Well written; my only quibble would be that you sort of buried the lede. "Critics of vouchers fail to distinguish between a direct subsidy for religion and a tax-funded entitlement distributed to citizens who may use that entitlement for religious purposes," is really the key sentence.
While I am glad the court ruled this way, I would raise the experience of Grove City College as a warning to private religious schools accepting vouchers. GCC found that the government considers any and all subsidies to students to constitute government funding of the school itself, and thus grounds for regulation of the school. Effectively Grove City stopped even accepting student loans after the government claimed that gave them the right to enforce whatever rules they wished. Private schools and school choice advocates in states lucky enough to have private school voucher systems should keep an eye out for such behavior, and seek legislation preventing the state from using the existence of voucher programs to make private schools conform to the dysfunctional norms of public institutions.
Interference in private schools is my worry as well, but its not a big enough worry to stand against vouchers (I would want to consider it in voucher regulation).
But let's get real, until vouchers are available less then 10% of the population is going to find private school financially feasible, and that just isn't going to bring about the societal change libertarians want.
The private christian schools in my area were the only ones that stood up to COVID nonsense. Even when it was clearly illegal to do so and the state made threats and sometimes took actions. This was a defining moment to me about who is worthy of my allegiance. Libertarians complained about COVID but mostly fell in line and shut up without any serious skin in the game sacrifice and resistance.
We choose to send out children to a private christian school based on their COVID performance and many other factors and I would welcome any return of out tax dollars that politicians could provide.
No, vouchers and school choice is definitely where it is at. I just wanted to speak a warning that the fight isn't over yet, and there is another front the education department and others will try to open to control how kids are educated.
I think you subtly misdescribed what the Court’s ruling was. It didn’t just rule that it’s ok for the state to allow voucher use for religious schools; it ruled that the state is prohibited from implementing a voucher program that singles out religious schools for exclusion.
Unfortunately, the establishment clause (which does not use the term "separation of church and state") has more often been defined as saying that the state may not legally take any action that benefits "the church." This would have been a ludicrous interpretation if ever posed to any of the authors of our Constitution, and I doubt that it is very often made in good faith.
If anything, our current interpretation serves only to do the exact opposite of what the establishment clause was created to do - it virtually establishes non-religion (which, as we all know, very often takes on every bit the religious devotion and fervor as any mainstream religion) as the religion of the State.
Our supreme court could do a lot of good by taking us back to the intended meaning of the establishment clause.
In a previous post in reference to labor laws, you said:
"It would be strange, then, to claim that you have an enforceable duty to not offer a *bad* job to that person—an offer that they can of course reject and be no worse off compared to a situation where they had no offer [...] If you are permitted to offer no job (or no gas or whatever), you should be permitted to offer a low-wage job (or high-priced gas)."
I'm wondering how you reconcile this view with the position outlined in this post, that IF the state decides to offer school vouchers, the vouchers must not be allowed to have any stipulations about their usage.
I suppose the parallel idea is that, according to the quoted logic:
The state has every right to NOT offer school vouchers. The state is offering us something, at least. The state is otherwise free (and well within its God given-rights) to just not give us anything. Nobody should be able to compel the state to do anything with ITS money - it earned its money, it's its own property, and it should be free to do with it what it wishes.
If state property is fundamentally different from non-state property in a way that morally obligates the state to offer school vouchers, while not morally obligating non-state entities to offer school vouchers (or at least, obligates the state not to put any stipulations on the voucher's usage should it choose to offer them, while not making the same moral obligation for non-state entities), I would be curious to see this fleshed out as to why.
It seems to have been determined that the state is obligated to provide access to public education. In doing so, however, it excludes at least one major form of education in the form of religious schooling (while still confiscating money from the families who choose religious schooling). What we are seeing with public schools in recent years (or not so recent - maybe going back as far as public schooling itself, but far, far more egregious in the past 20 years or so) is that schools are very far from being non-ideological. They may not be "religious," but many of them are overtly anti-religious. Many of them openly subvert the wishes of religious families and virtually all of them make it a priority to teach what they believe to be "values" (which some might argue is religious in nature).
