Homeschooling and virtual schooling 2025

Posted on August 5, 2025 by TPOL Nathan

All around we see the signs and ads telling us that the government-run, tax-funded schools are gearing up to start the 2025-2026 school year. Some very early in August, others (as in Rapid City, SD and its colonial possessions in the “Area School District”) the middle of August (at least, after Rally if not after the summer heat breaks). Well before the traditional post-Labor Day seasonal schools.

The Blaze and other news (yes, and gossip) outlets are looking back to pre-Beer Flu Pandemic Panic days and note a very good trend. At least from the point of view of lovers of liberty.

According to the National Home Education Research Institute, there were 3.1 million homeschooled K-12 students in the 2021-2022 school year, up from 2.5 million in spring 2019. Forbes indicated last year that estimates put the number of American homeschooled students at nearly 4 million kids nationwide. As multiple states do not require notification when parents decide to educate their children at home, the number might be much higher.

Today, there is good evidence that home schooling and virtual schooling numbers are double the pre-Panic numbers: as many as 5 million. Especially when you look at micro-schools and even forms of “unschooling” across the nation.

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Motorcycles and liberty – Sturgis 85 (2025)

Posted on August 4, 2025 by TPOL Nathan

We last touched on several points about why TPOL sees the annual Black Hills Rally as tied to liberty. Let us continue our look at liberty, bikes, and bikers.

This 2025 85th Rally seems to be off to a great start: lots and lots and LOTS of bikers – and RVs and pickups and even semi-trucks hauling bikes – are filling the Black Hills. Not just Sturgis, but Spearfish and Lead-Deadwood, Rapid City, Sundance, Newcastle, even remoter places like Hulett (near Devils Tower) and Custer City and Hot Springs. The air vibrates with the roar of bikes. Even when storm winds and rain briefly floods streets, parking areas, and vendors (to say nothing of tents and bivy sheets), people pick up and go on. You don’t see many sour faces, either. Except for those Mrs. Grundies and Karens that every community has too many of (1 being defined by many people as “too many”).

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Liberty and tolerance at 85th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally

Posted on August 2, 2025 by TPOL Nathan

Today, the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming are filled with the roar of big bikes of all types. Actually, the last week has seen a rapid increase in the number of bikers flowing into and through the Pahasapa (the old Lakota name for the Black Hills).

It is the 85th such rally, and events ending in 0 and 5 are big draws. Numbers of visitors and vendors and dollars are already up significantly over the last seven-eight years. Though the event was not cancelled (to the fear and horror of the nanny-staters) of 2020, numbers were down as people were brainwashed into fearing the Beer Flu. It will not be a surprise if a million or more people (and the same number of Harleys, Hondas, Indians, Triumphs and more) show up in 2025.

So what does this have to do with liberty, freedom, and the price of liberty?

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Government is not content with normality

Posted on August 1, 2025 by TPOL Nathan

Let us share another guest editorial by Bob Malone. Comments in brackets and below. Please, provide your thoughts!

Frankly, “they” [governments and “progressives’] need both parents out of the house and extended family [both physical and spiritual] severed from the daily lives of nuclear families. This is by design. Industrialized societies rely on and promote a workforce that is willing and able to relocate, both geographically and socially, to adapt to the constantly changing demands of technology, the market, and the broader economy.

This mobility is considered crucial for economic resilience, innovation, and ongoing growth. In industrial societies, more functions such as childcare, elder care, and education shift from the extended family to the state, and the nuclear family becomes increasingly isolated from their extended family. [Frequently this is instigated and enforced by courts and agencies which supposedly “serve” the families and “protect” children. One more set of lies.]

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MAFIOSI? GOVERNMENT GOONS? 2025

Posted on July 31, 2025 by TPOL Nathan

A recently seen cartoon (no doubt reposted):

This is “funny” of course, but at the same time it is an astute observation.

First, government, like crime syndicates, uses force and the threat of force to get people to do their bidding.

Second, in many ways, both entities are nothing more than parasites. Both promise “protection” of you, your family, your business, and your property. But much of what these organizations do for your “protection money” (taxes and fees) is not threaten or steal or destroy your property. Doubt this? Put up a statue or let your grass grow too high on your front yard and watch what local government code enforcement does.

