Vouchers are a Liberal Entitlement Program

Last night, I was thinking about many things. One of them was to revisit my post from early summer about vouchers being liberal. However, Hiram Bertoch did it for me Bold added by me):

All this talk of vouchers in Utah has got me thinking. Why are Republicans pushing such a liberal agenda?

I am a Republican, and support free markets. I believe that in this case, free markets already exist. Free markets mean that business men and women have the right to open a business, and consumers have the right to give them their business. It does not mean that the government gets involved, in order to subsidize the business, or to regulate it. Subsidies and regulation almost always increase prices, and lead to a system failing. This is not a conservative view, it is far more socialistic.

It is somewhat odd to me that Republicans have taken such a liberal view point on this issue. I agree that schools should not be regulated by government, they should be regulated by local school boards, made up of parents. I don”t believe the solution is to create another entitlement program, but rather to solve the actual problem, in decentralizing education, namely, in closing the national department of education, and in taking power from the state school board, and giving more to local school boards.

I had a conversation with my extremely conservative cousin (who probably supports vouchers) back in June when the conversation rolled around to free school lunch for poor kids.

"Oh, so school lunch is an entitlement program now?"

Yes, folks. It's OK to give rich kids money to do what they were going to do anyway, but poor kids that can't afford to eat are just S.O.L.

-Bob