Tax Credits and the Separation Issue

The state, religion and the U.S. Supreme Court
by Linda Stamato and Sanford M. Jaffe

"The First Amendment’s establishment clause, meant to protect religion against any intrusion by the state or, to put it another way, to ban government from the establishment of religion, has stood, despite challenges, until this decision, which allows the use of tax credits to pay for religious school tuition. Not, by the way, because the court had a close look at what the state of Arizona in this case was doing — aiding religious schools — but saying it didn’t have to look at that issue because those who were bringing the case had no standing to challenge it."

Why didn't "those who were bringing the case [have] no standing to challenge it"?

Today’s landmark decision [Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn] declared that the plaintiffs in the case lack standing to bring the challenge in the first instance because the program is funded by private contributions, not government funds.

“When Arizona taxpayers choose to contribute to [School Tuition Organizations], they spend their own money, not money the State has collected from respondents or from other taxpayers,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, for the 5-4 majority. “While the State, at the outset, affords the opportunity to create and contribute to [a School Tuition Organization], the tax credit system is implemented by private action and with no state intervention. Objecting taxpayers know that their fellow citizens, not the State, decide to contribute and in fact make the contribution.”

“Like contributions that lead to charitable tax deductions, contributions yielding [School Tuition Organization] tax credits are not owed to the State and, in fact, pass directly from taxpayers to private organizations. Respondents’ contrary position assumes that income should be treated as if it were government property even if it has not come into the tax collector’s hands. That premise finds no basis in standing jurisprudence,” continued Kennedy. (U.S. Supreme Court Dismisses Legal Challenge to Arizona School Choice Program)

It comes down to two fundamentally different views of concerning the relationship between the state and the individual - i.e., collectivism vs. individualism. The authors acknowledge this conflict, saying "It came down to determining whether the granting of a tax credit is the functional equivalent of collecting and spending tax money".

For their part, the court minority opinion holds:

[A]ssume a state wishes to subsidize the ownership of crucifixes in one of three ways. It could purchase them in bulk and distribute them; it could reimburse buyers with a check; or it could pay with a tax credit. ... Now, really — do taxpayers have less reason to complain if the state selects the last of these three options?

I've left the following comments:

zemack April 30, 2011 at 8:20AM

On tax credits, the authors are easily refuted on the facts. Who is "the tax payer"? It's the person who earned it. A person earns $100. He decides to take advantage of an education tax credit program. He spends it according to his own judgement. His tax liability is thus reduced by $100. He is simply not sending it to the government. No other taxpayer is involved. In the case of education tax credits, money spent on education doesn't change. What changes is who decides how it is spent. Follow the money: private taxpayer to private institution. The government is out of the loop. In what way are “the taxpayers” or the government subsidizing religion? They are not. Every dollar in question involves only the taxpayer that earned it.

There are two broader issues involved here, though. First, does the citizen’s life belong to the state, or is the state the servant of the citizens? Who has first claim on the nation’s earnings, and first responsibility for the education of the child? Is it those who earned the money, and those who brought the child into the world? Or, is it the state. The authors argue for the state, and thus support a totalitarian concept. That is the root of their position.

The second issue involves the church/state issue. Here, the authors are 100% correct. People have an unalienable right to their religious beliefs, including the right to believe in and practice no religion at all. Any tax funding of religion is a threat to that freedom. The corollary is that no one should be forced to support, through their taxes, religious ideas they may or may not agree with. The separation doctrine protects religion from government, and us from religion. Fair enough, and I concur.

So, why should I be forced to support, through my taxes, educational ideas that I may or may not agree with, or that “offend” me? I abhor the collectivist theories of John Dewey, which dominates modern progressive education. I believe in the individualist educational and epistemological philosophies of Maria Montessori and Ayn Rand. Why should I be forced to pay for Dewey? And why should I be forced to pay for the education of other people’s children, any more than be forced to pay for the religious training of those same children?

When government controls education, it controls what is taught and how it is taught. It controls the flow of ideas. The very convincing arguments in favor of the separation of church and state, clearly articulated by the authors, apply equally to education generally. Phasing out and abolishing the government-run public schools – i.e., the separation of school and state – follows logically from the church/state issue. The ultimate answer to the tax credit issue is to abolish education taxes altogether.

On Obama's Christian Strategy

Conciliatory Fighting Words, by E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post, writing on President Obama's recent commencement address at Notre Dame University

My Commentary:

Zemack wrote:
President Obama’s political strategy is clear, a philosophical masterstroke, and devastating for capitalism and freedom. His grand strategy for remaking America into a nation ruled by the collective should be obvious to anyone who understands the power of ideas and of morality.