From the point we decided that taxpayer money should be used to fund schools, allowing parents to choose whichever from of schooling their money pays for was the right thing to do. But we now appear to have reached the point where public schooling is directly opposed to religion - the establishment clause states that:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
Obviously (in response to the official Church of England) the State may not establish one religion at the expense of all others, but the second part "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is very important, and it makes clear that the object of this amendment is not to advance non-religion, but quite the opposite.
I would argue that - far from vouchers being unconstitutional - the provision of state-sponsored public education without vouchers is a violation of the establishment clause.
It's the nature of ownership that is fundamentally different.
If you choose to spend 2000 hours next year collecting rain water, and your neighbor spends 2000 hours collecting leaves, and at the end of the year you gave him all the water in exchange for all his leaves, and he dumps the water in a river and you carefully put all the leaves back where he found them, do I have a claim on how the two of you disposed of your property?
As silly as I might think the two of you, I have no say in the matter. It's your prerogatives.
Government is a necessary evil, if only because people disagree on the ideal government. And the state isn't a person who has the prerogative to take money from people and then dispose of it in whatever way. I CAN raise my hand and opine on what is and isn't appropriate use of its confiscated property, as I'm unfortuantely a shareholder in this "business". It takes my money - I rarely approve of how it's spent, but I certainly have some say in what's acceptable.
The hypothetical leaves-for-water trading you and your neighbor do is actually not my business. (As long as your neighbor isn't mentally handicapped and being taken advantage of an "invalid contract" type situation - sorry, I'm terrible with metaphors.)
That would only be true if we didn't already subsidize public education. By doing so, we incentivize people against Christian Schooling and effectively support (or "establish?") non-religion over religion.
Well written; my only quibble would be that you sort of buried the lede. "Critics of vouchers fail to distinguish between a direct subsidy for religion and a tax-funded entitlement distributed to citizens who may use that entitlement for religious purposes," is really the key sentence.
While I am glad the court ruled this way, I would raise the experience of Grove City College as a warning to private religious schools accepting vouchers. GCC found that the government considers any and all subsidies to students to constitute government funding of the school itself, and thus grounds for regulation of the school. Effectively Grove City stopped even accepting student loans after the government claimed that gave them the right to enforce whatever rules they wished. Private schools and school choice advocates in states lucky enough to have private school voucher systems should keep an eye out for such behavior, and seek legislation preventing the state from using the existence of voucher programs to make private schools conform to the dysfunctional norms of public institutions.
Interference in private schools is my worry as well, but its not a big enough worry to stand against vouchers (I would want to consider it in voucher regulation).
But let's get real, until vouchers are available less then 10% of the population is going to find private school financially feasible, and that just isn't going to bring about the societal change libertarians want.
The private christian schools in my area were the only ones that stood up to COVID nonsense. Even when it was clearly illegal to do so and the state made threats and sometimes took actions. This was a defining moment to me about who is worthy of my allegiance. Libertarians complained about COVID but mostly fell in line and shut up without any serious skin in the game sacrifice and resistance.
We choose to send out children to a private christian school based on their COVID performance and many other factors and I would welcome any return of out tax dollars that politicians could provide.
No, vouchers and school choice is definitely where it is at. I just wanted to speak a warning that the fight isn't over yet, and there is another front the education department and others will try to open to control how kids are educated.
I think you subtly misdescribed what the Court’s ruling was. It didn’t just rule that it’s ok for the state to allow voucher use for religious schools; it ruled that the state is prohibited from implementing a voucher program that singles out religious schools for exclusion.
Unfortunately, the establishment clause (which does not use the term "separation of church and state") has more often been defined as saying that the state may not legally take any action that benefits "the church." This would have been a ludicrous interpretation if ever posed to any of the authors of our Constitution, and I doubt that it is very often made in good faith.
