I suppose it was bound to happen somewhere in the Western world, but Canada elected to be the first to designate the racist/​white supremacist organization “Proud Boys” a terrorist organization. As Ian Austen of the New York Times noted:

Canada formally designated the Proud Boys as a terrorist entity under its criminal law on Wednesday, a move that could lead to financial seizures and allow police to treat any crimes they commit as terrorist activity.

That groups like the “Proud Boys” are repugnant politically and morally is, to my mind, not even a debatable question. But as the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark 1969 Brandenburg v Ohio case, repulsive speech is protected speech. What’s not protected speech is injuring or killing someone–but Canada, like the United States, already has laws to address violent behavior. Canada’s move is of course a sovereign decision, but for me the question is what kind of political and emotional signal does it send to the Biden administration and the now Democrat-controlled House and Senate? Will we see similar efforts in Congress to pass laws censoring speech the dominant political party finds offensive? Will there be an effort to pass a domestic terrorism law that mirrors, or perhaps even goes beyond, the infamous PATRIOT Act?

In the wake of the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection by supporters of now former President Trump, many of the bedrock free speech and civil liberties principles that have guided us seem up for grabs. Giving into a misguided impulse to “do something” is exactly how we got the PATRIOT Act in the first place. In this case, Congress and the Administration should resist that impulse and not follow Canada’s lead.

Joe Biden is old. He has been in politics since 1970 and holds antiquated views. On the campaign trail, he used expressions such as “malarkey” and said that kids should listen to the “record player.”

President Biden’s views on labor unions are similarly archaic. Unions appear to be central to his view of the economy, yet few private-sector workers are in unions today. This Biden campaign statement, which is ostensibly about clean energy, promotes labor unions 32 times. Biden wants to “create millions of good, union jobs rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure,” wants to “ensure these investments create good, union jobs that expand the middle class,” and so on. Spending on cars, energy, manufacturing, railroads, airports, broadband, and everything else in Biden’s plan is about union jobs, over and over ad nauseam.

The focus is pathological. I say that because union members account for just 6 percent of private-sector employment today, yet Biden’s statement reads as if unions dominate the workforce, are the bulwark of the middle class, and are central to the economy. They are not and will not be going forward. The economy is too dynamic and competitive, and Americans have increasingly rejected unions in the private sector, as shown in the chart below.

The Biden statement repeatedly stresses “choice.” Biden wants to “provide workers with the choice to join a union and bargain collectively.” But “collective bargaining” is a euphemism for monopoly unionism and the denial of choice. It violates freedom of association, as Charles Baird explains here. The frequent use of the word “choice” is an attempt to mask the reality of coercive labor unionism under current federal law.

Even if collective bargaining was reasonable in theory, frequent corruption scandals reveal that labor union leaders abuse their special privileges. Most recently, the

Justice Department reached a civil settlement with the United Auto Workers union, marking a major turning point in a multiyear corruption investigation that has sent several former labor leaders to prison. The sprawling probe, led by the U.S. attorney’s office in Detroit, has penetrated the UAW’s top ranks and exposed what federal prosecutors described as a culture of corruption among its leadership built around kickback schemes, embezzlement and other illicit activities.

Why would any policymaker want to strengthen such organizations? Yet that is the direction of President Biden. His proposals would move backwards by reinforcing the coercive nature of federal labor union law, which is incompatible with personal freedom and the modern economy.

The chart shows that private-sector union membership has fallen from 32 percent of the workforce in 1960 to just 6 percent today.

Note: Chart data from unionstats, Barry Hirsch, and BLS.

Former judge Michael Luttig has argued correctly that the Constitution refers to impeachment of the president, not the ex-president. Article II, section 4 provides that “The President … shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Accordingly, once a person is no longer president, he can’t be impeached or convicted. Our federal government has only those powers enumerated in the Constitution; it does not have the power to impeach a former president.

On the other hand, several legal experts have pointed to Article I, section 3, where the Constitution states that “Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.” Those experts note further that disqualification is a separate vote — requiring only a majority of the Senate, not the two-thirds required for conviction and removal. Accordingly, the disqualification vote could occur after the president had already been removed.