But to advocate socialism openly and honestly is and always has been a loser in America. After the tyranny, wars, and unprecedented mass murder wrought by the socialist regimes of Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Red China, and the many smaller variants of the 20th century, socialism is dead as an intellectual force. Notice how Obama and the American Left run from the socialist label as from the plague, despite the obvious socialist (albeit through the fascist back door) underpinnings of their agenda. How, then, to pursue a socialist agenda in America?

Enter what one might call Obama’s “Christian Strategy”. The President, a philosophically astute man (unlike most of his GOP rivals), is and has been attempting to forge an alliance with Christianity based upon a common moral foundation…altruism. Unlike socialism, religion is a live and growing force in America, and Christianity is the dominant religion. Since socialism and Christianity share the same ethical premise…that the good consists of living for others or putting others above self…Obama’s brilliant strategy is to hitch his socialist agenda to Judeo-Christian ethics.

America was founded on the opposite ethical principle, though those principles were never explicitly defined until the 20th century. The Founding Fathers created a nation based upon the supreme value of the individual possessing the unalienable rights to his own life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. They rejected the tribal view that man must live for others (i.e., the collective). But it was philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand who comprehensively defined the philosophical underpinnings for the American Revolution. Through her classic novels The Fountainhead and especially Atlas Shrugged…and through her philosophy of Objectivism…she presents the moral case for the American Revolution and capitalism.

It is only Ayn Rand who provides the vital intellectual ammunition to counter the accelerating collectivist trend in America, and thus save our individual freedom, because she can defend the individual’s right to exist for his own sake…and prove it. She offers the anti-dote to the doctrine that “we are all our brother’s keepers”, the moral root of Obama’s policies and the root of all variants of socialism. If Obama is to be stopped, Capitalism must be discovered. For Capitalism to be discovered, our Founding principles must be rediscovered and fully understood. For our Founding principles to be fully understood, Ayn Rand and Objectivism must be discovered and embraced.

The President is right that we are at “a rare inflection point in history”. He intends to steer America away from its Founding ideals by hitching his car to the engine of Christianity. It remains to be seen how successful he will be. But Obama understands fully that morality is the key to the direction America will take. It’s time that Capitalism’s defenders understood that, too.

Commentary 44-Parker on Warren Interview

A public forum in a religious context has no place in politics

Kathleen Parker | Washington Post Writer's Group
August 21, 2008

At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong.

It is also un-American.

For the past several days, since mega-pastor Rick Warren interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain at his Saddleback Church, most political debate has focused on who won.

Was it the nuanced, thoughtful Obama, who may have convinced a few more skeptics that he isn't a Muslim? Or was it the direct, confident McCain, who breezes through town hall-style meetings the way Obama sinks three-pointers from the back court?

Suffice it to say, each of the candidates' usual supporters felt validated in their choices. McCain convinced and comforted with characteristic certitude those most at ease with certitude; Obama convinced and comforted with his characteristic intellectual ambivalence those most at ease with ambivalence.

The winner, of course, was Warren, who has managed to position himself as political arbiter in a nation founded on the separation of church and state.

The loser was America.

In his enormously successful book, The Purpose-Driven Life, Warren begins: "It's not about you." Agreed. And this criticism is not aimed at Christians, evangelicals, other believers or nonbelievers -- or at Warren, who is a good man with an exemplary record of selfless works. Few have walked the walk with as much determination or success.

This is about higher principles that are compromised every time we pretend we're not applying a religious test when we're really applying a religious test.

It is true that no one was forced to participate in the Saddleback Forum and that both McCain and Obama are free agents. Warren certainly has a right to invite whomever he wishes to his church and to ask them whatever they're willing to answer.

His format and questions were interesting and the answers more revealing than the usual debate menu provides. But does it not seem just a little bit odd to have McCain and Obama chatting individually with a preacher in a public forum about their positions on evil and their relationship with Jesus Christ?

The past few decades of public confession and Oprah-style therapy have prepared us perfectly for a televangelist probing politicians about their moral failings. The Warren Q&A wasn't an inquisition exactly, but viewers would be justified in squirming.

What is the right answer, after all? What happens to the one who gets evil wrong? What's a proper relationship with Jesus? What's next? Interrogations by rabbis, priests and imams? What candidate would dare decline on the basis of mere principle?

Both Obama and McCain gave "good" answers, but that's not the point. They shouldn't have been asked. Is the American electorate now better prepared to cast votes knowing that Obama believes that "Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him," or that McCain feels that he is "saved and forgiven"?

What does that mean, anyway? What does it prove? Nothing except that these men are willing to say whatever they must -- and what most Americans personally think is no one's business -- to win the highest office.

