Setting Fathers Against Sons

In The Progressive Era, Murray Rothbard described a fight between Protestants and Catholics for control of San Francisco public schools. John Swett, one of the leading figures in California public education in the middle of the 19th century, believed that “children arrived at the age of maturity belong, not to the parents, but to the State, to society, to the country." The city's well-heeled Protestants agreed, and wanted to use the public-school system to "impose pietist Protestant control over Catholic ethnics." The vision of the state-run schools was so totalizing, and their efforts at undermining Catholic students' faith so extensive, that one San Francisco priest said the school system "is not satisfied with teaching children the 3 Rs…it reaches out and takes possession of their whole lives.” That is, in a sense, the goal of the Biden administration's LGBT agenda. Read Full Article »