August 29, 2013

Ed Morrissey's brilliance in a paragraph

Ed Morrissey is not the only one to hop on this story but I thought I'd point out one reason I admire his political sensibilities and acumen.  In a single paragraph he obliterates a vapid argument about why everyone should put their children into public education.  It's pure brilliance:
She starts off her argument by pronouncing anyone who does not put their children in public schools a “bad person”:
You are a bad person if you send your children to private school. Not bad like murderer bad—but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation’s-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what’s-best-for-your-kid bad. So, pretty bad.
Take a moment to mull over that gem. Benedikt’s entire argument is that non-participants in an organization ruin it by their non-participation. It’s not the actual participants who are to blame for the institution’s failures – not the teachers, not the administrators, and not the policy-makers — but the people who avoid the failure that should be blamed. That argument conveniently lets the participants in this “most-essential” institution off the hook for their own failures.
While Morrissey goes on to dissect the vapidity of the Slate opinion piece, he didn't need to do so. He could have stopped right after that paragraph because the assessment was esthetically perfect, irrefutable in it's logic and completely compelling. Great stuff, that.

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