The Romeike family was granted asylum in the United States …The Obama administration, which in other notable areas of immigration law has enacted a policy of “discretion” regarding deportations, took the Romeike family to court to have its asylum protections revoked, and succeeded in doing so. The family has appealed to the Supreme Court, which has ordered the Obama administration to respond to the Romeikes’ petition, but the administration has so far refused to do so.
There are actually two separate arguments going on here.
The first is whether the state has the right to decide what to teach your children (more specifically, whether the state has the right to teach your children that your beliefs are wrong or even evil).
The second is whether families have the right to leave if they don’t like how a particular government is governing.
I would argue that the answers to both questions ought to be the same regardless of the beliefs being pushed – or the beliefs being suppressed. If you imagine yourself as the victim, and the state as holding the beliefs that you find abhorrent, then it would stand to reason that there is a fundamental right to teach your children your own values (especially religious values), and to leave if your beliefs are formally declared a crime.
That the men and women representing the state sincerely believe they have a monopoly on “the truth” does not substantively change the argument. Governments do not own people. We are not here as slaves or servants of an all-controlling state.
But, then, I am an American – a nation that has always held that it is the consent of the governed that gives a government its legitimacy.
Also, most of the homeschooled kids I’ve known were far and away better-educated than their public-school peers.
Boundary Issues 