John Kirtley's comments

With his permission, I'm sharing John Kirtley's thoughts on vouchers:

 

Regarding those who object on separation of church and state, ask them if they object to the GI Bill. Veterans have been using them to go to faith based colleges for years, and even use them to study become priests. If they respond, “well, young minds are more impressionable than college kids”, they’ve just lost the argument. Their objection was taxpayer support of faith based institutions, period—not whether some standard should be used to judge when that support is OK.

And, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school choice programs do not violate the federal constitution.

In 1998 I attended a CATO Institute dinner in Phoenix where Nadine Strosser, the head of the ACLU was the speaker. This was before the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. During Q&A, I had the following exchange with her:

Me:                   You have sued to block every K-12 school choice program in the country.

Strosser:           Yes, they are a blatant violation the separation of church and state.          

Me:                   OK, reasonable people can disagree on that. But tell me this: why have you never sued to strike down the GI Bill. In this program veterans use taxpayer funds at schools that are intensely faith based, and even use them to study to become priests.

Strosser:           Well, we just have to pick our battles.

Me:                   You are a hypocrite.

She had no response. That’s because there isn’t one.