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by briansmith 6280 days ago
When I said "I am against someone imposing their religion on others--even their own children," I meant exactly what I said and no more. In particular, I didn't say anything about the government policing parents regarding their religious practicies.

I totally support a tax rebate program that could be used for both religious and secular private schools. That way parents do not have to "pay double" to send their kid to private school. But, that is not the effect that the voucher program has, because of our progressive tax system.

1 comments

Interesting. A few things stand out about your view:

You support public financing of education, but only when there is also public delivery of education services.

The objective of public financing of education is economic egalitarianism -- why should a kid not be able to go to school just b/c his parents can't afford it or don't consider it a worthwhile expenditure.

By objecting to some cases of public financing of education (such as vouchers) you seem to think that a kid whose parents are poor or who do not value education should have only one option, public school. I'm curious why you feel the need to limit the choices of the poor kid so much, but not the rich kid -- why shouldn't all parochial schools be banned?

It may be the case that you oppose the public funding of k-12 education. If that's the case, your argument is at least consistent. But you would then need to admit that since most people pay quite different amounts of property taxes, etc., that some deserve a refund and some deserve to have to pay extra even for public school.

As I said in other comments, I support vouchers for most non-parochial private schools.

I am willing to give parents of parochial school students tax rebates as a compromise to make voucher program implementable. Anybody that pays enough in property taxes to have the rebate cover the parochial school tuition can afford to send their kid to parochial school anyway. So, my support for tax rebates is purely tactical/political.