You knew I would feel compelled to respond, Roy. Thus was your nefarious plan . . .
As a legal matter, virtually every American child is, indeed, entitled to taxpayer-funded education as a matter of constitutional right. The U.S. Constitution says nothing about education, most assuredly, but most state constitutions do. North Carolina’s provision has been in place for nearly a century and a half.
As for the underlying argument in favor of a state role in education, I’ll repeat the conservative/libertarian one yet again: guaranteeing a floor of educational investment for each child is part and parcel of adopting the universal franchise as a model for self-government. If everyone is to be a voter, because of the practical and moral problems associated with attempting to exclude citizens from voting on the basis of knowledge or discernment, then funding a certain level of education with tax dollars is akin to financing other aspects of representative government with tax dollars.
That doesn’t mean that the current public-school monpoly is constitutionally required, among other implications. There is also a potential practical objection that state involvement in education, even if limited to scholarship assistance for low-income students, will fail to accomplish its stated purpose or worse. But, yes, there have been plenty of classical liberal thinkers and politicians ? starting with Smith and Jefferson and extending throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, including the likes of Friedman and Hayek ? who believed that a limited government should include among its limited functions, at the state or local level, taxpayer funding of education.
We’ll have to agree to disagree.
