LOL!!!
Thanks for the first substantial conservative rant. Patiently awaiting mod to shut this thread down.
The only problem with the "as local as possible" ideal is that many issues have regional, national, and global impact. Pollution has impact far away from its immediate source, which is why we need effective global and national policies dealing with pollution. So does national defense. So does health care, especially epidemiology.
As for resource size vs. size of government; it's all relative. A 10-person council with $10,000 to spend is just as wasteful and corrupt as a 10,000-person body with $10,000,000 to spend. It's all relative, because each person only has a limited amount of money with which to "wet their beaks". However, it isn't true on the opposite end. A small minority of citizens are willing to devote their time and resources to watchdog operations, no matter the size of government. A 10-person council probably has 1 watchdog who really can't do much. However, a 10,000-person body probably has 500 watchdogs, and together, they can do a lot. Monitoring activities can scale up exponentially. Graft scales up linearly because it's all about the total amount of funds available. 1000 10-person local governments will steal just as much as a single 10,000 person government, not accounting for watchdog groups.
Public education has done a lot for this country; much more than coddled sons and daughters of a wealthy America appreciate. Remember when farmers and sharecroppers pulled their children out for growing season? Do you honestly believe that without publicly funded and mandated education that practice would ever have faded? In the modern post-industrial, service-oriented economy, there's still many jobs that poor parents can send their kids to do; the cultural ethos that has arisen with public and mandatory education has made that choice less culturally acceptable.
As for national vs. local curriculums, I'm going to make an anti-populist argument. There's absolutely no way that a local school district can craft a curriculum that is as high quality as a federal one, especially if the community in question is poor and underprivileged. A federal curriculum can draw on national experts. A local one can only draw on local experts. Given the number of national experts (a handful) vs. the number of local experts (many), statistical distribution alone should show that national experts tend to be higher quality. A local curriculum leads to a caste system. A community of farmers will create a farming curriculum, and a community of rich business leaders will create a business curriculum. We need the social mobility that non-local curriculums provide. Some sons of tycoons make better farmers, and it would be wrong for our society to be deprived of that farmer.
Of course rich families send their kids to private school. It's better! But we can't afford to give every child the best. Public education is SOMETHING, which is better than NOTHING. And unless you are so selfish that you only care about your own children, you'll see the need of an education that isn't privately funded. Will the poor on their own provide better education than public school? Home-schooling is great for families who can, but what about families where both parents work full time? Politicians and the wealthy underfund public education because they don't want to pay for something they don't use. But they are the only ones who can pay for it; the poor cannot fund it alone. Yes, it's redistribution of wealth, but in a system that is intended to give everyone a shot and increase social mobility, it's a little bit of socialism that I can live it.
There's two kinds of freedom: "freedom to" and "freedom from". "Freedom to" is great if you can afford it: freedom to speak, freedom to worship, freedom to assemble. "Freedom from" is important too: freedom from hunger, freedom from disease. The first is American libertarianism and capitalism. The latter is socialism. Both are freedoms. Both are important. Society must balance them both. Most Americans don't think of the latter when thinking about freedom, though, and I think we should be reminded from time to time that these are freedoms too.
Liberals and conservatives both focus on freedoms of both types, just different ones. Liberals defend freedom to speak, even if it offends religious conservatives. Religious conservatives want freedom from anti-faith speech. Conservatives want freedom to speak, even if it violates a liberal's PC sensibilities. Liberals want freedom from hate speech. Our society balances both.
As for evolution, all I have to say is that, like all theories, the Theory of Evolution has "evolved" as new evidence is found. And of course, the consensus of the scientific and theological communities has no bearing on whether Evolution or ID are "right" or not. As an educated person, you must evaluate the evidence, hypotheses, and theories for yourself. If you are open minded and ready to engage in a serious and civil discussion on Evolution, start with "What Evolution Is" by Ernst Mayr. Ignore the chapter on Human Ethics. It is secular and humanist, and will likely make you sick. But the rest of the book is a gem. What is the difference between "micro" and "macro"? Do you have a scientifically rigorous definition? Micro leads to macro when reproductive isolation is thrown into the mix, which is the real foundation for speciation. This book covers this.
