We got a kick out of this…

If Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) loses a legal battle over his school voucher program, his state’s tax dollars may no longer go toward sending students to private institutions to learn that hippies were all a bunch of disheveled, drug-addled, godless philistines.

While the controversial law remains mired in the courts after being ruled unconstitutional last year, however, Louisiana taxpayers will continue to fund a program that sends poor and middle-income students to private institutions with curricula often determined by controversial and inaccurate textbooks.

The latest bizarre history lesson comes via John Aravosis of AmericaBlog, and suggests that the author wasn’t very fond of a particular counter-culture movement of the 1960s.

Many young people turned to drugs and immoral lifestyles; these youth became known as hippies. They went without bathing, wore dirty, ragged, unconventional clothing, and deliberately broke all codes of politeness or manners. Rock music played an important part in the hippie movement and had great influence over the hippies. Many of the rock musicians they followed belonged to Eastern religious cults or practiced Satan worship.

Of course, the piece is wrong at the outset; Louisiana’s voucher law wasn’t ruled unconstitutional. The funding mechanism for it, namely diverting money from the Minimum Foundation Program which was originally designed to supplement pay for teachers, was ruled unconstitutional. Based on Judge Tim Kelley’s ruling if the program is funded through another means that problem goes away.

The rest of the post drags up all the old “Loch Ness Monster” tropes the Left constantly attempts to foist on religious schools, and it gets boring at that point.

But what’s entertaining is the apoplexy over a negative characterization of hippies at a left-wing site where most, or at least a significant fraction, of the contributors are retread hippies or wannabes.

After all, who could possibly think that dirty hippies were dirty? Or that Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll would constitute an immoral lifestyle?

You can argue about whether the characterization of hippies in the textbook the HuffPo lefties are going into paroxysms about is overly pejorative, but there is no question you won’t hear that characterization in government schools.

So for a parent who doesn’t want his or her kids getting a positive impression of hippies, or who would prefer some assistance in discouraging those kids from emulating that lifestyle, getting stuck in government schools means said parent has no say in how those kids are being raised for eight hours a day on weekdays.

In a “voucher school,” let’s remember that nobody is there because they have to be. That school is populated completely with folks who volunteered to attend.

Meaning that nobody HAS to learn that dirty hippies were dirty. If you send your kid to a private school which teaches that dirty hippies were dirty and you disagree with that, you can pull your kid out of that school – voucher or no voucher.

But if you for whatever reason have neither the resources for private school tuition nor access to a voucher, you’re stuck sifting through what they teach in government schools.

And the HuffPo gang has no problem with what’s taught there.

Like for example that the New Deal cured us of the Great Depression, which is a lie.

Or that global warming is a man-made phenomenon, which is a lie.

Or that it’s “cultural outreach” or whatever to dress your daughter up in a burka.

Or lots of other things which assist in cranking out the worst-educated kids – and worse, worst-prepared for the adversities of life – in American history.

If as a parent you’d prefer not to have to spend every night de-programming your kid from the crap they’re indoctrinated with at government schools – while also trying to fight off the crap they’re indoctrinated with by the moron culture they’re ingesting when they flip on the TV at home – and use a voucher to cover the cost, the HuffPo gang will stroke out about it and call you stupid.

Well, what the HuffPo gang characterizes as stupid tends to produce better citizens than what they think is progressive and brilliant.

But the good news is, with the voucher program it’s up to the people involved to decide for themselves. The state isn’t forcing anybody to do anything. It’s for the parents to choose.

As it should be.

And if the market, rather than a lefty-controlled educational elite, gets to decide what schoolkids are taught about dirty hippies – or a host of other subjects which can influence the direction of the culture – then that’s an effect which would serve to prove Louisiana’s voucher law could be the best thing we’ve ever done in this state.

Nobody at HuffPo will agree with that. But who cares what they think? They’re busy trashing New York and California and Illinois and whatever other socialist utopias they populate; let them continue with that project, and we’ll go our own way without any feedback from them.