Libertarianism.org’s first week was a terrific success. If you haven’t visited yet, I encourage you to do so. The site’s an excellent place to learn about and explore the theory and history of liberty.

This week Lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org added

• A new video in our Libertarian View series. Blogger and GMU professor Don Boudreaux tells how his working-class upbringing and economics training led him to libertarianism.
• George H. Smith published a new essay in his Excursions series. Smith examines colonial reaction to the Declaration of Independence’s list of grievances as well as the political principles informing its drafting.
• Jason Kuznicki wrote a long blog post on the difference between “ideal acts morality” and “common sense ethics”—and how these two approaches play out in politics and real life.
• Miles Pope began a series of posts on Jan Narveson’s classic book, The Libertarian Idea.
• I blogged about Elizabeth Warren’s popular argument for paying higher taxes and how it relates to the intriguing subset of political philosophy dealing with political obligation.
• Finally, Lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org expanded its social networking reach to Google+. So if you’re a Google+ user, be sure to circle Lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org. And while you’re at it, we’re also on Facebook and Twitter.

Though I could probably pull something out of the Penn State scandal to illustrate the excesses of college sports, that’s not the real story as far as I can tell. This strikes me as first and foremost a sad legal matter, not a higher education policy story, so I haven’t had anything to say about it. Until last night.

As you probably know by now, following the announcement of Joe Paterno’s firing throngs of Penn State students took to the streets, either in anger or just to go out and be rowdy. Parts of the coeducational mob ripped down street signs, toppled over a TV news van, and hurled rocks and fireworks at police.

Now, this was absolutely not the Arab Spring, with decades of brutal dictatorship finally overthrown. This was over the firing of a football coach who, while no doubt beloved, did not ensure that the proper authorities were notified when children were victimized by one of his staff members. Yes, he passed the information up channels so he did the minimum, but it’s not like he is being fired for protecting the children. One might disagree with the PSU trustees’ actions, but they certainly didn’t do anything outrageous.

But students all too often don’t need anything even close to grave injustice to fuel rampaging and property destruction. Usually all they require is a sports win or loss. At the University of Maryland they take to the streets and burn things over big basketball games, win or lose. At West Virginia University, they seemingly have couch conflagrations at the drop of a hat. And they are not alone.

Is this what taxpayers are shelling out hundreds of billions of dollars for every year? (Pennsylvania taxpayers handed $279 million to PSU this year.) Is this what higher education is supposed to be?

Of course not, but rioting is just the most glaring part of the unstudious college iceberg. The mass of it includes infamous partying that has largely replaced tedious stuff like studying. Indeed, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa report that the average time per week spent studying for a full-time student has gone from twenty-five hours in 1961, to twenty in 1981, to an anemic thirteen in 2003. Then there are the atrocious college completion rates — from what federal data show, maybe 60 percent of all students finish their programs — and the numerous majors of highly dubious value. In other words, as taxpayers have poured more and more money into the ivory tower, it seems to have just added more bars, jacuzzis, and hangouts.

Taxpayers have to subsidize higher education, we’re told, because doing so promotes the “public good.” Well, as you watch Happy Valley turn decidedly unhappy, contemplate all the rot and waste that runs throughout the ivory tower. Then tell those people who talk up the public good that, clearly, it would be best served by letting taxpayers keep their higher ed bucks.

Yesterday the First Lady addressed high school students visiting Georgetown University for a day. Her message was to encourage students to strive for academic success and college degrees, but her answer to one question said a whole lot more. Here’s the question:

about the community, like, about this violence and teen pregnancy that’s going on.… What could you and your husband do to change or help out us young people? Because it’s like someone dying every day. Like, it’s just crazy.

Mrs. Obama answered at length, stressing the need for every individual to take responsibility for his own life and his own destiny, going so far as to add that

there’s all this stuff the President and Congress can do, but trust me, they can’t fix that. No matter what, they can’t get in your head and change that. You have to do that.

The First Lady is right that people must take responsibility for themselves, but what she seems not to realize is that government programs often stifle that kind of behavior. Responsibility is like a muscle: use it or lose it. The only way you learn how to behave responsibly is to actually have real responsibilities. Government has gotten in the way of that process in a host of ways, but nowhere so perniciously as in education. Today, the only educational responsibilities most parents have is to get their kids up in the morning and point them in the direction of the school or the school bus. They don’t decide where their kids go to school, who teaches them, or what they’ll be taught. The natural result—the inevitable result—is the atrophy of parental responsibility towards their children’s education and the horrendous cascade of social ills that flows from it.

Most of this is the fault of our state school monopolies that automatically assign children to schools based on where they live. But the federal government has exacerbated that problem by centralizing control over schooling even further. By abolishing their failed k‑12 education programs alone, Congress would save the nation’s taxpayers roughly $70 billion annually. And by encouraging states to return power over education to parents instead of leaving it with bureaucrats, they would dramatically increase the exact kind of responsible behavior that Mrs. Obama knows is essential to solving so many of our social and economic problems.

Consider that the state of Florida has a program that cuts taxes on businesses that donate to non-profit k‑12 scholarship funds. Those scholarship organizations subsidize private school tuition for low-income families. According to two separate studies, this program improves achievement in public schools, by virtue of the new competitive pressures it introduces, and it improves the achievement of the students who participate. And by requiring parents to make the difficult decisions as to where to send their children to school, and by requiring most parents to contribute at least a small co-payment, this program builds exactly the kind of responsibility and exactly the kind of social capital that Mrs. Obama so rightly yearns for.

