Law forcing schools to share student data with military recruiters 
should be scrapped, Libertarians say  

WASHINGTON, DC -- A new law that requires public schools to turn 
over student information to military recruiters should be scrapped, 
Libertarians say, because educators shouldnAEt have to cooperate in 
sending their students off to get killed in senseless foreign wars.  

"Apparently the government believes the three R's should stand for 
reading, writing - and recruiting," said George Getz, Libertarian Party 
communications director. "Schools are supposed to be supplying an 
education to their students, not supplying their students to the 
armed forces."  

A little-noticed amendment to the elementary and secondary education 
funding bill signed earlier this year by President Bush requires public 
high schools to turn over students' names, addresses, and telephone 
numbers to military recruiters. The measure has already sparked 
opposition in New York and other urban areas, where the number of 
students who have complied with draft registration has plummeted to 
as low as 49 percent.  

But Libertarians say the government has no business deputizing school 
administrators to act as agents for the military.  

"The fact that some students fail to comply with a federal regulation 
shouldn't obligate schools to violate the privacy of all students," Getz 
said. "Military recruiters should have no right to demand student 
records.  

"Besides, teachers' first obligation should be to educate and protect 
their students, not make it easier for the government to launch another 
Vietnam-style draft."  

"Americans should think about why so many youths are refusing to register 
for the draft," he said. "Maybe they've learned that the draft has 
been used as a tool to wage senseless wars that the public rightly 
opposed, such as Vietnam and Korea. Maybe inner-city students are 
especially aware that while governments launch wars, minorities always 
seem to end up leading the charge into battle.  

"And how can students fail to notice that presidents have a habit of 
sending Americans to fight in places totally unrelated to U.S. national 
security, like Bosnia, Haiti, Panama, Somalia, Lebanon, and Iraq?  

"No wonder so many students are reluctant to register: They don't want 
to die defending someone else's country."  

History shows that a draft has never been needed to defend the USA, 
Libertarians note.  

"Anytime this nation was actually attacked, as it was at Pearl Harbor 
and on September 11, Americans rushed to volunteer for military 
service," Getz said. "It's only when U.S. national security is not 
at stake that politicians turn to coercion and conscription.  

"If the government wants to ensure that Americans will always be eager 
to defend their country, it doesn't have to turn teachers into informants 
for military recruiters. All it has to do is adopt a truly defensive foreign  
policy of neutrality and non-intervention."

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Source: US Libertarian Party ...
http://www.lp.org/press/archive.php?function=view&record=613

Cheers, Steve..

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