California’s anschluss against home schoolers

California’s already dismal government schools are facing the brunt of the state’s fiscal nightmare. Reports Yahoo News:

Los Angeles – California, home to 1 in 9 American schoolchildren, is on the brink of what may be the biggest public education crisis in state history. Facing a $16 billion state budget shortfall, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed $4.8 billion in school-funding cuts, or 10 percent of education spending.

In the past week, over 20,000 preliminary pink slips were sent by school districts to teachers and administrators state wide, according to the California Teachers Association. The association estimates another 87,000 (of a total 350,000 public school teachers) could come if Governor Schwarzenegger holds to his budget cut request.

So, how is the state government responding? By cutting waste and increasing quality?

No, by assaulting home schoolers.

My former Orange County Register colleague Steven Greenhut (why isn’t this guy a national columnist?) has the info:

A state court of appeal has basically outlawed home-schooling….

The judges – two Republican appointees and one Democratic appointee – argued that “parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children.”….

The ruling is shockingly totalitarian, as it echoes this point: “In obedience to the constitutional mandate to bring about a general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence, the Legislature, over the years, enacted a series of laws. A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”

The phrase “loyalty to the state” captures the essence of the decision.

At the same time as Kalifornia has been assaulting home schoolers, the same thing has been going on in another state — or Staat, that is, the Fourth Reich. Germany today is persecuting home schoolers using a 1938 ban from the Third Reich — you know, the Reich run by that guy with the funny moustache. Home Education Foundation reports:

Germany’s ban on homeschooling began with the Third Reich. Chancellor Adolf Hitler banned the practice in 1938 in order to indoctrinate all young Germans in Nazi ideology through the public schools. Authorities have increasingly adopted the methods of National Socialist (Nazi) Germany to suppress homeschooling, which it regards as a “parallel society,” dangerous to the health of the state.

The parents of the nation’s estimated 300-500 homeschoolers face imprisonment, heavy fines and the state seizure of their children. Earlier this month, Klaus and Kathrin Landahl and their five children fled to England in order to escape the confiscation of their children by the mayor of their town.

The Nazis also shut Catholic and other parochial schools. They didn’t want any competition to the indoctrination of the Hitlerjugend — the Hitler Youth.

In reality, it is parents, not government — not even a “democratic” government — who are in charge of children. Even truancy laws are tyrannical. If you have kids, they’re your responsibility, not the government’s.

1938 also was the year of the Nazi anschluss (annexation) of Austria. In 2008, Kalifornia is trying to annex home schools.

Next thing you know, Californians will be fleeing this state for the same reasons folks fled the Third Reich. But why? Wasn’t it America, led by generals like George S. Patton, that kicked Hitler’s keister?

Isn’t America supposed to be a free country?