Oh, and, by the way, it saves taxpayers $1.49 for every dollar it reduces state revenue, so it makes economic sense in the immediate term as well as in the long term.

But there’s a catch: This practical and proven solution does not seem to fit well with Mrs. Obama’s political ideology—or, more damagingly, with her husband’s. So instead of ending failed federal education programs and encouraging parental choice, power, and responsibility, the president will keep pursuing federal programs that even his own wife recognizes are doomed to fail.

But while it’s hard for a person to change his ideology, it’s easy for a country to change its president.

…Apparently, when you are the District of Columbia public school system. The Washington Times reports today on a candle-light vigil beseeching the federal government for extra cash for new computers. The group organizing the vigil, OurDC, shares this “horror story” from former technology teacher Toval Rolston:

I’ve been in D.C. schools where the computers are so antiquated that you can’t even download a basic pdf file; our children don’t have the tools to compete in today’s high tech world.

The twin implications of this plea are that DC schools are underfunded and that more money will actually be spent wisely. The first statement is false and the second is decidedly unlikely. The last time I calculated total spending on K‑12 education in DC, from the official budget documents, it came out to over $28,000 per pupil (the linked post points to a spreadsheet with all the numbers).

How do you manage to spend $28,000 per pupil and not manage to keep your computer hardware up to date? Or, for that matter, manage to have among the worst academic performance in the country? Maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with not being capable, or perhaps even inclined, to spend the money on what works.

The Washington Times, by the way, points out that OurDC is headquartered at the same address as the Service Employees International Union. Go figure.

President Obama claims to support America’s exporting and so-called “green jobs” industries, but he also likes rules that restrict the importation of critical inputs to those industries. Austin Bragg and I produced a short video detailing how antidumping duties serve to nudge American manufacturers offshore or out of business. The examples we cite are American manufactured products that fall squarely into the category of “green.”

Facebook it. Tweet it. And read more of Dan Ikenson’s heavy lifting on the antidumping issue here, here and here.

Even though the unwashed masses decided that I didn’t win my stimulus debate in New York City, I continue my fight for the hearts and minds of the American people.

I’m now taking part in a debate for U.S. News & World Report on “Who Is Handling Its Debt Crisis Better: United States or Europe?”

This was a tough question. I asked the organizer whether I could vote none of the above, but I was told I had to pick an option.

As you can see, I said the United States was doing a better job — but only by default.

Our long-run outlook is grim, but at least we still have time to reform the entitlement programs and save America… The only major difference is that European nations are farther down the path to fiscal collapse. The welfare state was adopted earlier in Europe and government spending among euro nations now consumes a staggering 49 percent of economic output. This heavy fiscal burden, especially when combined with onerous tax systems, helps explain why growth is anemic. …the United States still can turn things around. Greece, Italy, and other welfare states have probably passed the point of no return, but it’s still possible for American lawmakers to fix the entitlement crisis by turning Medicaid over to the states , modernizing Medicare into a premium-support system, and transitioning to a system of personal retirement accounts for younger workers. If those reforms don’t take place, the consequences won’t be pleasant. To be blunt, there won’t be an IMF to bail out the United States.

For all intents and purposes, I contend that America can be saved if something like the Ryan budget is approved.

You can vote on this page on whether you like or dislike what I said, as well as what the other participants said.

I’m accustomed to a standard response when I propose removing government from some part of education: it’s not gonna happen, so forget about it. Often, a popular counter-proposal is then offered: Have government require “transparency” from schools, either of the k‑12 or higher variety. Transparency, apprently, is something we can get.

Except, it seems, we almost never do.

A couple of weeks ago I provided numbers exposing the likely failure of transparency in elementary and secondary education. Today, in a surprising twist, someone else reveals transparency futility in higher ed: Education Sector’s Kevin Carey, in a joint report with AEI’s Andrew Kelly. It’s surprising because Carey is one of the people who has dismissed my arguments for removing government as unrealisitc, and instead championed transparency as an achievable solution. In light of this, all credit to him for publishing his study.

The paper, The Truth Behind Higher Education Disclosure Laws, is awfully clear: Transparency requirements in the 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act have led to either rampant evasion or deception in reporting everything from Pell-recipient graduation rates to employment placement info. Indeed, the report says that “by creating an illusion of transparency and disclosure” the requirements are worse than having no reporting at all.

Sound familiar?

Based on what we know about transparency mandates in education, it seems at least as quixotic to expect regulations to work as to expect that we can begin to remove govenment funding. The reality is that regulations are often far too convoluted and endless for the regulated to comply with even a small fraction of them; they often stymie enforcement for the same reasons; and they are regularly ignored because those who would be regulated have a lot more political sway on their issues than the public.

Unfortunately, repeated failure doesn’t seem to deter those with an abiding faith in regulation, including Carey and Kelly, whose report largely recommends tougher rule enforcement. But go from regular push ups to those hand-clapping ones and you still won’t budge the Earth.

Or maybe I’m wrong (it’s theoretically possible). Maybe government actually can make colleges change for the better. Maybe it’s just that transparency isn’t the answer. Indeed, whether government can move colleges for the better will the subject of a terrific, full-day conference Cato will be hosting on November 18th with the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. Speakers will include CCAP founder and economist Richard Vedder; George Washington University President Emertius Stephen Joel Trachtenberg; Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein; and many more powerful analysts of the ivory tower. And the discussion, I assure you, won’t just be more regulation versus less taxpayer aid. There will be a wide variety of perspectives offered, and no doubt many surprising debates. I hope you’ll join us, and you can register here!