The Dangerous Arne Duncan

The new U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan seems like a good guy who means well, but he's pretty scary. He's this month's NRA cover boy for Obama's anti-gun administration -- following such well-known gun rights foes as Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder, and Obama himself -- and for good reason: he's been at the forefront of the battle to ban handguns in Illinois, "for the children."

Indeed, he asserted recently that it is an "undeniable fact that guns and kids don't mix." That our society does not "[value] children more than it values violent rituals and traditions that might have been at home in a frontier society two centuries ago but make absolutely no sense today."

That for those people who disagreed, he will "fight them in Springfield ... in the courts ... in the community ... and even in the home." (He didn't explain just how he wanted to fight me in my home over my choices with my guns and my kids.)

But it gets worse. Now, as Secretary of Education, he has unprecedented authority to spend money. The Secretary's discretionary money -- that he can spend in literally any way he sees fit -- is $5 billion, more than the entire budget of the Department of Education 35 years ago.

And he makes no bones about his intent to use that power to push his own agenda:

ARNE DUNCAN: I think Washington has an extraordinarily important role to play, maybe more so than ever before. But I would argue states have to behave in very, very different ways, and they have a critically important role.

I think there can't be one power center. I think we all have to work together, collaboratively in very different ways to get where we need to go.

JOHN MERROW: But you are going to be writing the checks. That's power.

ARNE DUNCAN: You see it as power; I see it as partnership.

JOHN MERROW: Do we need national standards?

ARNE DUNCAN: I think we need to look at it. I think the idea of 50 states doing things, you know, their own way doesn't quite make sense.

JOHN MERROW: Do you anticipate using some of this stimulus money, this incentive money to help these national standards emerge?

ARNE DUNCAN: Absolutely.

JOHN MERROW: So states will get money if they do this thing that Duncan wants?

ARNE DUNCAN: If you play by these rules, absolutely right.

Some "partnership." He'll push a single national standard for education and if you go along you'll get money. (Raise your hand if you don't think this will include his social agenda, including his anti-gun agenda.)

Of course, even apart from the social agenda, national standards for education make almost no sense. There's little serious interest in Seattle and Everett having the same standards, let alone Seattle and Atlanta.

Duncan wants control. This implies we need him and Obama and the rest of the crowd in Washington D.C. to control us. We don't. And we don't need his money so much that we should sacrifice our liberty and the best interests of our children to get it.

(And yes, this is exactly what I mean when I use the term "socialism.")