Ergo, the entirety of the impeachment process, expanded to include disqualification, could apply to an ex-president. Can those two provisions be reconciled? First, nothing in the Constitution requires that conviction and removal occur simultaneously. The Senate could certainly vote to convict while declaring that removal would occur on a specified future date. Then, between the date of conviction and the date of removal, the Senate could decide whether to disqualify the president from holding future office, in which case the three-stage process – impeachment, conviction, disqualification – would be complete prior to removal. None of the stages would affect an ex-president, thereby complying with both of the Articles cited above.

Second, the two Articles can be reconciled even if the disqualification vote occurs post-removal. Article II expressly refers to impeachment and conviction of “The President.” By contrast, Article I refers to disqualification, but limits that remedy to someone who is subject to “Judgment in Cases of Impeachment,” which could include an ex-president. Therefore, if the president is impeached and convicted in accordance with Article II, he might subsequently – post-removal, as an ex-president – be disqualified in accordance with Article I.

Of course, the president could avoid removal and disqualification if he resigned prior to conviction. In that event, if he had committed a crime, he might still be indicted after leaving office. And the voters might determine that his behavior disqualified him from future office.

Here are my conclusions: (1) Per Article II, President Trump was vulnerable to impeachment and conviction while in office. (2) Per Article II, he is not subject to impeachment and conviction post-presidency. (3) Per Article I, if he had been impeached and convicted while in office, ex-President Trump would still be at risk of disqualification. As we know, Trump was impeached but not convicted. In my view, he may not now be constitutionally convicted or disqualified. Yes, in 1876 the Secretary of War was impeached after he had resigned; but that act was never challenged in court and consequently does not establish legal precedent. After all, Congress has done many things that are unconstitutional.

Suppose Trump is unconstitutionally convicted? What redress is available? The Supreme Court might be reluctant to get involved because impeachment is a political question explicitly assigned by the Constitution to the legislative branch. Perhaps, however, while not inclined to rule on matters that arise during an impeachment, the Court would nonetheless be willing to address the threshold question of what counts as a legitimate impeachment. Otherwise, if Trump were once again to become a presidential candidate, despite the Senate’s vote to disqualify him, the Court might then opine on litigation initiated by one or more of his would-be opponents.

Ten progressive members of the U.S. House of Representatives have declared that national security powers should not be expanded, nor civil liberties curtailed, in response to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Their letter marks a welcome stand on principle in a debate sure to unfold in coming months.

“While we are all concerned about the security of the Capitol and armed attempts to interrupt our legislative business, we wish to state our strong opposition to the expansion of the domestic national security and surveillance powers of the United States government, as has often been our country’s reaction to horrific acts of violence,” write Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Earl Blumenauer (Ore.), Jamaal Bowman, Mondaire Jones, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee (Calif.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), all Democrats. “We firmly believe that the national security and surveillance powers of the U.S. government are already too broad, undefined, and unaccountable.” And “we pledge to oppose any attempts to expand” these powers “at the expense of the rights of our people.”

The full letter is here and a press summary here.

No one should try to downplay the seriousness of the attack, in which rioters bent on violence managed to get near members of Congress and staffers as well as Vice President Mike Pence. Five persons died at the scene. While most of the rioters behaved in a disorganized manner, recent charge documents portray alleged coordination among a smaller number of participants who dressed in paramilitary gear, moved purposefully as a group, and used two-way communications.

But as Conor Friedersdorf recently wrote in The Atlantic, “existing laws appear sufficient to charge, convict, and sentence the men and women who breached the Capitol building. Let’s see how they work before judging them too weak.”

Echoing a point also made by Cato’s Chris Edwards, the 10 progressive members also note that the security failures that day at the Capitol cannot reasonably be blamed on any shortage of funding at the disposal of federal law enforcement.

Putting new powers in the hands of the government is always most popular just after a violent outrage. But “we have been here before and we have seen where that road leads.”

The ten signers include some of the leftmost members of Congress, and not surprisingly when their letter turns to history and analysis it leans that way too. Civil libertarians from other political traditions might select different examples and emphasis.

But those are details, and this makes a fine start. Let’s hope it is followed by similar efforts by other liberty-minded lawmakers, including those on the Republican side.

Inaugural addresses have historically been used by incoming or returning Presidents to outline the broad principles by which they intend to govern. With the exception of the federal budget and taxes, the limited reach of early U.S. federal governments meant that, up until the progressive era of the late 19^th century, these speeches contained little mention of economic policies. That, of course, has all changed since FDR and the 1930s. Donald Trump’s 2017 speech had a particularly dark tone for free-marketeers, claiming policy should “protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs.” Given the pandemic and his stated policy ambitions, one suspects Joe Biden may outline a whole range of new ways he wants the federal government to intervene in the market economy in his speech today too.

