ACLU :-(

Topics: Rights, FreeSpeech
21 Sep 1993

From: ervan

As some of you may know, I dropped my membership in the ACLU
a couple of years ago after having been a member for 10 years. They
were moving consistently leftward as I was moving more consistenly
libertarian. The last two straws were their support for hate speech
laws in some cases and trying to apply constituional safeguards to
employer-employee relations.

Today I got a beg letter from them that further confirmed
my decision. The first 'item' says (in part):

[California school voucher initiative] Often euphemistically
called "school choice," the concept was devised originally
to circumvent court-ordered integration. A voucher system
would have the added effect of shifting tax dollars to
support private schools--including religious schools

They went on to characterize it as an assault by the religious right
on the public school system. That's perfectly silly all around.
The characterization is wrong. While the religious kooks are
part of the support, the majority of it comes from people who
are fed up with a failed public schools system. I find it particularly
ironic the letter mentions integration as the thing being avoided,
for several reasons. First, how did integration ever get to be
a civil liberity? Second, forced integration is exactly the thing
that has led (in part) to the degeneration of public schools because
whites fled the city and left it with even less money for its still
segregated schools.

Third, it shows they are more concerned with social goals than
educational goals (okay, that's their job) but exactly that is what
shreds the whole argument. If the purpose of schools is to achieve
purely social manipulation (instead of education) that is just as
surely a violation of freedom of religion as praying in school. Of
course, liberalism is the reigning philosophy of the education
establishment so it does not see it as infringement to impose
the majority point of view. In 1890, protestants did not see it
as an infringement that catholics were forcibly indoctrinated
in their schools either. The bottom line: public education is
inevitably going to run afoul of freedom of religion.

So the argument that vouchers support religion and therefore should be
unconstituional (or, at least, unconscionable) is absurd because that
is already what the public schools do. Whether or not vouchers
actually support religion is a dubious claim in its own right. Does
allowing someone to spend their foodstamps at a kosher grocery violate
freedom of religion? Nope. Does allowing parents to buy (voucher
subsidized) education at a religious schools violate freedom of
religion? If so, only in the most indirect and circumstantial sort of
way. In any case, it would be a strict improvement on the current
situation.

The pragmatics are wrong too (I mean the pragmatics of achieving
more rights, not necessarily economic efficiency). The current
situation is that public schools do not teach evolution (for
instance) in order to avoid political unrest, court decisions
not withstanding. With private schools, while some would be
creationist, the rest would be freed from the political process
and could teach evolution. Thus, vouchers would allow everyone
to win.

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