ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 8, 1996 TAG: 9611080044
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-17 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TIMOTHY LAMER
NO ISSUE unites the right as school choice does. The religious right, neocons, culturecons, supply-siders, and libertarians all argue that vouchers will unleash market forces and break the iron grip of the National Education Association. Many on the right also see school choice as a means to promote moral and religious education.
But is publicly funded school choice really conservative? In arguing for vouchers, many of my brethren on the right sound a lot like liberals. Some examples:
* The Egalitarian Argument. James K. Glassman makes this common argument in a Washington Post column: ``But there's the matter of justice too. Chelsea Clinton's parents can choose the best school for their child. Why can't the parents of the poorest kids on the most dilapidated, drug-infested block in Washington, Los Angeles or Newark?''
Well, from that point of view, does justice demand that the government provide poor families the same choices rich families have in, say, health care? Conservatives have long argued that inequality is a fact of life and that when governments try to do something about it, they end up harming everyone; that instead of building up the poor, they tear down the wealthy and middle class.
Could vouchers harm private schools instead of helping public schools? Conservatives who usually make such arguments against misguided egalitarianism should at least consider the possibility.
* The Right-to-a-Subsidy Argument. The Heritage Foundation's Dennis P. Doyle and Fordham University's Bruce C. Cooper recently argued that without school choice, poor children's religious liberties are being violated. In other words, the Constitution obliges taxpayers to send poor children to religious schools if their parents so choose. ``The First Amendment clearly proscribes the establishment of a state church,'' they write. ``But it also guarantees the `free exercise' of religion.''
``Poor children - compelled by economic necessity to attend government schools - are denied the opportunity to freely exercise their religious beliefs within a school setting,'' they maintain.
This argument - that First Amendment guarantees are not rights protected against government intrusion, but entitlements produced by government spending - is normally employed by extreme liberals, not Heritage Foundation fellows. Do Doyle and Cooper think the government should have to buy printing presses for poor people so they can exercise their freedom of the press? Do they agree with liberals that artists supported by the National Endowment for the Arts have a First Amendment ``right'' to a federal subsidy? Poor people have the right to freely exercise their religion, but they don't have a right to do it with other people's money.
* The Every-Other-Civilized-Country-Does-It Argument. Doyle in the American Enterprise writes, ``In the Netherlands, for example, 70 percent of children attend denominational schools at public expense,'' and ``America is the only civilized country in the world that does not support religious elementary and secondary schools'' with government funds.
Liberals often argue that every other civilized country has high tax rates, statist health care and so forth; therefore the United States should too. Conservatives usually retort that America's unparalleled prosperity is a result of our relative lack of government interference in the economy. We point out that if this country had French-style economic policies it would also have French levels of unemployment.
A similar argument could be made against Doyle. Why is the United States more religious, relatively speaking, than the countries he holds up as models? Perhaps because keeping church and state separate has served to strengthen religion in America.
* The Just-Like-Pell-Grants Argument. On his show on the conservative NET channel, Dan Mitchell of the Heritage Foundation recently condemned the ACLU's opposition to school choice: ``What's their rationale? Well, [they say] this is a subsidy to a religious school. Well, now, hold on a second. You have students attending Brigham Young University, Notre Dame University, all sorts of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish - all sorts of religious colleges - with Pell Grants and student loans from the federal government.'' Bob Dole said the vouchers in his school-choice proposal would be ``like Pell Grants.''
If vouchers are like Pell Grants, does that mean they will wildly inflate tuitions at private schools, as Pell Grants and student loans have done at colleges and universities? Will school choice become a sacred-cow program that grows every year and that Republicans can cut only at a steep political price, as Pell Grants and student loans have become? Will vouchers be used by liberals as an excuse to regulate private schools, as student aid has been used to regulate higher education? Shouldn't conservatives be at least a little worried that if vouchers are ``like Pell Grants,'' they just might bear the same sour fruit?
Some on the right (including me) are leery of school choice. For one thing, it looks an awful lot like taxing citizens to advance religious teachings with which they disagree, a type of coercion that should be especially distasteful to religious citizens. And a heavy burden of proof is on those who claim, against the weight of history, that government money can come without government strings attached.
Fears about school choice may turn out to be unwarranted, but the liberal arguments some conservatives use to advance vouchers aren't reassuring.
Timothy Lamer is director of the Free Market Project at the Media Research Center, a conservative media-monitoring organization.
- The Washington Post
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