Lest libertarians find these aspects of recent inaugurals depressing, here’s a selection of the greatest libertarian rhetorical hits on economics from past inaugurations. Nobody is pretending the mouths they came from were themselves libertarians, nor did many of them live up to their libertarian words in office. But these speech extracts at least reflect well some of the principles and approaches to economics and the role of the state which we should aspire to.

Principles

“Men and women of the world move toward free markets through the door to prosperity. The people of the world agitate for free expression and free thought through the door to the moral and intellectual satisfactions that only liberty allows. We know what works: Freedom works. We know what’s right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state. For the first time in this century, for the first time in perhaps all history, man does not have to invent a system by which to live. We don’t have to talk late into the night about which form of government is better.” George H. Bush, 1989

“Still one thing more, fellow-citizens — a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities….peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” Thomas Jefferson, 1801

“Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen.” James Garfield, 1881

“The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?” Ronald Reagan, 1981

On openness and progress

“But our growth has not been limited to territory, population and aggregate wealth, marvelous as it has been in each of those directions. The masses of our people are better fed, clothed, and housed than their fathers were. The facilities for popular education have been vastly enlarged and more generally diffused.” Benjamin Harrison, 1889.

“Under the benign influence of our republic institutions, and the maintenance of peace with all nations whilst so many of them were engaged in bloody and wasteful wars, the fruits of a just policy were enjoyed in an unrivaled growth of our faculties and resources. Proofs of this were seen in the improvement of agriculture, in the successful enterprises of commerce, in the progress of manufacturers and useful arts, in the increase of the public revenue and the use made of it in reducing the public debt, and in the valuable works and establishments everywhere multiplying over the face of our land.” James Madison, 1809

“We…shall secure homes for our children and our children’s children, as well as for those exiles from foreign shores who may seek in this country to improve their condition and to enjoy the blessings of civil and religious liberty. Such emigrants have done much to promote the growth and prosperity of our country. They have proved faithful both in peace and in war. After becoming citizens they are entitled, under the Constitution and laws, to be placed on perfect equality with native-born citizens, and in this character they should ever be kindly recognized.” James Buchanan, 1857

“Wealth is not inimical to welfare; it ought to be its friendliest agency. There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.” Warren Harding, 1921

“When George Washington first took the oath I have just sworn to uphold, news traveled slowly across the land by horseback and across the ocean by boat. Now, the sights and sounds of this ceremony are broadcast instantaneously to billions around the world. Communications and commerce are global; investment is mobile; technology is almost magical; and ambition for a better life is now universal. We earn our livelihood in peaceful competition with people all across the earth.” Bill Clinton, 1993

On the case for small and focused government

“Not only those who are now making their tax returns, but those who meet the enhanced cost of existence in their monthly bills, know by hard experience what this great burden is and what it does. No matter what others may want, these people want a drastic economy. They are opposed to waste. They know that extravagance lengthens the hours and diminishes the rewards of their labor. I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.” Calvin Coolidge, 1925

“Under our scheme of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen, and the contempt of our people for economy and frugality in their personal affairs deplorably saps the strength and sturdiness of our national character. It is a plain dictate of honesty and good government that public expenditures should be limited by public necessity, and that this should be measured by the rules of strict economy; and it is equally clear that frugality among the people is the best guaranty of a contented and strong support of free institutions.” Grover Cleveland, 1893

“We must never again abuse the trust of working men and women, by sending their earnings on a futile chase after the spiraling demands of the Federal Establishment.” Ronald Reagan, 1985

“The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. Under this republic the rewards of industry belong to those who earn them. The only constitutional tax is the tax which ministers to public necessity. The property of the country belongs to the people of the country. Their title is absolute. They do not support any privileged class; they do not need to maintain great military forces; they ought not to be burdened with a great array of public employees.” Calvin Coolidge, 1925

“The method of raising revenue ought not to impede the transaction of business; it ought to encourage it. I am opposed to extremely high rates, because they produce little or no revenue, because they are bad for the country, and, finally, because they are wrong. We cannot finance the country, we cannot improve social conditions, through any system of injustice, even if we attempt to inflict it upon the rich. Those who suffer the most harm will be the poor. This country believes in prosperity. It is absurd to suppose that it is envious of those who are already prosperous. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation and all other economic legislation is not to destroy those who have already secured success but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful.” Calvin Coolidge, 1925

