The Bionic Mosquito on Bleeding Heart Libertarians and Education

The Bionic Mosquito has the idea, unfashionable in certain academic circles, that people who claim to be libertarians should support libertarian positions. On state-controlled education, the libertarian position is simple: it should not exist. Unfortunately, for some “bleeding-heart libertarians,” an uncomplicated answer will never do. The bleeding hearts, here also called “wine spritzer libertarians,” have frequently aroused the Mosquito’s wrath, and this time his target is Andrew Cohen, a political philosopher at Georgia State University.

Cohen claims to be sympathetic to the abolition of public education, but things are not what they seem. He does not oppose state testing of students or state funding for education. Would not these measures allow the state to control the educational system? Cohen then is “against” state schools, but at the same time allows the state to control the school system. The Mosquito appropriately remarks that this combination of beliefs is an example of Leon Festinger’s “cognitive dissonance.”

The Mosquito also notes that Cohen does not condemn state schools in principle. Such schools do, in his opinion, prevent harms. The question then becomes whether they do so efficiently. Again, the libertarian position that such schools violate rights is too simple for Cohen. Further, the Mosquito points out that it is much easier than Cohen imagines to show that state schools are inefficient.

The Mosquito points out that Cohen favors parental licensing, and here I think we have a clue to the source of Cohen’s philosophy. John Stuart Mill also favored parental licensing. Mill in addition supported state tests for schoolchildren and, more generally, talked about harms rather than rights. All of this, I suggest, is no coincidence. Readers of the Mosquito’s post will enjoy Murray Rothbard’s outstanding discussion of Mill in Chapter 8 of his Classical Economics.

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