Anti-Climacus

MY ADOPTEE: It's clear that Matthew Yglesias has half an argument here, which is your basic On Civil Government or Letter Concerning Toleration argument that the functions of the state and of religion ought to be separated (and as the former instance of that argument was made by Martin Luther, I tend to think it carries some weight). But:

"Your freedom of religion extends to you, not to your ability to exercize your will over others."

True insomuch as we are social actors. But Matt's blurring a distinction here, because people are also political actors, and being asked to check your values at the door when it comes to public policy, candidates, or lobbying for laws is not only silly, it runs fundamentally against an organizing principle in American politics. If I honestly believe that, say, school prayer is an issue that demands a law be made concerning it, and can find enough people to support it, vote for candidates who will proposes and vote for it, and justices who think it's kosher with the Constitution, what harm has been done to the democratic process? Has it not, rather, been fufilled?

"So why is it so commonly thought that parents should have some kind of "right" to indoctrinate their children in the way they see fit? Why is that preferable to state coersion?"

Well, in this instance, I think it's the argument of in loco parentis, in the literal sense: if the mother and father of any particular child will bear (in addition to the obvious moral burden) legal responsibility for keeping their child out of legal trouble, then they should have the right to acheive that end by whatever means seem best to them. But I'm also not a lawyer, so I could really be wrong on this.