[BrenBarn]

This is like saying if Trump says you have to pay for air, then you have to stop breathing to have true freedom.

No. We don't need this, and we also don't need a return to the status quo. What we need is a more equitable system where everyone's freedom is guaranteed and everyone accept that, such that actions like what we see Trump taking here are treated like an old crank on a street corner screaming about the apocalypse: we put him into a padded cell and move on with our lives.

[garrettgarcia]

> This is like saying if Trump says you have to pay for air, then you have to stop breathing to have true freedom.

Can you explain what you mean? I don't see how this follows from the arguments in the article.

[BrenBarn]

The article is saying that Trump's actions have illustrated how dependency on federal funds makes colleges vulnerable. The proposed solution is to eliminate that funding. But what I'm saying is that what is better is to remove the loopholes in our system that allow Trump to threaten it.

Rereading the article, it does seem to have a bit more generic right-wing-flavored "government shouldn't do stuff" than stuck with me on the first read, which may be why my logic was a bit unclear. Basically my point is that the government cannot use funding to control universities unless some individuals have discretion over how and whether to award that funding. I'm saying what should be reduced is not funding but discretion.

(I'm open to rethinking the system to make it less discretion-dependent; the article does have some ideas that could be relevant there that I wouldn't dismiss out of hand. But that an issue of how schools get funded, not whether.)