Do you have an eight-year-old child? Is your son or daughter currently being educated by a teacher, in a school? If so, you are a failure as a parent, and as an American. You need to quit your job (or if you are a man, tell your wife to quit her job) and teach your child at home. By “teach,” I mean have your child read a lot of books and watch YouTube videos on his or her own.

So says Ron Paul in his new book, The School Revolution.

The last three decades have been difficult for people with deeply conservative views on education. Ronald Reagan sold out the movement by embracing the recommendations of the seminal 1983 report A Nation at Risk, which called for stronger academic standards in public schools. Implicit in the report was the legitimacy of public schools and standards imposed by a government of some kind. This began an unbroken chain of presidents calling for more government funding, along with tougher standards, tests, and school accountability. Both Bushes pursued this agenda, along with Clinton and Obama too.

But recent years have seen once-marginalized notions of citizenship and government gain popularity. Ideas previously regarded as too weird or retrograde for respectable conversation have infiltrated mainstream politics. Manifestos that might have been relegated to the odd web page or pamphlet are now being published as books that people actually read. Which brings us to The School Revolution.

Ron Paul does not believe in federal funding of schools. Or state funding. Or any funding, because Ron Paul does not believes in “schools” as we know them today. Schools are part of the state, the state (by definition) wants to steal your freedom, and freedom is a good thing. So state schools indoctrinate children to believe in the state, a belief they carry to adulthood, at which point they enroll their children in state schools, and the cycle of serfdom begins anew. The logic of The School Revolution reaches no higher levels of complexity.