Liberalism and Religion

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
>
>Nathan wrote:
>>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.
>
>-Why apply this argument only to religions?  Surely, there are many
>-constituencies (e.g., poor feminist families, poor GLBT families,
>-poor black nationalist families, poor white supremacist families,
>-etc., at all points of the socio-political spectrum) that find
>-current public schools ideologically repugnant but manage to live
>-with them.
>
>It's coercive for them as well, which is one reason why many urban areas
>have been quite attracted to vouchers as a way to escape racist schools that
>track their kids into mediocrity rather than providing decent education.  We
>have radical segregation in our society by suburbanization between our
>schools.
>
>The religious folks are the loudest but there are a range of interesting
>folks supporting vouchers.  And where a majority of folks have supported
>them, why is it the Supreme Court's role to overrule that majority will to
>experiment with vouchers.
>
>I have mxed feelings on such vouchers but I have no mixed feelings on the
>role of the Court.  They should butt out.
>
>--- Nathan Newman

"Separate and unequal" schools can't be remedied by experimenting 
with vouchers and charter schools.  They can be only reformed to some 
degree by abolishing the system of funding schools based upon local 
property taxes and (more importantly) by redistributing wealth from 
the rich to the poor.
-- 
Yoshie

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