Where, for that matter, do we find a federal obligation to help finance public schools? That's a state matter, right? Used to be. The schools -- alas -- weren't producing. In the late '50s, the federal government stepped in gingerly, and from there, especially during the Great Society, things really went to town.
The No Child Left Behind Act (like the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965) is as unconstitutional as it could be, if the letter of the Constitution means anything -- which, you can be pretty sure, it doesn't anymore. And because it doesn't, we're being asked, for fiscal 2005, to come up with $2.4 trillion, a huge portion of it to cover matters you might think highly personal, like retirement income and health care.
Conservatives are nominally the buckoes who worry about such things: which explains conservative distress over present spending trends and objects. Why no Bush vetoes of inappropriate appropriations? Edward Feulner Jr., president of conservatism's main idea factory, the Heritage Foundation, complains that "for too many conservatives in power, government has become a political, rather than principled, exercise. There is a tendency for them to play ball with the special interests and kowtow to broad demographic groups with tailored programs and well-targeted handouts."
Ex malo bonum. Will it help to think on such matters? It can't hurt. Better still to think and act.
If conservatives no longer display appreciation for conservative tenets, do we wait around for President John Kerry to straighten things out? Or, as a much-admired conservative president, Ronald Reagan, once asked, in words never improved on: "If not us, who? If not now, when?"