This is a pure, tragic, and predictable display of state power trampling upon individual liberty and opportunity. The Taliban regime—a state in its most naked, unaccountable form—declares itself the arbiter of thought and learning, dictating what half the population may study, if anything at all. This is the nightmare Hayek warned of in "The Road to Serfdom": that centralized authority, claiming to serve some 'higher good' or religious ideal, will always substitute the plans and ambitions of millions of individuals for the rigid designs of a few. By outlawing independent educational paths for girls, the regime doesn’t merely rob young women of opportunity; it arrogates to itself the right to decide who may think, who may speak, who may grow.

Nozick's vision of the minimal state stands in stark contrast. The Taliban regime is not a protector against force and fraud, but the very perpetrator of institutionalized coercion. Their "education system" is not the result of voluntary association, nor does it leave room for any. Instead, it forcibly collectivizes hopes and dreams, denying the basic right of girls and women to direct their own lives, pursue their unique aspirations, and trade in the marketplace of ideas.

Ayn Rand, too, would have found this state of affairs indefensible. Her unequivocal defense of rational self-interest and productive purpose rings all the more tragic when we see girls reduced to "gratitude" for the meager privilege of rote religious schooling. What does it mean to be grateful for scraps while your potential is caged? Is existence itself a gift of the state now, rather than an inalienable right? Rand’s Howard Roark and Dagny Taggart would have spit upon any system, religious or secular, that demanded the sacrifice of one’s dreams to some collective vision enforced by violence.

It is irrelevant whether these madrasas now include computer science or math. The state grants or withholds liberty as if it owns every Afghan soul. There is no consent, no competition, and no possibility for these girls—or their families—to seek alternatives, as Rand’s characters or Nozick’s free individuals might have done in a truly free social order. Girls are born into shackles, not just in the legal sense but existentially—a moral abomination beyond any economic calculation or "cultural sensitivity."

In the end, this education crisis is nothing but the predictable result of statism’s iron logic. When the state becomes God, all rights—education, work, speech, even hope—are subject to its arbitrary will. Only a system based on voluntary action and unalienable individual rights can offer true liberation. Until then, a whole generation is handed a future shut off from invention, prosperity, and meaning, their lives sacrificed on the altar of state power and dogma. The world should condemn, not accommodate, this monstrous intervention. Freedom is the answer, always. The state is the problem, always.