Schools: You’re not the police.

So here’s a shocker to all you rugged individualist Montana libertarians. Your favorite Communist is going to make a post defending civil liberties! I know this is very contrary to your image of communists as brutal Stalinists, so if you need to take a break in the middle of this article to digest it that’s totally cool. OK, here we go.

Ever since I was a 16 year old punk rocker in high school, I’ve noticed that more and more our public school system is being used as a new sort of police force. I guess the idea is that the cops aren’t doing enough to keep kids in line, so the school should take up law enforcement itself and save them the trouble. I think this is crap, personally.

When I was an aforementioned little punk, the big thing was drug testing high school athletes. The head basketball coach got word that his precious angels were all smoking dope (oh noes) and so he threatened to resign if they didn’t introduce mandatory drug testing for student athletes. So my question is, why is it the school’s business what these kids are doing outside of school? Now, if kids are shooting up under the bleachers or something like that, sure, it’s a reasonable and good idea to punish them. If that kid is picked up by the cops, fine. He will be punished according to the law and that’s perfectly fine with me. But if a kid goes home, smokes a J in his bedroom, eats some Cheetos and takes a nap, doesn’t do anything to hurt anyone and therefor doesn’t get in trouble with the law, why is it the school’s place to punish him?

An argument I’ve heard a lot is, “well if they’re all hopped up on drugs they won’t be good at basketball so they don’t need to be on the team!” OK. If their drug use is interfering with their performance, don’t kick them off the team for doing drugs…kick them off the team for sucking. If it’s obvious that their performance has eroded then you shouldn’t need a drug test to figure out what’s going on. That’s a total bullshit argument.

So what triggered this rant? Am I still bitter about my high school days? Not really, actually I read a recent article about a clever student prank. A rural Wisconsin high-schooler threw a kegger, only to have the cops bust it up…and determine that the keg was full of root beer. After breathalizing the entire party, and searching the house for hiding kids, they found no one who had consumed alcohol.

It’s only 10 am, so it’s not saying much, but that’s the coolest thing I’ve heard all day. The best part was that the party was thrown as a student protest after several students were suspended for having their pictures taken drinking from red plastic cups. Because you know, if there is a red cup it is full of beer, and if kids are drinking beer they should be suspended from school! Which brings me to my ultimate point: why does breaking a law necessarily mean you forfeit your right to a public education? It’s the job of the police to enforce the laws. That’s why they give kids MIC’s (minor in consumption. That’s what we called them where I went to school. You crazy Montana kids probably have something different). The law doesn’t say anything about being stripped of your right to learn. How is it even legal for the school to double-punish kids?

It’s pretty stupid if you ask me.

Tibetan Nationalism is no Progressive Cause.

I guess I’m kind of an odd duck. I have some weird beliefs, and seeing what’s happened in Yugoslavia over the past decade (wait, two decades? I’m getting old!), and now in Tibet, I kind of feel like I’m the only one of my kind left.

I have this belief that not every nationality needs its own independent state. I have this weird idea that white people can work and live in the same country as African-Americans, Latin Americans, American Indians, people of Middle-Eastern descent, whatever. I think this is a progressive idea.

There are people out there who disagree with me. There are people who think we should make America a special country just for white people, send all the blacks back to Africa, drive all the “wetbacks” back to Mexico, send the “towelheads” back to Iraq, and whatever else. These misguided people harass minorities, vandalize their property, and try to intimidate them with the intent of driving them out of their self-designated “white” communities. This is reactionary and just wrong to me.

That’s why I get frustrated when I see so many so-called “progressives” championing the cause of Tibetan nationalists in their war against the People’s Republic of China. Because to me, every “liberal” with a “Free Tibet” bumper sticker might as well have a big Confederate flag stamped on the back of their CRV.

We all know what’s been happening in Tibet recently, but I’ll sum it up for the sake of watching myself type. Tibetan nationalists have taken to the streets rioting, trashing their communities and attempting to intimidate ethnic Chinese. They want their own nation-state for Tibetans, and so they want to carve their enclave out of China so they can have their own little Tibet for Tibetans.

I can kind of see how people would get behind this. In the United States we don’t really understand the concept of the nation-state. We say “our nation”, “our country”, etc. as though they are synonymous when they’re not. There is no American nation, except maybe American Indians and Alaska Natives. But we call the modern USA the “great mixing pot”, so it’s hard for us to wrap our heads around what real nationalism is. Nationalism is the idea that each nation (a group of people with a shared history, customs, religion, language, etc.) needs its own independent state in which it is dominant. That idea is totally foreign to us, so it’s hard for us to spot nationalism and understand it for what it truly is. Instead a lot of us make the mistake of putting many nationalist movements — like the Tibetan one — on par with various other independence movements, including our own revolution

But there are some key differences. When we fought to secure our independence from the British Empire, we were fighting to replace monarchy with a democratic republic. We were fighting against taxation without representation. We fought against absentee rulers across the Atlantic. What is Tibet fighting for? The replacement of socialism with a feudalistic theocracy, for one….hardly progressive! They can’t say they are under-represented because they are an autonomous region, which makes them different than, and has distinct advantages over, other provinces of China. Finally, there is no ocean separating Tibet from the rest of China. Alaska has a better geographical claim for secession from the US than Tibet does from China, but I’m no AIP sympathizer.

The Tibetan independence movement is not fueled by progressive causes. It is driven by the notion that two nations with different religions, histories, customs, etc. cannot co-exist within the framework of a single state. I look at my own country and have to call bullshit on that one. Again, we have had our rough spots, but if you buy into the idea that coexistence isn’t possible and preferable to decisiveness, I would like to tear a page out of Joe McCarthy’s book and accuse you of being downright un-American.

So why are we all so up-in-arms against China? Let me ask you this: if Neo-Nazis started beating up minorities, trashing their property, and trying to drive them out of “white” American, would you blame the government from using force against them? I wouldn’t. In my opinion, we handle trash like that far too lightly. If our government spent my tax dollars handling white nationalists the way they handled anti-globalization protesters I would gladly buy George W. Bush a Moose Drool. Which is why I don’t blame the Chinese for cracking down on radical nationalists in their own country. Could their tactics be a bit excessive? Maybe. Maybe not; they have yet to fully contain the situation, and you can’t believe everything you see on TV about the “crackdown”. But either way, you could argue that our own government was a little excessive at, I don’t know, Kent State?

In any event, I feel that someone needs to speak up and stand out against the constant drone of anti-Chinese, pro-nationalist propaganda that is constantly blaring from the TV speakers. I am for unity, not nationalism.