If anything, our current interpretation serves only to do the exact opposite of what the establishment clause was created to do - it virtually establishes non-religion (which, as we all know, very often takes on every bit the religious devotion and fervor as any mainstream religion) as the religion of the State.
Our supreme court could do a lot of good by taking us back to the intended meaning of the establishment clause.
In a previous post in reference to labor laws, you said:
"It would be strange, then, to claim that you have an enforceable duty to not offer a *bad* job to that person—an offer that they can of course reject and be no worse off compared to a situation where they had no offer [...] If you are permitted to offer no job (or no gas or whatever), you should be permitted to offer a low-wage job (or high-priced gas)."
I'm wondering how you reconcile this view with the position outlined in this post, that IF the state decides to offer school vouchers, the vouchers must not be allowed to have any stipulations about their usage.
I suppose the parallel idea is that, according to the quoted logic:
The state has every right to NOT offer school vouchers. The state is offering us something, at least. The state is otherwise free (and well within its God given-rights) to just not give us anything. Nobody should be able to compel the state to do anything with ITS money - it earned its money, it's its own property, and it should be free to do with it what it wishes.
It's not apples-to-apples...
If state property is fundamentally different from non-state property in a way that morally obligates the state to offer school vouchers, while not morally obligating non-state entities to offer school vouchers (or at least, obligates the state not to put any stipulations on the voucher's usage should it choose to offer them, while not making the same moral obligation for non-state entities), I would be curious to see this fleshed out as to why.
It seems to have been determined that the state is obligated to provide access to public education. In doing so, however, it excludes at least one major form of education in the form of religious schooling (while still confiscating money from the families who choose religious schooling). What we are seeing with public schools in recent years (or not so recent - maybe going back as far as public schooling itself, but far, far more egregious in the past 20 years or so) is that schools are very far from being non-ideological. They may not be "religious," but many of them are overtly anti-religious. Many of them openly subvert the wishes of religious families and virtually all of them make it a priority to teach what they believe to be "values" (which some might argue is religious in nature).
From the point we decided that taxpayer money should be used to fund schools, allowing parents to choose whichever from of schooling their money pays for was the right thing to do. But we now appear to have reached the point where public schooling is directly opposed to religion - the establishment clause states that:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
Obviously (in response to the official Church of England) the State may not establish one religion at the expense of all others, but the second part "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is very important, and it makes clear that the object of this amendment is not to advance non-religion, but quite the opposite.
I would argue that - far from vouchers being unconstitutional - the provision of state-sponsored public education without vouchers is a violation of the establishment clause.
It's the nature of ownership that is fundamentally different.
If you choose to spend 2000 hours next year collecting rain water, and your neighbor spends 2000 hours collecting leaves, and at the end of the year you gave him all the water in exchange for all his leaves, and he dumps the water in a river and you carefully put all the leaves back where he found them, do I have a claim on how the two of you disposed of your property?
As silly as I might think the two of you, I have no say in the matter. It's your prerogatives.
Government is a necessary evil, if only because people disagree on the ideal government. And the state isn't a person who has the prerogative to take money from people and then dispose of it in whatever way. I CAN raise my hand and opine on what is and isn't appropriate use of its confiscated property, as I'm unfortuantely a shareholder in this "business". It takes my money - I rarely approve of how it's spent, but I certainly have some say in what's acceptable.
The hypothetical leaves-for-water trading you and your neighbor do is actually not my business. (As long as your neighbor isn't mentally handicapped and being taken advantage of an "invalid contract" type situation - sorry, I'm terrible with metaphors.)
We are subsidizing public education currently. Would subsidizing catholic schools be WORSE than subsidizing public education.
My answer after the last few years is emphatically no. Public education didn't even remain open. Catholic schools did.
That would only be true if we didn't already subsidize public education. By doing so, we incentivize people against Christian Schooling and effectively support (or "establish?") non-religion over religion.