Alternative Education and Adverse Attitudes Regarding It

Several generations ago, there was an American historian who famously wrote on the subject of what he called the paranoid style in American politics.  This kind of characterization can be true; or, at least, it sadly exists in this nation, though not, admittedly, in quite the specific way that this particular historian had once meant.  

Homeschoolers and paranoid politics at large can, when hotly combined, make some (fictional) people seem as potential or known public enemies of the people. The seeming conspiratorial mentality, however, is alive and well, especially among those not normally suspected of such an attitude.

Rather, one unfortunately finds that enlightened opinion tends to get paranoid about its seeking to find scores of alleged enemies; these are set among those deemed as being irretrievably unenlightened or reactionary throwbacks to an earlier America, invested only with suspected bigots, freaks, weirdos, etc. who are thought, by political progressives, to be strictly beyond the pale of humane thought and appreciation, of socio-cultural support and sensible approbation. 

This real paranoia, however, can and has had definite negative consequences that can suggest perils to civil rights and civil liberties, by those thought of as unprotected social, political, and/or cultural minorities not considered very worthy of respect or consideration, which ought to be regarded as, at least, dangerous thinking; this then rather frightening tendency has, moreover, fascistic-authoritarian overtones that usually or almost always get so conveniently overlooked, because the proper kind of responsible people in authority are not thought of as being bigoted monsters in disguise.  But, one can be yet fooled by mere outward appearances.

They are, according to much popular myth, among the “nice” people who are liberal minded and seemingly generous to a fault, with their purported sense of fairness and tolerance; so, what could possibly come along to then rudely dispel the apparent socio-cultural illusion of a general sense of implied pleasantness and decency about these (assumed) nice people?  The problem is that many of those in authority often see things differently from those who lack the power to avoid all difficulties of being advocates of alternative education, inclusive of educating their children at home.

An Exercise in Paranoia Exposed

An emergency drill, done courtesy of the Michigan homeland security, and as sympathetically funded by Federal Homeland Security, took as its insanely sick scenario the incredible and obnoxious idea of a group of supposed “terrorists” as, thus, being a bunch of homeschoolers who were directly and radically involved with a public school bus bombing!  Apparently, not enough people, directly in charge of deciding about this set particular issue, thought such a possibility to be naturally too ludicrous, for sustained consideration and rational judgment, as to its both inherent and highly acceptable plausibility.