One of the points I often made as a Green journalist (and Libertarian-anarchist before that) is that a voucher system to fund education is precisely the same in all formal respects as the Canadian-style "Single-payer" healthcare system. I don't think anyone who read the Montana Green Bulletin agreed with me, and it pissed a lot of people off - like the Teacher's Union stalwarts whom I rely on for a political "moral compass." The fact that it would have immediately been compatible with the late Albert Shankar's AFT plan for teacher-run schools did not impress them. They were never for that, they said, and more so once it was revealed that Shankar worked with the CIA for some "education-related" project.
The ideology of Trade Unionism is foreign to my experience, as are "professional associations" based on State licensing and regulation. All my training in economics and liberation politics assures me that any sort of monopoly, with the power to hire and fire, and restrict the entry of new providers who might compete on price and quality, is absolutely wrong and harmful to everyone except those who own or control those monopolies, which in this case is the Corporate State, fully owned and controlled by various corporate "interests" whose views are manifested by ALEC and similar "associations."
In these two vital areas - health care and education - monopolies are tantamount to the very end of civilization, which we might be witnessing even as we live our "disengaged" lives basking in the fruits of a fully-funded public education system. If people studied history, they would understand. The Catholic Church and other state churches did that for 1000 years - acted as sole providers of God-related goods and services, as well as health and education. The reason it survived at all was because there was a lot of diversity within the Church, and the underlying ethical values were valid and universal (quite Buddhist, actually).
Today's People's States are much less morally defined and responsible than even the more corrupt churches or other organized relitions. Indeed, they are vicious competitors, as we see in current attacks by secular courts against the religious practices of people now long dead. I have long marveled how any of those cases win. And they never did until quite recently, which indicates either that people are much more ethically concerned to "compensate" victims with large financial "settlements" or that the Criminal Injustice System has finally run amok, and threatens to bankrupt or destroy any institutions and individuals who stand against them. They're not much concerned with us as individuals, of course, unless we have a lot of money. Thus, they might serve the Revolution in spite of themselves....
My home town, seemingly an obscure village in the wilds of Montana, is actually a major center of the Military-Industrial Complex and the destruction of the planet by scientific means. That's what people do, here. That's what I grew up with. When my high school class recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, I suggested a "Jubilee Year", as in the Bible, in which prisoners are freed and debts are forgiven. Leonard Bernstein wrote a "Jubilee Games" for the 50th anniversary of the State of Israel, mentioning that tradition. Even if it didn't work for Israel, it might work for us.
As we recounted stories and legends about how our families came to be here, we realized how much the divide between "military" and "civilian" has dissolved. The Anaconda Smelter and the Great Northern Railroad were the largest employers and dominant players in state and local government. Basically, they got whatever they wanted, and in the case of Anaconda, it actually owned 5 of the 6 largest newspapers in the state. The exception was the Great Falls Tribune, completely unionized, considered one of the best papers for its size in the country.
During WWII, we became the major Lend-Lease Base, ferrying thousands of aircraft to the Soviet Union, including everything about American technology, government, etc. which Soviet agents could collect and ship back in sealed "diplomatic" cases. And thus, our fate as a military power was sealed. We were first to get the new solid-fuel "Minuteman" missiles which could literally be launched in a few minutes from hardened "silos" which were billed as major "deterrents" and "defenders of our freedom."
It was 30 years later before we discovered it was actually a first-strike weapon, and that American strategic policy had long been based on exactly the scenario portrayed by George C. Scott in "Dr. Strangelove." Hit them first, and then we can worry about retaliation, but if it costs us a few millions, it's worth it to get rid of the vast evil of "communism." Believe it or not, this "doctrine" still exists in various guises, and we see it acted out in the NATO "response" to a fascist coup in the Ukraine, as well as the almost universal demonization by Neo-liberals of Vladimir Putin as though he were some sort of modern-day Stalin.
As for debtors, we get frequent lessons on how monopoly banksters have managed to steal most of the world's wealth and use it for their own purposes - all in the guise of "savings and investment", "retirement," "insurance," and other financial rackets which are quite legal and protected in the Finance Capitalism State. That's what we are, today.
My Class of '65 (or its self-appointed "leaders") retired us to the Country Club. Since I was boycotting it because they cancelled a Planned Parenthood fund-raising event last Spring, I didn't go. I found no support for having a "protest reunion" in a different venue. So, I guess that's the last we'll hear from the Class of '65, whose most visible members might be HIllary Clinton and David Letterman.
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