Paying For It

 My first thought was a federal program that would supply guns to every family in America, paid for with tax dollar. Your tax dollars. I was wondering if the allure of the Second Amendment might take some of the hurt out of that whole tax thing. I make the large assumption here that for those who cherish their right to bear arms are also the ones who bristle the most at taxation, representation or not. 

It's a trial balloon. You know, the kind you float up to see if anyone will shoot at it. 

Because I believe it is this same group of people who are incensed by the suggestion that we add a few years of public education to the system we already have in place. "And who's gonna pay for that?" asks the public. 

Well, the public, seeing as how it's public education and all. 

And the way we tend to fund public programs is to collect taxes, based on income, to pay for all that wonderful stuff like schools and sewers and streets. And highways. The ones that inevitably you see those fun folks driving on while they talk into their phones generating social media proclaiming their fierce loyalty to their one nation under god and the principles which our founding fathers put forth in what is essentially the vessel for the Second Amendment, our Constitution. 

What if we said that we wanted to put down some more highways for the purpose of recording video rants, but the only way we could do that was by collecting taxes from our citizenry. And what if we felt that the people who had great big buckets of money anyway might want to toss a few extra coins in the bucket to make sure that we had streets and highways to take us all the places we wanted to go.

The freedom to go to all the places we want to go. That's almost as important as guns, right? Well, what if I suggested that education would play a vital part in getting you where you want to go? More education would mean more places to go. Makes sense, right?

Unless you were really afraid of socialist programs like public education. The kind that was first put forth by a senator from Massachusetts by the name of Horace Mann. He suggested that teachers should be trained. Professional. And that everyone should be afforded the opportunity to go to school. In America. Land of the free and home of the taxes. 

A few days ago, another senator, this one from Delaware who happened to have climbed the ladder just a little higher to the White House, suggested that public education in the United States should include universal preschool and two years of community college. 

That won't be cheap. But probably a lot less expensive than outfitting the population of the United States with AR-15s.