"All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter." - Edmund Burke.
In the late 1950s, when William F. Buckley, Jr. provided the intellectual underpinnings of contemporary Conservatism with books like Up From Liberalism, he needed to rebut his more rigid Conservative allies. Some Conservatives at the time argued that it was axiomatic that the State could do no good. Buckley quickly responded that the State could stop Communists.
Conservatives are Conservatives because they lack the economic rigidity of Libertarians and unbridled faith in collective efforts possessed by Liberals. However, even Conservatives can allow ideological blinders to narrow their vision. Conservatives need to embrace the art of governing even while endeavoring to diminish the role government plays.
One tenet of Conservatism is that the more local the government the better. The number of localities and competition between localities insure that local governments will not stray far from the assent of the governed. Private associations have the greatest respect for individuality. Local governments are safer than state governments who in turn are safer than a remote federal government.
A Holy Grail for Conservatives is the implementation of voucher schools to wrench control from state-sanctioned local monopolies as a means to empower individual parents to make educational decisions for their children. However, the road to such schools runs through local governments and local school boards. If these could loose themselves from the suffocating boa-like grip of teacher unions, there would be less need for independent schools. Hence, those school districts most in need of independent alternatives are those least likely to permit them.
Lisa Graham Keegan of Arizona has struck upon a novel strategy: Use the state government to provide alternatives to locally run public schools through a state-wide system of independent, publicly financed charter schools.
In 1993, as an eager and idealistic Arizona State legislator, Keegan proposed a full-blown parental choice program with vouchers and charter schools. The Arizona educational establishment, like any monopoly, fought vigorously and defeated the legislation. Later, she introduced the same legislation without the voucher program. The educational establishment was so jubilant and confident they had frustrated Keegan, that they did not appreciate the revolutionary charter school program buried in the legislation. This provision has ushered the creation of hundreds of charter schools in Arizona. Roughly 3% of the K-12 students in Arizona now attend these charter schools.
