In some situations, you have to prioritize the principles involved

This post is basically going to consist of a Facebook post and one chain within the comment thread underneath.

Here is my post:

I don't usually use social media as a vehicle for activism, but this one really disturbs me. I'm speaking of the utterly boneheaded idea of merging the departments of labor and education. Yes, I understand that much of today's world of work requires skills that most people don't have. But education and training are two different things - entirely. 

The point of education is to grasp the vast sweep of human history, and to explore the best that has been thought, discovered and created.

It is to learn how to live humanely in a difficult world.

Training is something the private sector does to meet the particular needs of particular private entities.

And so I'm offering the URL to this petition to stop this move.

By the way, here's the URL. You should sign the petition, too.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-merger-between-us-dept-education-and-us-dept-labor

And here's the thread:

Other Guy: If you think the Department of Education is about teaching anything like "the vast sweep of human history" you are not paying attention.

Me: See above comments. I'm in complete agreement that the Ed Department and for that matter the Labor Dept should be abolished. (A big reason I was a Ted Cruz enthusiast was that he had the spine to come out with a list of cabinet-level departments and federal agencies that he'd set about dismantling if he got elected.) But to get into that level of it here would be to muddy the waters. These departments do exist, and it is indeed folly to merge them.

Other Guy: I think if the merger results in there being half as many federal employees at the end of the day, who cares.

Me: Because of the reasons I state in the post.

Me: It looks to me like a nationalist move, borne out of some kind of concern that America taken collectively needs to be more "competitive" vis-a-vis other industrialized countries. It reduces education to the equipping of a work force to meet the needs of corporations. It seems to me it could be argued that it's actually a leftist impulse - playing favorites in the marketplace.

Me: If company A needs particular skill sets and can't find them, that is not a matter for government to address. 

 Other Guy: I was looking at it as a way to cut two bloated bureaucracies in half. 

Me: That's a good thing, I'll grant you, but another important principle is at stake here. 

Other Guy: Fair enough. I haven't thought about any deeper than "hey, less bureaucrats".

Glad you accepted my invitation to think about it a little more deeply. By the way, it's "fewer bureaucrats."