Dead Cant Rant

I meant to put this up last week. Thursday before last the San Antonio Express-News published an anti-school voucher letter that accused the Texas legislators as a bloc of conspiring to undermine the public school system and scheming to run schools “like a business” because “they only care about profits”. No effort was made to explain how legislators would profit from providing vouchers to inner-city children.

His letter reflects the dearly-held belief by many on the Left that their position is automatically inherently moral, and therefore all opposition is not merely wrong on policy grounds but is inherently immoral and even evil in nature. This explains the seething hatred of the right by many on the left.

My response to the letter directly challenged the author’s world view. The paper published it a few days later.

Opponents, not enemies

In Thursday’s letter “Funding a joke,” Tyler Smurr attacks the Texas Legislature for daring to support school vouchers.

But instead of attacking them on the merits of their proposal, he instead resorts to the cheap shot, writing, “They don’t care about the children of this state.”

In Smurr’s distorted view of the cosmos, there is only one possible right answer — his — and all others by necessity cannot reflect an honest disagreement over real issues (in this case, perceived social benefit versus personal freedom of choice) but instead must reflect the inherent evil of his opponent.

Such self-aggrandizing rhetoric is certainly entertaining but serves no purpose other than to make the author feel good about himself, facts be damned.

I have no doubt he has the best interests of the children at heart. I just wish he would get over his own infantile ego and extend the same courtesy to the opposing view.

More information on vouchers:

American schools are failing because they are organized according to a bureaucratic, monopolistic model. A school voucher of $3,000 per student per year would give more families the option of sending their children to non-government schools. However, many people believe that such a small amount could not possibly cover tuition at a private school; they may be thinking of such costly schools as Dalton, Andover, and Exeter and concluding that all private schools cost in excess of $10,000 a year.

In fact, Education Department figures show that the average private elementary school tuition in America is less than $2,500. The average tuition for all private schools, elementary and secondary, is $3,116, or less than half of the cost per pupil in the average public school, $6,857. A survey of private schools in Indianapolis, Jersey City, San Francisco, and Atlanta shows that there are many options available to families with $3,000 to spend on a child’s education. Even more options would no doubt appear if all parents were armed with $3,000 vouchers.

Source: What Would A School Voucher Buy? The Real Cost Of Private Schools (Cato Institute)

“Education used to be the poor child’s ticket out of the slums. Now it’s part of the system that traps people in the underclass.”

Source: Baltimore’s Mayor in a speech to the Manhattan Institute