What would happen if Republicans started acting like a political party, and took seriously the statement that has been at the heart of their own party platform, essentially unchanged, since 1854?

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that whatever good we imagine comes from occupational licensing, it doesn’t begin to compare to the evil that it has enabled in the hands of government officials who claim that ‘public health trumps everything’ and are willing to pull licenses in order to crush anyone who disagrees with them.

Ask not what we can teach children. Ask what, if not learned by children, will endanger the rights of everyone, and ask how we can assist those children whose parents can’t afford to help them learn these things, without confusing ability with age, or learning with being taught, or progress made with time spent, without conflating common benefit and private interest, and without requiring those who have less to subsidize those who have more.