Tony Parsons Quotes
Grammar schools are public schools without the sodomy.
Parsons, Tony. Late Review. BBC Two, 1998.
The mayor had eliminated an independent Board of Education and obtained more control of the Chicago Public Schools and instituted long needed reforms.
This plank if ever actually implemented would clearly destroy the American educational system. Extreme radical ideas such as this are not typical of Libertarian Party positions before or afterwards. The quotation illustrates that there are people in America who would end public education if they could. The quotation also illustrates how a small cadre of people can capture control of a political party and create a platform that is their own personal views which may be different from most of the party members or the historical position that the party has taken. In 1980 the Libertarian Party Vice Presidential Candidate was David Koch, one half of the billionaire conservative Koch brothers. Their money financed the Libertarian Party in that year and David Koch’s views then prevailed in the party platform. Historically, the Koch brothers moved from a minor third party to the Republican party at the beginning of the 21st century when their money was able to help drive the party very far to the right from the traditions of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
Liberia had been founded by American Free Negroes. American religious missionary organizations were very helpful in building the new nation, but they also created their own parochial, religious day schools. And behind the scenes they blocked efforts to establish a public school system. Walker, in America, was trying to get public support for allowing there to be public schools in Liberia.
Tony Victor Parsons is an English journalist, broadcaster, and author. He began his career as a music journalist for New Musical Express (NME), writing about punk music. Later he wrote for The Daily Telegraph, before going on to write for the Daily Mirror for 18 years. Since September 2013, Parsons has written a column for The Sun. He was for a time a regular guest on the BBC Two arts review programme The Late Show, and appeared infrequently on the successor Newsnight Review; he also briefly hosted a series on Channel 4 called Big Mouth.