On protectionism

“If in lifting burdens from the daily life of our people we reduce inordinate and unequal advantages too long enjoyed, this is but a necessary incident of our return to right and justice….When we tear aside the delusions and misconceptions which have blinded our countrymen to their condition under vicious tariff laws, we but show them how far they have been led away from the paths of contentment and prosperity. When we proclaim that the necessity for revenue to support the Government furnishes the only justification for taxing the people, we announce a truth so plain that its denial would seem to indicate the extent to which judgment may be influenced by familiarity with perversions of the taxing power. And when we seek to reinstate the self-confidence and business enterprise of our citizens by discrediting an abject dependence upon governmental favor, we strive to stimulate those elements of American character which support the hope of American achievement.” Grover Cleveland, 1893

“In executing this power by levying a tariff of duties for the support of Government, the raising of revenue should be the object and protection the incident. To reverse this principle and make protection the object and revenue the incident would be to inflict manifest injustice upon all other than the protected interests.” James Polk, 1845

“A high tariff can never be permanent. It will cause dissatisfaction, and will be changed. It excludes competition, and thereby invites the investment of capital in manufactures to such excess that when changed it brings distress, bankruptcy, and ruin upon all who have been misled by its faithless protection.” Millard Fillmore, 1850

On policy favoritism

“it would seem to me that the spirit of equity, caution and compromise in which the Constitution was formed requires that the great interests of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures should be equally favored” Andrew Jackson, 1829

“Any policy which shall tend to favor monopolies or the peculiar interests of section or classes must operate to the prejudice of the interest of their fellow-citizens, and should be avoided.” James Polk, 1845

“The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government its functions do not include the support of the people. The acceptance of this principle leads to a refusal of bounties and subsidies, which burden the labor and thrift of a portion of our citizens to aid ill-advised or languishing enterprises in which they have no concern.” Grover Cleveland, 1893

“The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

We hear much of special interest groups. Our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and our factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we are sick–professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truckdrivers. They are, in short, “We the people,” this breed called Americans. Well, this administration’s objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunity for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination.” Ronald Reagan, 1981

On the dangers of populists

“…as long as the love of power is a dominant passion of the human bosom, and as long as the understandings of men can be warped and their affections changed by operations upon their passions and prejudices, so long will the liberties of a people depend on their own constant attention to its preservation. The danger to all well-established free governments arises from the unwillingness of the people to believe in its existence or from the influence of designing men diverting their attention from the quarter whence it approaches to a source from which it can never come. This is the old trick of those who would usurp the government of their country. In the name of democracy they speak, warning the people against the influence of wealth and the danger of aristocracy.” William Harrison, 1841

Could public schools have prevented the disgraceful, riotous attack on the U.S. Capitol?

The question seems crazy. The mob, or at least a sizeable portion of it, was outraged and apparently convinced that our system of government had gone off the rails. That it had cheated them. How could public schools have done anything to stop that?

It would, of course, be wildly unfair to blame public schooling for the breakdown of social cohesion and civic norms we saw on display at the Capitol. Except for one thing: Public schooling was largely created on the promise that it would prevent such breakdowns, a promise that continues to be wielded against alternatives such as charter schools or private school vouchers. We are told that public schooling is the “cornerstone” or “bedrock” of American democracy, and anything departing from it would cause unity and rule by the people to crumble.

The notion that “common” schooling is crucial to democracy has some illustrious early propagators. Thomas Jefferson – generally not a proponent of energetic government – was perhaps the most famous Founder to champion public schooling, calling for a basic, publicly funded schooling system in Virginia. He wrote in 1786, “I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness.” He was not alone in this belief, with John Adams and others also asserting the importance of widespread education delivered, at least partially, by public schools.

Despite the enthusiasm for public schooling among some founding luminaries, little was established in their lifetimes. This was likely because most people simply did not believe that government should provide schools, and education was already widespread. Historian Albert Fishlow estimates that by 1840 – before much public schooling – more than 90 percent of white adult Americans were literate. (African Americans were often barred by government from being educated.) And while the early United States was far from perfectly democratic – in most states only white males who owned property, paid taxes, or had served in the military could vote – the nascent country was nonetheless advanced compared to the rest of the world when it came to rule by the people.

