Are there private high schools in this country that explicitly operate according to a libertarian ethos?

Usually, we think of private schools as institutions that are not required to observe the civil liberties of students, and that therefore do not. But what I am wondering is, are there private schools out there that use their prerogatives as private institutions to educate students in the ways and means of freedom?

Comments are open; responses are welcome.

THere's a free high school in Moscow where the kids make most of the rules, inlcuding hiring and firing of staff.

I guess the first question would be how we're defining "libertarian". If we're speaking essentially of the withering away of the state, then I wonder if any school will prepare students for that, since given human nature as we understand it, that's likely not going to happen. We're not going to be contracting voluntarily for police and military services and opting out of the FBI in our lifetimes, or those of our children. A major purpose of education is to train young people for citizenship -- what other justification do we have for teaching communication, persuasion, or critical thinking skills? If we presuppose citizenship, then we presuppose a state.

We can certainly ask what kind of a state we want, and we would want students to see a range of options and hear a wide diversity of viewpoints. But none of this would be "libertarian" education in the sense of unrealistic preparation for some utopian stateless society. If by "libertarian" Erin means "minimalist" or even "federalist", fine, and there may well be schools that teach this, but I think before we get to that we need to be more precise about the terms we're using.

To follow up, I just did a quick google search on "libertarian definition", and it pointed out that there are real problems with this word. The most common definition was as a philosophical term of art, one who believes in philosophical free will, as opposed to necessitarianism. I don't think that's what we mean in this discussion. A political libertarian is defined most commonly in these google links as one who believes in "freedom and individual responsibility" -- well, I betcha Bill Clinton has expressed beliefs in those things many times, and I certainly heard Sen. Collins (liberal R-ME) in an interview with PBS at the Republican convention indicating that these are cornerstones of Republican belief. Do libertarians see themselves as congruent with Republicans in this area? Very likely not.

I would guess that it wouldn't be difficult to find a private school that espoused belief in freedom and individual responsiblity -- you would likely find these terms very warmly expressed in the catalogs of Phillips Academy, Choate, Groton, etc. etc.

So I think we're back to needing a more precise definition of libertarian as it applies to schools.

The Sudbury schools are not explicitly libertarian and don't take on politics per se, but they operate internally with a very libertarian ethos, attract a lot of political libertarians, and tend to act in libertarian ways out of both necessity and ideological propensity (i.e., due to their highly non-standard methods of education it is prudent, as well as principled, to refuse any government funds such as vouchers or grants which might be available so as not to give the state an excuse to regulate the school).

Also nifty is the traditional Sudbury practice of limiting tuition to the per-student funding allocated to a state school in the same district, which both makes the school fairly affordable and belies the argument that private schools succeed only because they have more money available.

All Sudbury schools are independent and some follow these practices more closely than others.

I would characterize Hillsdale College as a Libertarian leaning college, so I would suspect that Hillsdale Academy would be Libertarian leaning as well.

The Naeher post seems closer to providing a definition of "libertarian" (though simply to have non-standard methods of education isn't libertarian). We hear, though, that the Sudbury schools refuse government funds to avoid giving the state a pretext to regulate education.

So at least contextually we're seeing a "libertarian ethos" as something opposed to the state per se. I'm not sure I like this, as at minimum it's not realistic, but beyond that, especially since the world-view in and of itself is not realistic in expecting the absence of a state apparatus, I wonder what the difference is between teaching one "ethos" and teaching others, as The Little Red School House did (and may still, for all I know). Would a child be better off attending a real-world school where parents can have their petitions redressed via the Board of Education?

I think of "libertarian" as most closely related to what the CATO institute stands for: http://www.cato.org/about/about.html - see the section on "How to Label CATO." The "Libertarian Party" used to hold similar views; now they are the haunt of off-the-wall anarchists and general malcontents.

New Saint Andrews College ( http://www.newstandrews.org/index.html) and the associated grade schools in the Classical Christian School movement are often very "libertarian," especially those specifically affiliated with Doug Wilson. They are socially very conservative, and politically very "libertarian" (which, as the CATO institute puts it, emphasizes: "limited government, individual liberty, free markets and peace.").

