Ramesh — I am for school choice on principle, as a taxpayer, and as a parent with three kids in a religious school. And I am no defender of Huckabee. BUT — the problem of “strings attached” when a school accepts government money is a real one. The government cannot be trusted, no matter who is President, to keep political correctness and all sorts of ideology and various requirements out of schools when it pays the bills.

At the same time, stipulating that no strings be attached is not really a good option in our increasingly diverse — or is it fragmented? — nation. Those lovely Saudi-funded madrassahs — which teach a pretty virulent strain of un-American, anti-west, anti-modernity doctrine, are a real problem. The communitarian in me says that what they teach is too deeply problematic, especially when we are engaged in a multi-decade war on Islamofacism, to tolerate. And yet, if you send your kids to Catholic school, and I send mine to a Jewish school, we will have a very hard time arguing against funding those who wish to send theirs to the madrassah. You know how powerful the “rights” doctrine is. A decade ago we were still worrying about inner city Afro-centric academies, which did not seem to be preparing children for life as Americans.

If we are going to require education, as a democracy must, then we also need a mechanism to keep some control on the content of that education. And yet, if we allow too many strings with our vouchers, all sorts of things one disapproves of — from Heather’s two mommies to condoms in the middle school bathrooms — will creep in. So, we have a real dilemna — and i have yet to hear a serious resolution of it. Nor do I see how market forces will solve this one.