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The Obummer Legacy, Part 2

Posted on July 30, 2025 by TPOL Nathan

Continuing to share Mikki Willis’ thoughts on the era of 2009 to 2017 (and past that), when you know who was in power. We’ve done some editing and added a few thoughts (in brackets) to his commentary.

Now, let’s talk about the smoothest criminal of them all…

Obama was the first U.S. president I [Mikki Willis] ever voted for. Growing up in California, I was conditioned to believe that only Democrats truly cared about people and the planet. At the time, I was convinced that progressive policies were our only hope to fix a broken nation.

I’ll never forget the night Obama was sworn into office. I was at a bar in downtown Los Angeles with a group of friends, and we all had tears in our eyes when he placed his hand on that Bible. But before the end of his first term, I found myself asking, “What happened to hope and change?”

We had been duped. He turned out to be just like the rest – but even worse.

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The Obummer Legacy, part 1

Posted on July 29, 2025 by TPOL Nathan

As we are treated to revelations of exactly what that 8-year occupant of 1600 PA did, both during and after he “served” in office, let us look back on that time.

Is Trump any better? He is certainly different, but to many people he seems to be slightly better.

Mr. Mikki Willis compiled this list of quotes which we are in turn sharing courtesy of Bob Malone:

In anticipation that some readers might dismiss this by saying I’m the wrong color to understand, here are just a few quotes from prominent Black voices:

“Obama posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency.”

— Cornel West

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The Price of Liberty: revisited

Posted on July 28, 2025 by TPOL Nathan

“Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.”Jean V Dubois (Robert Heinlein)

The Founding Fathers recognized unalienable rights – not rights that couldn’t be taken away. Rather, rights which it was wrong (sinful! evil!) to take away. They are God’s gift to His creations: every human being.

Our headlines are filled with both examples of those rights, those liberties, being stolen away. And of people who use their liberties to do evil things. Not just to others, but even to themselves.

Recent recounting of a NY Democrat’s bald statement that the reason to flood her congressional district with immigrants was to ensure that her district’s voting power (that is, number of bodies) was not weakened by the 2020 census. It was not about treating the stranger (immigrant) properly and kindly, it was about her political power and that of her cronies. We see daily reports of politicians and “public servants” who have sought to stay in power or prevent others from having power, and have committed crimes and immoral acts to achieve those goals.

Heinlein was not the original inventor of the concept that “Service Guarantees Citizenship” but certainly publicized it. The wisdom of such a system may be debated, but is it not better than the mess we have today?

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Colbert, O’Donnell, and The Donald

Posted on July 27, 2025 by TPOL Nathan

We here at The Price of Liberty are sometimes accused of going overboard by blaming the government(s) for so much and so many things that make people miserable, angry, and poorer.

Well, we guess we’re just pikers.

Dear, dear, infected Rosie O’Donnell, darling of Woke America, has beaten us all hollow. As reported on Breitbart, she has told her 2.8 million TicToc followers (worshippers?) that it is the evil Trump-led FedGov that has blackmailed CBS into giving The Donald a bribe of $16 million dollars and forcing CBS into firing the “great” Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show. Stating that Trump and the Fedgov have thereby destroyed the right of free speech, and more. Apparently the firing of Colbert is just a tiny step away from “full-blown fascism” here in the Fifty States. (Another celebrity has claimed that the CBS action has “dismantled the Constitution.” Apparently two sitting US Senators take her ranting seriously.) And Colbert’s firing is the first step in a dastardly plan by The Donald to “arrest every artist that disagrees with him.” Has the US Constitution been dismantled?

Wow.

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Seventy years of decay or improvement?

Posted on July 26, 2025 by TPOL Nathan

In 1955, the Fifty States – and the world – were far different places than the States here in 2025 or the world today.

As freedom goes, as liberty is found or lost, we sometimes think everything is worse today than in the past. Especially in that “Golden Age” when “The Greatest Generation” was nearly over the trauma of the Second World War and busy producing Baby Boomers and “Made in America” products of all kinds.

Go back to that time with us and let’s do some comparisons.

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