Arguing For Our Freedoms From Different Angles: A Good Thing

A few years ago, I found myself in the unusual situation of watching two political organizations to which I belonged arguing opposite sides in front of the Supreme Court. And I couldn't have been more pleased about it.

The case was Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, in which the Supreme Court was considering the constitutionality of a school voucher program in Cleveland. Attorneys from the Institute for Justice were there to defend the voucher program, while Americans United for Separation of Church and State were there to oppose it.

Why was I pleased? Because both sides were there to argue for our freedoms: the Institute for Justice for the freedom of parents to have a choice about where their children go to school, and Americans United to argue against public funds going to religious schools.

In a country that is supposed to be the paragon of freedom, it shouldn't be as rare as it is to see two sides advocating for different aspects of our liberties. Good stuff would come of more of this type of debate.

Although I still hold Americans United in high regard, I let my membership lapse when I realized the organization is as much concerned with preserving the virtual monopoly of government-run schools as it is with preserving the separation of church and state.

School vouchers would be an imperfect system, but if done right they could lead to higher quality schools than we have today. It's especially critical that we provide more choices for poor kids who are trapped in their poorly-performing neighborhood public school. I've heard the argument that we need to help such poor kids by straightening out all the problems of the public education system, but its unfair to not give them the opportunity to get out of a lousy school immediately. Vouchers are at least worth experimenting with in limited pilot programs.

I am comfortable with the Institute for Justice's argument that, in a voucher system, it is the parents who may choose to send their children to a religious school, so the government has no direct ability to establish religion through a voucher program. I worry more about the opposite scenario where religious fanatics gain control of public school boards, thereby subjecting all the public school students in their district to religious indoctrination. Think Kansas.

Still, I understand and respect anybody who argues that school vouchers are wrong because they funnel public money into religious schools. Perhaps a suitable compromise would be to require any religious school accepting voucher funds to (a) keep secular academic instruction separate from religious instruction and (b) allow any student to skip the religious part of the day.