Jim

One school fits your criteria perfectly (and, interestingly, was this year ranked #1 by the Wall Street Journal in college-admissions success): Saint Ann's School.
(http://www.saintanns.k12.ny.us)

These are interesting points of view, but there are still several possibilities for "libertarian ethos" that we're seeing in posts here. "Social conservatism" probably doesn't mesh well with "libertarianism", since many people who endorse libertarian views oppose any restrictions by society or state on sexual preferences or conduct, drug use, abortion, and so forth, and certainly a state that tried to regulate these issues would be resisted by many libertarians.

I also have a concern in particular with the example of Hillsdale College, whose President resigned in the late 1990s after a scandal involving incest and his daughter-in-law's suicide. By all accounts, any meddling the state might have done at Hillsdale would have paled in comparison to the petty tyrannies that the college's own administration imposed. Reminds me some of Paul Johnson's remarks on the proximate cause of World War I, whereby the Serbs and other minorities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire wanted the "freedom" to oppress their own minorities.

This continues to raise in my mind the question that Erin posed in a post the other day -- if you don't like what happens in a private school, libertarian, Trotskyite, or what-have-you, you have few good options other than leaving. There is no room in the state-abjuring context for conventional petition redress of grievances -- an extremely strong argument, it seems to me, for state involvement in a school.

So I continue with the question, which "libertarian" model for education are we actually discussing here -- social conservative or anything-goes -- and why do we find it attractive? Would attending a public school in some place like Idaho run as a tight ship by an administration generally in tune with the local populace be potentially a better choice?

You've made a good start at defining "libertarian". I wonder, though, what Erin means by "libertarian ethos" applied to a school.

I cringe at the thought of students running the asylum - as seems to be the case at the Moscow school. Will a 4-year-old put away the cookies for later, and eat the broccoli now?

Perhaps the question might lead to a larger question of "what is education?" and "how do we do it?".

We should always keep in mind the difference bewteen freedom and license. Some have said that perfect freedom consists in being able to do what we ought to do. One of the key points in the Cato Institute's definition is "... and the rule of law". Where that law comes from is the other big question.

I like to think of "education" as "leading out" (from the Latin roots) - but instead of the older idea of "bringing out" knowledge already there, rather "leading out of the darkness [of ignorance] into the light [of knowledge and reason]". And in some cases, they have to be brought out unwillingly.

But as many a parent has said, "It's good for you", and "It builds character".

I think the "what is education" question is a very good one in this context. The US public schools have often been a bone of political contention, and I don't think that's a bad thing. Note, for instance, that the liberal forces allied with the teachers' unions oppose the "No Child Left Behind" initiative as state sponsored-meddling -- in that respect, those forces are taking a libertarian viewpoint, and in fact they are resisting a politically-driven reform (another name for petition for redress of grievances).

The center-right forces advocating programs like testing and NCLB are, it seems to me, acting in the spirit of the American social contract, expecting the schools (an answer to what is education supposed to do) to prepare students with a set of basic life competences, as well as the traditional "citizenship" skills of critical thinking and social awareness.

However, this is being achieved in a communitarian context via state mechanisms -- indeed, as the founders intended. Religious schooling, for that matter, is communitarian, and probably by definition not "libertarian". Judaeo-Christian parochial schooling would have goals very similar to US public schools, adding only a particular level of religious instruction (which has never kept non-Catholics or even non-Christians from sending kids to Catholic schools, with the expectation that overall quality is higher).

So, again, what libertarian model do we have in mind? How would a state-abjuring educational model (rare as we find it in real life in any case) be superior, say, to just sending your kid to a Catholic school -- or even one of the well-run units of a big-city school system?

Re Jim Carroll's post: the "Classical Christian School movement" certainly tends towards libertarian views in relation to the U.S. government, but do the schools embody libertarian principles in their own government? My experience, which is limited but not insignificant, suggests a big NO.

I would think that a school truly shaped by a libertarian ethos would strive to have no formal opinions about and no interference in matters of belief or behavior that are not intrinsic to the mission of the institution; but it would also be necessary for such a school to have a limited, even a chastened, sense of what its mission properly is. To use a hypothetical example that Erin used the other day -- one that surely prompted her question in this post -- any school that has "mandatory meetings in which students are separated according to identity categories" no doubt thinks of such meetings as intrinsic to their mission of "character education" or some such.

The real question, I think, is this: is it possible to persuade teachers and academic administrators that how students form their identities vis-a-vis race, gender, or ethnicity is none of the school's damned business?

