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One cowers to think what terrible things might happen next when the government is allowed to let parents choose to spend money — which has been given them to spend wherever they wish-well, wherever they wish. As a matter of fact, I spent much of my G.I. Bill money on dates — and some of those girls were deeply religious. It also helped me to attend Pepperdine University, a college affiliated with the Church of Christ. Such an act is interpreted, by the ACLU and others, as "scaling the wall of separation between church and state," a principle enshrined in the ACLU's interpretation of a letter from Thomas Jefferson. No doubt, many of that group's allies believe this wording actually appears in our nation's Founding document. But then, we have been talking about an education crisis for 30 years now. Which is, of course, the real reason the Supreme Court was finally called upon to rule up or down on vouchers, just one of the options offered by the "school choice" movement. The whole reason there is a Cleveland voucher program is the politically correct intellectual ghetto to which the U.S. government has forced Americans to abandon their children. The good news is that the nation's highest court has justified the efforts of the parents, teachers, and concerned citizens in America's hinterlands who still possess enough intellectual chutzpah to perceive not only the problem but also the tragedy of it, and are motivated to sustained action. Unfortunately, for the next few weeks a host of commentators, legal experts, and educrats will keep the public debate focused not on the real issue, but on what has always been a diversionary tactic, and quite a good one, actually — the preposterous idea that "church-state separation" is somehow threatened when people are allowed to escape America's intellectual ghetto. Well, today's decision says that's not true. No more true is it than that the Founding Fathers somehow meant to hermetically seal education in America from the influence of religion; no more true than the idea that America's Founders were worried about church influence on the state rather than the other way around. Today's decision says that when the government gives people a voucher to spend on education and they choose to spend it at a religious school, this no more constitutes government endorsement of religion than spending G.I. Bill money at Pepperdine. The decision is right, notwithstanding the protests of those good citizens who worry that the government may turn around and use the voucher decision as an excuse to come in and regulate private and religious schools. The government may, indeed, try to do this — but few righteous causes would receive any support, much less win any long-term victories — if the threat of unjust consequences cowed them into backing down. If the government decides to take unjust advantage of today's decision, it will simply force the next battle in the war for choice in education. And it will be a dandy. Since 1997, my organization, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, has championed an idea that would avoid this problem: a limited tax credit for public or private-school tuition expenses, and also for individuals and companies that contribute to public or private schools or to scholarship funds. In an EPIC/MRA poll commissioned by the Mackinac Center, just 43 percent of respondents said they would support a voucher program today; yet support for school choice jumped to 67 percent when respondents were asked if they would support a broad education tax credit. One wonders whether it has ever occurred to the guardians of the crisis in education that if all Americans were able to choose which schools their children attend, a matter such as the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance, would never arise. Atheists living in fear of "one nation under God" could send their children to schools where other justifications for right action are detected. Meanwhile, the rest of us could set about the long-overdue business of re-erecting what Richard Weaver called "the toppling walls of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome" that are our intellectual heritage and treasure. — Samuel Walker is a communications specialist with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute based in Midland, Mich. |
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here's no
doubt that the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris
supporting Cleveland's school-voucher program will meet howls of protest
from those who think the government is endorsing religion when parents
choose to use public money to send their children to a private religious
school. 