The person most prominently associated with the birth and eventual dominance of public schooling is Horace Mann, the 19^th century Massachusetts reformer known as the “Father of the Common Schools.” His crusade for public schooling began in 1837 when he became the first secretary of the newly formed Massachusetts State Board of Education. The need to create virtuous, dedicated citizens was his top selling point. As he declared in 1848, “Never will wisdom preside in the halls of legislation, and its profound utterances be recorded on the pages of the statute-book, until common schools—or some other agency of equal power not yet discovered—shall create a more far-seeing intelligence, and a purer morality, than has ever existed among communities of men.”

It took several decades after Mann’s crusade to solidify public schooling as the educational norm, but it eventually came to dominate. The earliest, readily available data we have on where children have gone to school dates back to 1889, and they consistently show roughly 90 percent of students attending public schools. We also see more children spending increasing amounts of time in school as time passes: from about 65 percent of 5 to 17-year-olds spending roughly 78 days in school in 1869, to more than 94 percent spending 167 days today.

Public schooling has been triumphant. Yet we are a cleaved society with an increasingly weak commitment to democratic norms such as political tolerance and rule of law.

The Capitol riot seems like prima facie evidence of a dissolution of social cohesion and democratic values, especially coming off years of highly contentious elections, demonstrations against police brutality that sometimes spun off destruction, “cancel culture,” and more. Deeper analyses back up this seemingly obvious state of affairs. These include non-negligible support for unilateral presidential rule or even a military coup under certain conditions; findings of markedly increased demonization of members of opposing political parties since the late 1960s; partisan affiliations being seen as legitimate negative factors to use in hiring decisions; declining trust in numerous American institutions, including government; and declining generalized trust, with the share of General Social Survey respondents agreeing that “most people can be trusted” dropping from 46 percent in 1972 to 21 percent in 2018.

Clearly, widespread public schooling has not prevented the decay of social cohesion and democratic norms. Probably because it never had the power to do so. The education system cannot force people to like one another or democracy, nor can it maintain those things if people turn against them. Democratically controlled schooling is more likely to reflect decrepit attitudes than change them.

That said, the system does not appear to do a good job with what it can directly impact.

According to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress civics and history exams – federal tests given to nationally representative samples of students – only 23 percent of public school 8^th graders were proficient in civics, meaning they were able do such things as “explain two ways Congress fulfills a constitutional responsibility” and “identify the purpose of a country’s constitution.” In U.S. history, only 14 percent were proficient, including the ability to do such things as “identify a right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.”

What about bringing diverse people together?

The first reality that has long rendered public schools poor builders of bridges among disparate groups is that children tend to be assigned to schools based on their home addresses and, for reasons tied to both law and human nature, people tend to live with others who are similar—racially, economically, culturally—to themselves. When students do attend schools with diverse populations, they tend to be in separated classrooms and social groups.

An inherent inability to create physical togetherness is just part of the public schooling cohesion-building problem. By trying to encompass diverse people, public schooling ends up fostering political and social conflicts which, by their adversarial nature, are more likely to have polarizing than unifying effects. Public schooling forces diverse people to fight over whose values, history, or preferred policies the schools will uphold.

This is not just theoretical. Cato’s Public Schooling Battle Map catalogues over 2,400 values and identity-based conflicts collected since 2005, including about 350 at the state level, leaving no state citizens outside the battleground. In just the last year we have seen conflicts over students’ rights to express support for Donald Trump versus the rights of others to calm, orderly instruction; rights of teachers to champion Black Lives Matter against students’ rights to not be captive to an authority figure’s political speech; battles over classic but sometimes offensive reading assignments; and much more. And, of course, there has been a furious national debate over the New York Times’s 1619 Project, including its use in schools, which prompted a Trump-led drive to advance “patriotic” interpretations of U.S. history.

This inherent tendency to force conflict may be a major reason that public schooling does a poor job of shaping citizens. It likely renders a lot of civics topics, or encouraging civically engaged behaviors, too hot to handle. Imagine discussing impeachment, or encouraging protesting, in many schools today. As Louise Dubé, executive director of the civics education group iCivics, said about handling the contentious 2016 presidential campaign, “Teachers right now are afraid to teach the election.”

