Plato's Republic

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Thu Jun 20 11:58:03 PDT 2002



> > Coercion is the very essence of law....that is the entire point of
> >Dworkin's work: how does a liberla society one justify coersion?
>
>-The point about liberalism is that you don't use coercion to enforce
>-contested views about fundamentals: that's why head scarves are protected.
>
>So how do you feel about public school vouchers?

I'm agin' 'em.

>
>So should a truly liberal state allow parents to educate their children
>free
>from coercion, including economic coercion, by providing vouchers for
>education as they see fit?

Remind me why should pay for Mary Elizabeth's Catholic education? There's a tradeoff of coercion here. Sure, we require ME to go to school, meaning we send the truant officer after her if she doesn't. That's coercion. But if I pay taxes that are spent by her parents on vouchers for a Catholic school, that's backed by coercion too. So we have to choose here, and on balance IO think the liberal choice is to keep the state out of the church.

But look, you can go on with this too much. There are hard choices for liberals. That doesn't mean liberalism is a hard choice. Least of all of you, fellow lib!

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