But didn't US public schools that traditionally taught the "melting pot" in effect take a position on students' race, gender, or ethnicity? Let's not even talk about high school sociology courses. What would a libertarian school teach? Would it give equal time to the "monster Lincoln" theory, frequntly espoused on lewrockwell.com? Are we saying just drop all this (which is to say, don't teach Huckleberry Finn or US History, among much else), or are we saying (more likely, it seems to me) teach what I want to see taught?

Let's hypothesize -- because that's all we can do -- a correct "libertarian" school that has a mix of all genders, preferences, ethnicities, DNA, etc. -- are we expecting the school simply to teach differential calculus and not address any questions the students may have about, say, the gay rights demonstration in town last week, or why the old photos of the bus station downtown show white and colored waiting rooms?

What if the good libertarian headmaster comes down on the wacko side of various theories of race or ethnicity -- since, as a good libertarian, there's a non-trivial chance he may have non-mainstream views on such subjects? We're back to the situation where the only option students and parents have is to withdraw from the school. In a public school, wackiness is addressable via public pressure -- and it frequently is addressed that way.

Where's the control on wackiness in a libertarian private school? We've had at least one poster above suggest that OK, we've got guys at Cato who don't swing from the chandeliers, but on the other hand, we've got others in the movement who most definitely do.

This may be a reason why there are few or no pure libertarian private schools, as defined here. It seems to me the answer to Erin's original question -- are there libertarian private high schools that fit a very wide diversity of definitions of what such schools should be and should teach -- the answer must almost certainly be no, and if there were such, I would hate to see it!

1. Sudbury schools--only witnessed from the outside the "education" of a daughter's friend. There was not education, there was warehousing and endless self -amusement. good thing the girl is quite intelligent and intellectually curious. She was able to make up lost time once in a more intellectually rigorous environment.

2. "But what I am wondering is, are there private schools out there that use their prerogatives as private institutions to educate students in the ways and means of freedom?"

Readers are invited to investigate the Round Square consortium of schools:

http://www.roundsquare.org/

fooey. I'm having connectivty problems. At any rate, private schools vary wildly in their internal composition. Some are merely filling a market void, others actually have idealism at their core.

To John Bruce: you're talking about what might go on in the classrooms of a "libertarian school." And it's certainly important to ask how a commitment to libertarian values might affect a school's pedagogical quality control. However, I was imagining a libertarian school not in the sense of "a school that is committed to promoting a libertarian social/political philosophy" but rather in the sense of "a school that follows libertarian practices in its own governance." Such a school could legitimately have some say over what sort of ideas about (for example) race, gender, and ethnicity get taught in the classroom -- that's quality control, and eliminating "wackiness" good quality control -- but might refrain from trying to coerce students into assuming one or another stance on such matters. So, no apologists for Lew Rockwell's take on Lincoln in the classroom, but also no mandatory meetings for members of certain identity groups.

Such a school would presumably allow more intellectual variety among its teachers than most non-religious private schools do -- that is, wouldn't see anything that deviates from the standard left-liberal line as necessarily "wacky." In other words, libertarianism in governance would probably also result in greater pedagogical freedom, and the risk of "wackiness" would probably be a little greater. But perhaps any dangers of that kind would be compensated for by the school's refusal to use extra-curricular activities to pressure students into particular political attitudes.

I think how we look at the question depends on the definition of Erin's question. Does the school operate in such a way as to abjure statist meddling -- that would be one interpretation. But it seems to me that operating according to a libertarian ethos could certainly be interpreted as meaning that libertarian doctrine is incorporated in the curriculum, no differently than we might expect Catholic or Christian doctrine to be incorporated in a Catholic classroom. Erin so far is silent on this point, so it seems to me that both or either is valid until we see otherwise.

The problem with libertarianism, as with any doctrine that claims to have more than the usual number of answers to things, is the tendency toward cultishness. Add the ingredient of we don't want no statist meddling (read, potentially, accreditation, for instance) and you've got quality control issues, irrespective of whether Mr. Wackey's American History class describes Lincoln as a monster and Jeff Davis as a misunderstood martyr.

So my interest in this discussion continues to be why we would find a libertarian educational model, defined with any degree of rigor, attractive. By this I mean there are people, like those at Cato, who call themselves libertarians but basically mean they're Republicans who've reread Milton Friedman. Those aren't what I think most people would think of when they say libertarian. Glenn Reynolds and Virginia Postrel would mark the most mainstream border of libertarian, to my way of thinking, and as soon as you take a close look at what they often say, you get (or I get) a creepy feeling at the margins.

