The other day, this gem from Jim Geraghty was featured on National Review. Uber has become a magic word for the Conservative Inc. and it very well be on its way to being another word for “sacred.” Anything they want to imbue with moral virtue will get the word “Uber” slapped on it in the same way lefty will affix and “i” to anything they want to make sound high tech.

Americans are depressed.

Their deep-rooted pessimism about the future may or may not put a Republican in the White House in 2016. But seriously shaking this gloom will probably take more than the usual conservative policy proposals of tax reform and simplification, a defense buildup, regulatory reform, and so on.

History demonstrates to us that giant, rapid, positive change is possible, in both the political and the economic realms.

Actually, history argues the exact opposite. Giant, rapid changes are things like earthquakes and hurricanes. Revolutions and wars are giant, rapid changes. Good change is incremental, perhaps even glacial. The fact that someone calling himself a conservative would write such dewy-eyed nonsense says a lot about why there’s nothing left to the conservative movement in America. But, the point of the article is education so let’s get to the meat of it.

1. School choice everywhere. Any parent, in any community, should be able to send his or her child to any school that will accept that child. Period. Yes, some might say this is Washington forcing a change on the states. Too bad. We don’t run our education system for the benefit of state and local education officials — or at least we shouldn’t. We do it for kids and parents. Any administrator who wants to deny parents the right to send their children to the school of their choice can get the hell out of the education system.

The guys with kids always latch onto public school choice like it is a magic solution, without ever thinking about what they are saying. We have school choice now. You can send your kid to private schools, you can move to a place with good public schools and you can home school. This reality has done nothing to alter the inherent defects of public schools run by unions and forbidden to discriminate.

That last part is the elephant in the room. Bad schools all have the same problem. They are are full of bad students. Those students come from bad families, usually black and poor. The schools are not allowed to throw the troublesome kids out, so the schools degenerate as the responsible parents move away. School choice is just a way to segregate the bad apples, usually minorities, without owning up to the what your doing.

2. Trade schools, trade schools, trade schools. Our leaders have to drive a stake into the heart of the attitude that all American children need to go to a four-year college or university. Not every American kid needs a degree, but every American kid needs a skill. This is a cultural fight as much as a policy fight.

Jim Geraghty is an open borders fanatic. He can barely choke out the words “illegal immigrant” without sobbing. Why in the world would we spend a cent on vocational training when we are importing a population of helot workers to do these jobs? Further, conservatives cheered as we let the financial sector auction off the manufacturing base to China and Mexico. Unless Geraghty plans to ship vocational school grads to China, there’s no point in sponsoring vocational training.

3. Push the business world to step directly into education. Corporations have complained for a long time that the education system is not providing them with workers ready to step into entry-level jobs. It’s time to bring the employers into the classroom.

Go ahead, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Cargill, Nike, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Disney, Intel, Wal-Mart, Goldman Sachs. Build your own charter schools. What smart kid with an aptitude for engineering wouldn’t want to go to a Ford Academy of Automotive Engineering or a SpaceX aerospace school? Or how about a Google School of Computer Science? These schools would “check all the boxes” for the usual range of core subjects, but they would also offer a constantly updated curriculum in the specialized area relating to their industry. Attendance at one of these schools wouldn’t guarantee future employment at the sponsoring company, but it would certainly open doors and establish early connections.

This already happens. Charter schools are run by for-profit companies. Major corporations spend enormous sums in training their workers. Asking them to take over the public schools sounds great, until they send Jim Geraghty the bill. Then he is not going to be as enthusiastic.

Worse still, when Acme School Inc fires Jim Junior for having a low IQ, Jim Sr. is calling his Congressman. Private business spends a lot of time discriminating amongst the various inputs available. They know you can’t make a good product with poor ingredients. Google would not exist if they were forced to hire an army of low-IQ degenerates and criminals.

Far too much of what passes for conservative these days is just warmed over progressive mush from the 70’s and 80’s. Conservatives used to argue for local control of schools, abolition of teacher unions and aggressive segregation of students based on merit and local custom. That was the best way to provide the best education to the broadest portion of the population, but allowing for the skimming off of the best and the worst for the special treatment they warrant.