The states, said Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, are America’s “laboratories of democracy.” Today’s red-state Republicans see them differently — as staging grounds for cultural revolution.
Despite polls showing that most Americans favor legal abortion, 15 Republican-controlled states have passed laws depriving women of their reproductive rights. They are also targeting the nation’s public schools.
So far this year, 10 red states have enacted laws expanding school vouchers and similar subsidies to private schools. Arizona, Iowa, Utah, Oklahoma and Florida have gone farther, passing “universal voucher” bills that allow even the wealthiest families to collect public dollars for private schooling.
Republican support for vouchers isn’t new, of course. In the past, however, conservatives at least pretended to be concerned about low-income and minority parents whose children are trapped in bad urban schools. Now it’s clear their idea of “school choice” is to give all U.S. families with children financial incentives to exit public schools.
