Let’s get real – a nation is one generation away from oblivion. All human congregations are, regardless if they are small families or gigantic nation-states. Because once all the members die, it’s over.

With 327 million Americans largely intent on continuing the human race it’s not at all likely that everyone will cease having children within the year – or the next twenty – but nation-states face more than an existential threat of not having any children. Nation-states only continue as states if they successfully transmit the values that founded that state. If they fail, whatever systems and traditions they have built are likely to be gone within a couple decades of that failure.

Nation-states aren’t terribly fragile on this point unless they have very small populations – or insane one child policies. Humans come in size messy – even if the state totally fails to transmit its values its citizens likely will pick up at least some, if not all, of the slack. This makes nationalist nation-states fairly robust entities that stay pretty consistent over time.

Nation-states aren’t invincible, however. Not even the US has the capacity to endure sustained failures. Eventually, people stop picking up the slack and start wondering what was so great about their country to begin with – and wouldn’t it be nice with new ideals and new values and maybe a few doilies on the armchairs?

Frankly, I don’t think the US is as vulnerable in this capacity right now as the news media would have us believe. Schools teaching insane theories isn’t exactly new and while it IS a problem and does need to be addressed, the thing we need to remember is that the camel’s nose is now under the tent.

Nation-states have a valid interest in passing on their values to the next generation. But do they have the right to force their citizens into accepting those values? In the United States the answer is a categorical NO. The state’s interest in its children is superseded by the parent’s interest and the child’s interests are paramount to both.

That is ever so much easier said than done – humans are very messy things. We’re going to fuss and fight over our values – which is okay. It’s part of the testing process that helps us find out if those values are worthwhile or not.

Should racists have the right to teach their children that other races are inferior even though the rest of us regard that as stupid? Well, uh… It’s kinda hard to say yes when we want to say no. But we NEED to say no.

Maybe Junior grows up to join a racist organization – and notice that I’m not saying what race Junior is because it doesn’t matter. As a nation, we don’t want to hate people or think less of them because of a silly color they can’t control anyway. It’s regrettable when Junior doesn’t get the memo – but it’s only tragic for Junior who’s gonna miss out on some really great folks.

But maybe Junior grows up and decides that while he loves his parents, they’re just flat wrong. Junior is now in the best possible position to convince others that they are wrong – something no piece of legislation could ever do. Junior understands them in a way an outsider cannot – and they will give Junior chances that they would never give hostile outsiders.

That’s only possible because we let people think for themselves. It’s scary – who wants a racist in the neighborhood? But it’s also what makes the United States such an incredibly robust nation-state – we aren’t afraid of bad ideas. We’ll fight them with good ideas – sometimes finding out that ours were actually the bad ones – sort through the mess and take all the good stuff.

America – taking all the best ideas since 1492.

That’s the incredible value of the ‘free marketplace of ideas’. It let’s us take them for a test drive, see what works and what doesn’t, tinker with them a bit and then either drive them home – or test out a newer model. Some, like the need for freedom and justice, we keep under the hood all the time. Others, like ducking under the covers every time other nation-states say boo, we have mostly discarded – well, we still keep our isolationist blanket in the closet in case of emergency.

What happens if the state dictates what ideas are ‘safe’ for your children? Well, no more racists, right? Wrong – in the short term oppression usually increases resistance, but it can do worse – it can introduce a variant version. But let’s assume a perfection that doesn’t exist and voila, the state has successfully taught a whole generation to not be racist. And it keeps it up for three or four generations – utopia, right?

Dystopia, actually. Because people are still going to come in only size messy and change is going to happen – sometimes very, very badly. Now we are six generations removed from the last racist – tell me, could you run your great, great, great grandfather’s business? Tractor? Butcher his hog? Of course not – you haven’t his skills and in most cases, you won’t have learned those skills at all – they’re lost.

So now our great, great, great grandkiddies hit a crisis and for whatever reason, it has racial overtones. How do they cope? Can they reproduce the miracle that let them lose the understanding that we have? We know racism is wrong because we can see it in the real world and not in mere abstraction. Socialism sounds great in a textbook – but hasn’t ever worked out that way.

This hypothetical generation not only lacks the cultural background – it lacks the free market system of ideas to test this new set of ideas in. They were spoon fed an ideology that never had to stand up to scrutiny – and they have no idea how to test it properly.

This is what happened to modern Christianity in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Kids raised with a basic knowledge of the Bible and no idea of how to defend it (there’s a whole field called apologetics that does just this and my generation barely knew it). When Christianity came under attack, a LOT of Christians capitulated simply because they hadn’t been taught how to question constructively and debate ideas effectively. Christianity didn’t fail – it’s still growing worldwide – but American Christians in large part did.

That’s why we NEED people to be able to think for themselves even when we really, really hate what they think. Scripture says ‘iron sharpens iron’ – that’s what ideas do with each other when we test them out against other ideas – even ones we dislike.

And this is why we don’t let the state control what people think – and what children are taught. The state can have a say – it needs to have a seat in the marketplace because its survival ultimately depends on those kids. But the state is not God and not particularly wise – the American system is still mostly a matter of ‘muddling through’ – and must never be allowed to control any conversation – or child.

Not even the ones that we know are wrong – because we come in size human, too.