Keeping Our Little Platoons Chugging Along

Fire of Liberty

Now here's a piece over at USA Today by Notre Dame University Law Professor Richard W. Garnett which points out that various catholic schools, hospitals, churches and orphanages are facing extensive government regulations that are making life hard for these Catholic entities to stay open. For me it looks like the hulking federal government is threatening to tear down one of the great institutions that make up the "little platoons" that Burke noted in his writings and the associations that Alexis de Tocqueville spoke so fondly in Democracy in America. The one thing I'm concerned about is that by imposing such burdens on institutions like Catholic schools which provide a high quality education that blows the wheels off the public education system thus yielding a sense of hope to the students and their parents who live in various inner cities. If we want to produce educated children who will grow up and pull themselves and the neighborhoods out of their dismal state then we've got to be able to let these schools and various other Catholic entities continue to do what they do so well without worrying about high taxes, massive regulation, and do-gooder governmental officials and their love for what Sen. Pat Moynihan referred as "iatrogenic government." Once the government starts traveling down the road and pushing these "little platoons" into mere nothings we'll eventually unravel things that make our society outshine all other societies. My best advice is for the federal government and to lesser extent the state to tread lightly on something that's not specifically in their purview. I think you'll understand the issue a whole lot better by reading Professor Garnett's great piece.