https://spectator.org/education-america-democracy/
In an 1816 letter to his friend Charles Yancey, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information.” Jefferson was making the case for taxpayer-funded public schools. He believed an educated electorate with access to a free press would be proof against the government’s inclination to encroach upon our liberties. One wonders if he would take such a sanguine view after witnessing what passes for education and news reporting today.
It’s useful to ponder this question now, considering that our president’s first State of the Union address was a classic expression of the propensity to which Jefferson alluded. Absent the tired bromides and outright balderdash, it was a call for the expansion of an already-bloated federal behemoth. The $2 trillion “infrastructure” plan the president pitched, for example, includes numerous programs to which few taxpayers would apply that term. Indeed, it would spend far more money on entitlement programs than on roads and bridges. As Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) expressed it in his SOTU response:
Republicans support everything you think of when you think of “infrastructure.” Roads, bridges, ports, airports, waterways, high-speed broadband — we’re all in! But again, Democrats want a partisan wish list.… Less than 6% of the President’s plan goes to roads and bridges. It’s a liberal wish-list of Big Government waste … plus the biggest job-killing tax hikes in a generation. Experts say, when all is said and done, it would lower American wages and shrink our economy.… “Infrastructure” spending that shrinks our economy is not common sense.