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Republican State House leader Vince Candelora has a gift for summarizing in a few pithy sentences legislative attempts to solve problems majority Democrats in Connecticut‘s General Assembly have made.

Objecting to the “final” version of a bill many home schooling parents in Connecticut find unnecessarily intrusive and needlessly complex, Candelora said the bill “really misses the mark, if we are concerned about children falling through the cracks who are being abused,” the precipitant cause of the now revised homeschooling bill favored by Democrats. “That’s what our focus should be. [The bill drafted by Democrats is] an attempt to regulate homeschooling, and that’s not our issue. Our issue is when children are in DCF [Connecticut Department of Children and Families] custody or a report of DCF abuse or neglect [has been made], how are those children monitored? The focus [of the present adjusted homeschooling bill], is registering homeschooled children. [The bill] is the first step to regulate homeschooling. The next is curriculum review, and that is where families start to object.”

To anyone who supposes that the revised homeschooling bill has set the feet of Connecticut’s Democrat controlled General Assembly on a “slippery slope” that could lead to further intrusive home schooling restrictions, state House majority leader Matt Ritter announced, intemperately: “The term ‘slippery slope’ is the laziest intellectual argument that has ever existed in mankind, because it can be used for anything. I hate it. I hate it, so I don’t want to hear about slippery slopes.”

Ritter did not share with reporters his detestation of the expression “the camel’s nose in the tent,” as in “the present watered down homeschooling bill is the camel’s nose in the tent.” We all know that once the camel’s nose is in the tent, the rest of the beast will follow, displacing the tent dwellers. That would seem to be the import of the following passage in a Hartford paper: “Both Ritter and House Majority leader Jason Rojas of East Hartford said it is possible that there could be changes [to the proposed bill] in the future.

“’There will have to be a new hearing, a new bill, elections,” said Ritter.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again – but only after the upcoming election have been concluded. It is extremely important to Democrat leaders in Connecticut that incumbent majority Democrats should not lose office by slipping on slippery slopes.

Noah Webster, born in West Hartford and known as the “Father of American Scholarship and Education” – the man was immensely prolific; a modern bibliography of his works spans 655 pages -- reminds us that power politics may trump Constitutional restraints. We should be doubly wary of ambitious politicians who appear to be actuated by noble intentions: “It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”

Webster was largely homeschooled by his mother before enrolling at Yale at 16 years of age. Recruited by Alexander Hamilton as editor of The Federalist, he moved to New York but quickly moved back to Connecticut upon graduation. Apart from Yale, he was educated by tutors, later writing that a liberal arts education “disqualifies a man for business.” A public school teacher in Glastonbury, he was a lifelong critic of public education. His own elementary school teachers, he thought, were the “dregs of humanity.” Their instruction, he later complained, mainly concerned religion.

And Webster was unabashedly patriotic: “America sees the absurdities—she observes the kingdoms of Europe, disturbed by wrangling sectaries, or their commerce, population, and improvements of every kind cramped and retarded, because the human mind like the body is fettered ‘and bound fast by the chords of policy and superstition’: She laughs at their folly and shuns their errors: She founds her empire upon the idea of universal toleration: She admits all religions into her bosom; She secures the sacred rights of every individual; and (astonishing absurdity to Europeans!) she sees a thousand discordant opinions live in the strictest harmony ... it will finally raise her to a pitch of greatness and luster, before which the glory of ancient Greece and Rome shall dwindle to a point, and the splendor of modern Empires fade into obscurity.”

As we approach the country’s founding celebration on July 4, 2026, it may be instructive to turn on its head the wrong question – What do we think of the founders? -- and ask the right question – What would the founders think of us?

Is Europe still absurd? May we say with assurance that we in the United States observe scrupulously the rights of every individual? Are gerrymandered Democrats in Connecticut’s General Assembly who outnumber Republicans willing to allow an open government that includes the opposition party in the general decision making process? Is democracy by political caucus democratic? When we celebrate the semiquincentennial of the United States’ founding on July 4, 2026, will we remember the opening words of the Declaration of Independence we are celebrating: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

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