The Democrats waged a bitter campaign against the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Ultimately they lost that battle when Vice-President Pence cast the deciding vote in a split Senate. But this battle had less to do with DeVos the women (indeed, perhaps one can only be a misogynist if they oppose Democrat women) and more to do with the concept of “school choice.” Ah yes, the Democrats, the party of “choice” when it comes to women and their bodies are decidedly anti-choice when the debate shifts to where you send your children to school. Because DeVos has expressed support for school vouchers, that means she is a blood-sucking monster who wants to see children die. This is no hyperbole in characterizing the oppositions rhetoric – noted Democrat film critic Richard Lawson tweeted “voucher programs will lead to more suicides, Betsy DeVos’s policies will kill children. That is not an exaggeration in any sense.”

The tweet has since been deleted. But you get the idea. These people literally believe that if we don’t all meekly line up single file like cattle to go to our assigned schooling center, then the very fabric of society will be rent.

Apparently allowing parents the freedom to decide where their children go to school means the public schools will be unable to function by virtue of decreased revenue. But this makes little sense on its face. If a school has 1,000 children and 500 leave for another school then both revenue and expenses have fallen in concert. This is why if you choose to eat at McDonalds and not Burger King no one says your actions are “defunding” Burger King – as though Burger King has some superior claim to your money that for the good of society necessitates you eat there. Why if you don’t eat at Burger King then they may have to fire people, and unemployment is bad for society, therefore we will tell you when and where to eat, shop, live, and go to school. Even though schooling is the only active part of that hypothetical edict, logically there is no reason this greater good argument can’t be used for any other economic activity.

School choice means that if money is directed away from public schools that are not satisfying the parent’s desire for a good education, then those public schools will have to fire teachers and (gasp!) administrators. Fewer public school teachers mean fewer public school union members. Unions oppose school voucher programs not because they genuinely think it will harm children. No. They oppose it because they genuinely think it will harm their current position of political clout.

Fortunately the American public sees through the self-interest of the unions and past their spurious claims of wanting what is best for the children. A recent poll found that 68 percent of Americans are firmly in the school choice camp. Indeed it is often claimed that school choice is a clandestine method of re-establishing segregation in schooling again, but don’t tell that to the 72 percent of blacks and 75 percent of Latinos who are pro-school choice. For many of them it is the only life-line they have to escape the failing schools they have no choice but to attend by accident of their zip code. The Democrats claim to stand for the interests of the poor and underprivileged, but they are all too willing to sacrifice those ideals upon the altar of political expediency in praise of their god the unions (indeed, the Department of Education was established by President Carter to reward the strong support he received from the teacher’s unions). But there’s still hope for the anti-DeVos camp; throw your support behind Rep. Thomas Massie’s bill H.R. 899 which will abolish the Department of Education.