I live a mile or so from a Los Angeles Unified School District high school, John Marshall, that appears to provide a very good education to its students, working within a real-world political context. Why do we feel we have to search for good education in exotic environments?

I guess the issue is what that's supposed to mean. Is it:
1, a HS dedicated to promoting libertarian policies,
2, a HS dedicated to producing free and responsible individuals,
3, a HS the internal administration of which is analogous to libertarianism.
Just want to know what it is we're supposed to be talking about.

Just lose Wendy Shulik

Summerhill was probably the most libertarian school imaginable. Kids could spend several years there and never attend a single class. The school still exists, but not exactly in its original form.

The problem with libertarianism, as with any doctrine that claims to have more than the usual number of answers to things, is the tendency toward cultishness.

I'm actually not a libertarian -- though (as is probably clear) Erin's post makes me think about the possible virtues of libertarian school governance -- but this seems to have libertarianism exactly wrong. Isn't the whole point of libertarianism that it claims to have fewer answers than other political systems? Isn't that the whole point of leaving people in situations of maximum liberty -- because those who run governments don't have all the answers about what makes for a good life, etc.?

Again, we don't have a single rigorous definition of libertarianism here. But one of the antecedents of modern libertarianism is the Ayn Rand movement or "positivism" -- I believe Virginia Postrel's "dynamism" is, I believe, self-defined as a descendant of "positivism", for instance, and to the extent that Glenn Reynolds ascribes to "dynamism" (he frequently plugs Postrel's books and her blog) his "libertarianism" bears some relation to it. Reason magazine also appears to be part of this orientation. Someone may be able to clarify these relationships. I'm not a specialist here and am certainly eager to be corrected where needed.

Positivism and its related beliefs, of course, have a whole set of economic and psychological theories associated with them. There is nothing simple about them. And once you accept the radical anti-federal views of many libertarian thinkers, you're necessarily drawn into conclusions like the wrong side won the War Between the States, and then all kinds of hedges about how Jeff Davis would probably have freed the slaves within a few years anyhow. The results of such trains of thought are by no means simple, it seems to me.

Libertarianism is a humorless, hillbilly version of anarchist thought. It's not radical: take the social liberalism of the left and the ecomonic orgy of the right. Its idea of freedom is simplisitic, its imagination of the individual macho. Sort of a Wild West theme park for the SUV class. Ultimately, its critique of centralized government comes off more as paranoia than as reasoned analysis. The comment linking liberatarian thought to Ayn Rand just suggests to me the thin line between political movements and cults.

Or, as Frank Zappa sneeringly sang, "Freedom is when you don't have to pay for nothing or do nothing -- I want to be free."

A Situationist or anarchist school would be far more interesting. John Cage style music classes, Stewart Home as a creative writing teacher, Guy Debord as required reading. Hells yeah.

Umm, Luther, the Ayn Rand wing (which doesn't even self-identify as libertarian) is only one subset of the total package of classical liberalism. There's also John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, Bastiat, Adam Smith, Hayek, Nozick, and so on, not one of whom owned an SUV. Also, you've got the genus-species wrong: anarchism is a subset of libertarianism, not the other way arouund. I don't know where you got the "humorless hillbilly" part - how many of these folks do you actually know?

In my comment about Rand, I was simply poking fun at a previous comment, in which Rand's pseudo-philosophy was seen as an ancestor of modern libertarianism. It's wrong to associate liberalism with libertarianism. The latter might be a footnote to the former, but ultimately, I see modern libertarians as exceptionally unliberal. A great liberal like John Dewey saw the central government as the dialectic sublation of the atomistic citizen; that is to say, the modern individual only emerges through the State. That's very different from the hands-off-my-gun-fence-in-my-property-don't-tax-me type of libertarian thought. Nor would Dewey be happy with the current libertarian equation of a free market with choice and democracy. Coke and Pepsi is not a choice. Bush or Kerry is not a choice either. As the artist Alan Moore recently said in an interview, the very fact that both candidates have to look good on camera is a sign that democracy is in trouble.

So someone like Postrel, with her glorious odes to Starbucks ("giggle giggle no one Starbucks is like any others tee hee isn't that wild?"), with her vision of the market as a place where people's true needs are met -- I see her as an enemy of liberal democracy. See Tom Frank's brilliant *One Market Under God* for more on this.

