to present workable plans, have not behaved in good faith and, in general, represent an extremist ideology.”

Really?  How’s this for a workable plan?

As for not “behaving in good faith,” we’re not exactly sure what that means.  If it means we’re assholes – “guilty as charged.”  But if this website is implying that we haven’t consistently advanced market-based reforms in education (the way we consistently advance market-based reforms at all levels of government) then we think a simple search through the pages of this site will dispel such a charge.

As for the claim that letting parents take a portion of their tax burden to find a better academic option for their child is somehow “extremist,” we would argue that it is common sense.  Not only that, it’s a reform that has been proven effective at raising achievement levels in private and government-run schools.

If liberals and conservatives truly zeroed in on the outcomes they claim to be pushing for – i.e. more jobs, more prosperity, better educated workers, etc. – then they would be forced to admit that government is not only failing to produce these outcomes, in many (if not most) cases it is actively undermining them.

(Don’t believe us?  Take a look …)

That’s not “extremist” people .. it’s the truth.

Make no mistake, though … the bolder government grows in robbing us of our income and depriving us of our liberties, the bolder we will grow in protecting both.

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Pic: David Asiamah