>Since when is failing to fund something the same thing as trying to
suppress
>it? Is the government trsying to suppress my work in analytical legal
theory
>because it does not subsidize that work?
Taxes are not per se coercive, but there is something coercive in mandating that children go to school, but only providing money for non-religious schools, thereby forcing poor religious families to send their children to places they find ideologically repugnant.
But the bigger coercion is taking the whole issue out of democratic debate through the court system. The coercion of liberalism is using a minority bastion of power in the courts to override majority will to support religious schools in a number of ways over the years. In that, the establishment clause cases have moved towards both an intolerant and anti-democratic spirit, hardly markers of liberalism in my mind.
-- Nathan Newman