A hidden cost revealed
Mar 2nd, 2012 @ 07:45 pm › Jim Fedako
My Home School Legal Defense Association membership renewal card arrived in the mail today. As I put the card in my wallet, I acknowledged the expense associated with the card and membership, an expense realized for the sole purpose of protecting my homeschooling family from government.
As I put my ever-lighter wallet in my pocket, I wondered how many other negative externalities are the result of the supposed public goods provided by the state, externalities so common place they are not recognized even as they occur.
note: HSLDA provides legal assistance to homeschooling families that offend the sensibilities of neighbors (qua local government officials) acting as the nanny do-gooders of the collective.
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9 Responses
It is amazing that a simple citizen (like myself) has to pay for a yearly membership fee in order to exercise his God-given right to educate his own children. And we claim to be the land of the free?
The HSLDA in turn takes your money and funds the Neo-Con Patrick Henry College.
HSLDA does nothing for you that you can’t do for yourself. In fact their “lobbying” efforts have had a negative legislative effect upon various states- Pennsylvania being one of them.
Fair point. But in our world of fascialism, that point tends to become the all-to-easy counter to many arguments.
All too true. You cannot find many avenues for peaceful solutions to much of anything these days. When the only permitted ‘solution’ to one form of violence is another state sanctioned mechanism of violence, that does not justify statism. It demonstrates just how dire things are becoming.
The assumption is that you registered or sought permission from your government to school at home.
You were not forced to register. From what I’ve read there’s a large “underground” school at home movement in your country filled with people who refuse to register with the government.
In my country of Germany schooling at home isn’t legal.
As to whether to pay HSLDA or not, I recommend it if you’re not an attorney. I’m an attorney and I home school my children, so I don’t use them, but… You would not want to attempt to represent yourself in our court system unless you want to spend hours and hours and hours and hours learning the law – and even then, a significant part of the practice of law is knowing the Judge and other attorneys. Given that attorneys in my rural neck of the woods charge $100-$200 an hour, the HSLDA yearly fee is a real bargain if you’re into pooling risk.
As to whether to register initially or not, that’s a personal decision – I’m opposed to registration, but I did it (of course, they’re not likely to mess as much with me, but I digress). If you don’t register, you’re basically going to have to hide your children all of the time during school hours because – if you’re not registered, you WILL be going to Court and – worst case scenario – you could do jail time or lose your children. Not likely on first offense, but that’s certainly possible long term. Since we did register, we take the children wherever we want, whenever we want – even during school hours – and if a law enforcement officer hassled us, I’d have a perfectly good defense. Without registering, you’re hiding.
On the other hand, my pastor didn’t register his child and the child made it all the way thru high school with no issues. The child then tested highest math score ever at the local university and the admissions people were like “where did you come from?” He answered, “I’ve been right here in the county all the time.”
Let s make it legal then. Starting – now. Well we already started and we will not give in easily.-fyi – looking for charter -school which was mentioned in a speech by Ron Paul ,I also found socalled magnet -schools. One I found out is in Dortmund. For a real horror of hardestcore kommunism, check their schulprogramm pdf…
“HSLDA does nothing for you that you can’t do for yourself.”
Assuming you have have the legal expertise of a lawyer and the resources to not have to work for a living but spend the time in court and doing legal research.
It’s called division-of-labor, and comparative advantage. Just because you can do something yourself doesn’t mean that your time and effort is best spent that way.
Michael Farris recently came out on Facebook and wherever anyone else would listen saying he wouldn’t vote for Ron Paul because Dr Paul believes the “Tenth Amendment trumps the Fourteenth” and then goes on to cite a case he argued in California using the 14th as his baseline. Unfortunately Farris is a nationalist> He obviously doesn’t believe in states’ rights. I wonder if his crusade will end up hurting ALL of us INCLUDING the homeschoolers that worship him. Another point is that his organization endorsed McCain in 2008, and Bush before him. For someone who loves to cite his christian beliefs to besmirch Ron Paul, he seems rather inconsistent.