Finally, to see anarchism as part of the subset of libertarian thought is profoundly wrong. Libertarians love them some capitalism. Anarchists oppose the hierarchical arrangements on which capitalism thrives. That radical difference would seem to sever any ties between a libertarian and an anarchist system. Both may be offshoots of Enlightenment-era liberalism, but so is everything else today.

"a great liberal like John Dewey saw the central government as the dialectic sublation of the atomistic citizen; that is to say, the modern individual only emerges through the State." That's actually not liberalism, it's fascism. I don't mean fascism-as-generic-ad-hominem, I mean literally fascism, as in virtually quoting from Mussolini's essay "Facsism: Doctrine and Institutions." If Dewey said it too, that means Dewey isn't a great example of a liberal.
I love Alan Moore, but the line you quote from him isn't any more true today than it was 40 years ago. Regrettable, but neither here nor there regarding whether or not Hayek offers better economic insights than Keynes.
"to see anarchism as part of the subset of libertarian thought is profoundly wrong" No, libertarians argue that the state should be as small as possible. If "as possible" is still something, you get a minimal state (as in Mill, Nozick); if "as possible" is nothing, you get anarchism (e.g., in Rothbard, Long). Anarchism is thus a subset of libertarianism. Allegedly anarchistic movements which embrace communist principles can't consistently maintain their anarchism - if there is forced "sharing," then the hierarchies and power structures they eschew creep back in. In any case, you claim that capitalism thrives on hierarchies -- I don't see that at all. Neither Oprah nor Bill Gates got rich through expoliting a hierarchy, but by challenging and defeating one.

I meant "exploiting" of course. D'oh!

To place Dewey's "The Ethics of Democracy" alongside Mussolini is offensive and pinheaded. Of course, a libertarian would see very little difference between a liberal who sees the importance of centralized government and a fascist. Yet again, the difference comes down to capitalism -- the fascists loved surplus value, while Dewey argues in favor of "industrial democracy," or the sharing of wealth.

For Dewey, democracy is not merely the sum of its atomic parts. Instead, by creating a federal government through popular election, the citizenry can then receive recognition as individuals by this federal government. The thinking here shows clear Hegelian influence:

I. fragmented, undifferentiated mass
II. federal government that protects the rights of individuals, that emerges via popular representation
III. recognition of individuals from mass

Of course, if you ignore the role played by democracy here (again, for Dewey, both electoral and economic), you can elide the differnce between Dewey and fascism. But that's a classic "only a gun and a fence can protect my individualism -- that and shopping at Wal-Mart"-style libertarian move. Without a strong central government protecting the rights of its citizens, we're back at the Hegelian life and death struggle: Mad-Max-style nomadic atoms of people roaming around with guns, using force to oppress others or liberate themselves. That's not individualism.

Finally, back to the anarchism/libertarian relationship. You can only place the former below the latter by ignoring the radical importance of anarchism's critique of capitalism. Anarchism cannot exist alongside the hierarchical arrangements of capitalism. Anarchism is incommensurate with libertarianism. That and the historical dilemma: according to the OED, "libertarian" comes into play between 1830-1878, while "anarchism" goes back as early as 1642-1656 in their modern English usages. But this is chicken-and-the-egg baloney. Is anarchism a radical offshoot of libertarian thought? Is libertarianism a milque-toast compromise version of anarchism? The game of priority is a stupid one.

In my experience, most American libertarians are really states-rights populists. A small central government, for them, doesn't preclude an invasive or hierarchical local government.

I don't usually engage with people who resort to name-calling, but in this case I'll make an exception. If you think I'm off base in comparing your citations of Dewey to Mussolini, consider this.
Mussolini writes: "Man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which he contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation....the Fascisr conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man....Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual." You said :"John Dewey saw the central government as the dialectic sublation of the atomistic citizen; that is to say, the modern individual only emerges through the State."
I leave it to the reader to determine whether my comparison is "pinheaded."
You say that "by creating a federal government through popular election, the citizenry can then receive recognition as individuals by this federal government" Mussolini says: "Fascism stands for liberty, the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the state and the liberty of the individual with in the state....[There are] no individuals outside the State."

"the radical importance of anarchism's critique of capitalism" Which anarchists precisely are you referring to? You're using "anarchism" here as if it were an entity. It's not. I've read many anarchists who do not critique, but embrace capitalism. Wait, unless you're stipulatively defining capitalism as expolitative and hierarchical. I'm defining it simply as "the free market." See Rothbard, Long, Barnett, Friedman, Benson.