That parents freely choose private schools may well be one reason they appear to do a better job shaping citizens than public. Private schools can teach more rigorous, concrete civics because painful conflict is less of a danger to avoid. Rather than families being forced to fight against teachings they find unacceptable, they can simply leave. And most families likely would not choose schools with teachings they found intolerable to being with.

The only private school scores the National Assessment of Educational Progress publishes are for Roman Catholic schools, which constitute the largest single group of private K‑12 institutions. They perform much better than public schools. In civics, 41 percent of Catholic school 8^th graders were proficient, as were 29 percent in U.S. history. These results certainly leave room for improvement, but they are roughly double the public school proficiency rates. This despite Catholic schools for a long time having been considered by many people to be the un-American arch-nemeses of public schools.

Catholic school scores could, importantly, reflect characteristics of the students and families that choose them more than what the schools themselves do. Though relatively low cost – their tuition is around $8,000, versus the roughly $15,000 per-student spent in public schools – Catholic schools still must charge tuition, and hence likely have better-off students on average than public schools. That said, numerous studies have controlled statistically for student backgrounds, and have typically found superior private school performance. As University of Arkansas professor Patrick Wolf itemizes in School Choice Myths: Setting the Record Straight on Education Freedom, the most methodologically rigorous studies have produced 27 findings on civic outcomes, with 14 showing a private school advantage, 12 no difference, and only 1 a public school advantage.

Freedom wards off divisive conflict and enables private schools to teach rigorous curricula. It also enables them to have distinctive identities and cultures that render them better able to build bridges among diverse people. A school’s distinctive ethos, whether it be Christian values, high academics, an arts focus, or more, immediately gives students who may be from, say, different racial backgrounds, foundations to build new, shared identities.

Research supporting this is limited, but private schools overall have been found to have more peaceful, racially harmonious climates than public schools, while more focused studies have found greater voluntary mixing of students and intergroup friendships at private than public schools.

Of course, while superior to public schooling, even universal school choice would be no panacea for polarization or disintegrating democratic norms. If large shares of people have highly divergent political views, or strong desires to separate, neither school choice nor public schooling can make them change. Again, education is much more likely to reflect widespread beliefs than to alter them. Which is why the failure to create unified, small‑d democrats nationwide cannot be laid at the feet of the public schools. But that failure also puts the lie to the assertion that public schooling is a guarantor of a unified, democratic society, and therefore sacrosanct. Indeed, the evidence points to school choice as the best means within education to foster a unified, civically healthy country.

We’re just 15 days into 2021, and the number of really bad, anti-liberty policy and legislative proposals are multiplying like mold spores.

To that end, I would direct you to the request by the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) create a “No Ride” list for passenger rail akin to TSA’s infamous “No Fly” list for the airline industry. From the unions’ press release:

Suspected insurrectionists continue to threaten further violence as the transition to President-elect Joe Biden’s administration approaches next week. Some of these have been relegated to the No Fly List overseen by FAA, preventing them from traveling by air, but no such restriction exists for the national passenger rail network. SMART-TD and BLET urge that a “no-ride” list that mirrors FAA’s list be enacted immediately.

By all means, lets make passenger rail travel just as hell-like as airline travel: insane requirements for removing shoes, non-science based limits on liquid carry-on items, more expensive, ineffectual screening technology, and of course, even longer delays in being able to board your train and get to your destination. Apparently, union reps have forgotten just how ineffectual and liberty-damaging TSA’s VIPR teams were before Trump—in one of his few useful acts as President—tried to kill the VIPR program.

This union proposal naturally begs additional questions: where will it end? Will the union representing Washington Metropolitan Transportation Authority (WMATA) ask for a “No Ride” list for DC’s Metrorail and Metrobus services? After all, since you don’t know who might morph from a protestor to an insurrectionists, better to to simply take any names of the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists (alleged or actual) on the TSA “No Fly” list and get them banned from riding Amtrak, DC Metro, or any other transit system, right?

That our nation’s Capitol building was overrun by at least hundreds seeking to overturn a fair, free, and valid election is clear. The Department of Justice has already created a running, online list of those thus far charged with federal crimes in connection with the insurrectionist event. What we don’t need is yet another due process-free, innuendo driven, government run transportation security “list” that gives us another debacle like TSA’s Quiet Skies program, and that further undermines the ability of citizens not wanted for a crime to go about their travel unmolested.