The sheer magnitude of the demand for better public schools was revealed last Wednesday when billionaire philanthropist Ted Forstmann and WalMart heir John Walton revealed that there were 1.2 million applicants for the 40,000 private-school scholarships they are awarding to low-income kids for the coming school year (see "The Million Student March," on page 17).
But for die-hard backers of the public-school establishment, the popularity of such scholarships is not a sign of a deep failure in the education establishment: It's evidence of an evil plot. Consider the remarkably mean-spirited anti-voucher editorial in the April 6 newsletter of the Baptist Joint Committee -- the Washington lobby for many of the nation's Baptist churches (though many conservative Baptists don't support it).
"One's heart goes out to all those who have bought the limited vision of voucher propagandists," writes James M. Dunn, executive director of the committee. "It's not politically correct, nor is it sweet and gentle, to name the demons that drive the push for vouchers. Yet, those darker dimensions can be characterized as: Political -- appeals to cynicism and hopelessness, the worst aspects of our nature. Selfish . . . parochial . . . greedy . . . racist."
And that's not all. According to Dunn, "Most voucher advocates . . . have not thought it through or are thinking too anecdotally. Some folks turned a blind eye to Hitler's grand schemes because the trains ran on time."
So the Washington voice of liberal Baptists equates advocacy of school vouchers to "Hitler's grand schemes"? Remember this the next time someone calls religious conservatives haters.