You say "Dewey argues in favor of sharing of wealth." By force? Then you'll get hierarchies and power structures. If it's voluntary, no libertarian would object.

"In my experience, most American libertarians are really states-rights populists."
Then your experience is quite limited. Libertarian theory has been one of my main areas of research for about 18 years, and what you say here is simply false. No libertarian thinks states have rights. Virtually all libertarians are opposed to populism, seeing it (correctly) as antithetical to individual liberty, on a variety of models (Lockean, Millian, Hayekian).

so, does this mean that private schools are not all that they are cracked up to be? Penn probably doesn't look so bad now.

I have followed your blog for a while, and I was a bit surprised when I read that you wanted to leave Penn and go to an independent school. Having taught at independent schools for 10 years before getting my Ph.D, I was curious to see how you were managing the reverse.

Personally, I think you should just write education books and commentaries, guest lecture, do op-eds...

regards,
my 2 cents.

OK - I'll apologize for the "pinheaded" comment. I was simply characterizing the statement, not the person, but it was awfully O-Reilly-Factor of me.

Again, I'll just state the point again. The immense difference between Dewey and Mussoini has everything to do with the immense difference between Fascism and Democracy. A State consisting of popularly elected representatives is far different than a State that puts itself in power via intimidation, violence, scapegoating, playing on fear, and rigging "elections" (and I'm not talking about Florida in 2000 here!).

Dewey's point is that democracy is more than 1+1+1+1+1 . . . to infinity. Such atomistic models presuppose the existence of "modern liberal individualism" in a state of nature (whatever that is). Dewey is saying that the State is neither a top-down fascistic entity, nor a piecemeal collection of atomized people. In both of those cases, individual rights are only protected by each individual's individual acts of protection. Simply stated, without some State entity, individuals are left to exerting power as atoms. That means that while one brave individual can fend off oppression, a more powerful individual can oppress. This is what I meant by invoking Hegel's brilliant master/slave dialectic. That is not a state of individualism. It is feudal at heart, or at least the condition of possibility for feudalism.

Dewey picks up from Hegel by seeing the rational State, democratically elected, as being the sublation of every-man-for-himself particularism and fascistic universalism. A State that is not popularly elected has no responsibility to respect the individual. An individual without a State is left to do as he pleases, but he is not an individual in the modern political sense because such individualism is only one side in a dialectical rhythm. As there are no "natural rights," as all rights are socially and historically constructed, as soon as individuals get together to agree on protecting individual rights, they have created a State, whether or not they like it.

I suppose, when talking about anarchism, I'm thinking mostly of the Situationists and other European models of it. An anarchist who embraces capitalism is, well, a libertarian. You speak of capitalism simply as "the free market" -- but as far as I know, there never has been a free market, and there probably never will be one. I do see capitalism as tending toward exploitation and hierarchies. I don't have the time to get into that, but Marx's *Capital* Vol. One is a good place to start. Or Bush's recent comment that the problem of taxing the rich is that they can afford lawyers and accountants to get out of taxes and pass the bill onto the poor and middle class! Or, just compare the differences between a bottom-level employee's salary and a CEO's salary in the US and the UK. While the UK is no socialist paradise, at least a few CEOs there don't skim every bit of profit off the top, give themselves huge pay-rises while the company itself is losing money and laying off workers. But that probably has a lot to do with the relative power of organized labor in the UK, even after years under Chairman Thatcher and Pope Blair. I know these are gross generalizations at some level; but recent statistics on CEO incomes pan this out.

As far as my perception of libertarians in America goes, perhaps it can be chalked up to the theorists and philosophers versus the always louder and more conspicuous bloggers, NRA fanatics, don't-tread-on-me paranoids, etc.

I'm a democracy and labor man myself. Bi-polar economies don't do much for me. Insofar as American capitalism is clearly bi-polar, I think it's brutal and nasty. Tasteless, really. As tasteless as strip malls, car-culture, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Barnes and Nobles. Tasteless like Halliburton and Enron. Like the dot-com boom. Like "who moved my cheese." Like refering to lay-offs and outsourcing as "creating new opportunities for workers to seek their true desires on the free market." Like Postrel swooning over the shiny design packages of the crap we're sold: ooo, Apple computers are so gorgeous! Like Rand turning a boorish businessman into the Ubermensch.

What I believe you are looking for can be found in an educational agenda called "constructivism". It is a growing philosophy of education that focuses on teaching children how to learn, not just what to learn... where education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.