Warren tried to defuse criticism about staging the interviews in his church by saying that though "we" believe in the separation of church and state, "we" don't believe in the separation of faith and politics. Faith, he said, "is just a worldview, and everybody has some kind of worldview. It's important to know what they are."

Presumably "we" refers to Warren's church of fellow evangelicals. And while, yes, everybody has some kind of worldview, it shouldn't be necessary in a pluralistic nation of secular laws to publicly define that view in Christian code.

For the moment, let's set aside our curiosity about what Jesus might do in a given circumstance and wonder what our founding fathers would have done at Saddleback Church. What would have happened to Thomas Jefferson if he had responded as he wrote in 1781:

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are 20 gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Would the crowd at Saddleback have applauded and nodded through that one? Doubtful.

By today's new standard of pulpits in the public square, Jefferson -- the great advocate for religious freedom in America -- would have lost.



My Commentary:

We’ve come a long way since 1960, when JFK jumped through hoops to assure the nation that his Catholicism would not influence him in his capacity as president, thus re-affirming his commitment to church-state separation. Had Kennedy engaged in a Warren-type public interview with his priest, he would have been soundly defeated. We’ve come a long way indeed…in the wrong direction. Today we have a president who openly declares that America’s foreign policies are guided by his Christian beliefs.

That both 2008 major party candidates have agreed to this discussion with the influencial evangelical pastor Rick Warren highlights the growing cultural and political power of religion in America. Perhaps most significantly, Obama's presence here, as well as his previously announced support for so-called "faith-based initiatives," may signal the breakdown of the Left's commitment to preserving the wall of separation (one of the few areas of agreement, albeit a major one, that I have with them).

Kathleen Parker has hit a walk-off homerun here. To understand what the "wall" protects us from, one need only consider the consequences of the failure of the Founders to build a wall of separation between economics and state. America is no longer a free, capitalist nation, but a semi-free mixed economy, where an explosion of economic pressure groups battle for control of the government's ever-widening power over production, trade and commerce. Each is attempting to gain some economic advantage over all others by legislative force. The result is an ever-more-powerful state, and steadily shrinking individual freedom, in the field of economics.

Imagine now an explosion of religious pressure groups. Considering the fact that religious beliefs are based on faith, rather than reason, the consequences would be far graver than in the field of economics. At least economic pressure groups are open to rational argumentation. Religious groups would not be, having abandoned reason for faith. Religious beliefs, in essence, amount to-“It is so, because I say it is”. The Founders understood this, and explicitly disconnected religion from political power. A re-connection would lead to the same kind of bloodless civil war of pressure groups as in the economic realm, with religious factions fighting to impose their own particular creed on everyone else. The big loser, again, would be the individual and his rights.

Just as the endless array of economic special interests can now, to paraphrase Jefferson, "pick your pocket and break your leg," so to would the new array of religious pressure groups. Just as the state's growing taxing and regulatory power led to our dwindling economic freedom, so to would the state's growing power in the field of religion lead to an end to freedom in the field of ideas. An end to the "wall" would mean an end to the First Amendment, including religious freedom, which includes the right to hold no religious beliefs at all.

The Religious Right...i.e., political Christianity...is at least as great a threat to freedom in America as is the socialist left. Both lead to the same end- dictatorship.

I heartily applaud Ms. Parker's perceptive and insightful analysis of the Rick Warren interview.

Christianity and Socialism

Choosing a candidate isn't a single issue decision for bishops

Posted by John J. Myers March 04, 2008 10:42PM
Categories: Hot Topics, Politics
In an op ed essay on Monday, Joe Feuerherd, a former reporter for the National Catholic Reporter, argued that the nation's bishops are warning Catholics that they risk their salvation if they vote for the wrong candidate. And, he said, the bishops always seem to make opposition to abortion thelitmus test, almost to the exclusion of all other issues.

Today, knee-deep into election hype-steria, I am beginning to see an unfortunate repeat of the events of 2000 and 2004, when pundits, politicians, media in even some candidates for office sought to paint the Catholic bishops as bad guys manipulating parishioners into voting for a particular candidate based on one issue alone.


Already, commentators are pointing to a document from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops - "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship" - as reason to claim that the Catholic Church is a one-issue only political interest group.

That simply is not true.

Over the past 30 years, every version of Faithful Citizenship has focused on the full spectrum of the church's concern for the problems and challenges of living in society today. At the center of this spectrum is the commitment to the sanctity and dignity of every human life - the only natural center from which to proceed. The church calls for Catholics to look at the "tough issues." The church has never issued a guide urging people to vote for one party or another, or one particular candidate.

With Faithful Citizenship, the bishops call on America's Catholic voters to judge issues and the candidates in the light of the transcendent truths of right and justice. The current version, finalized in November 2007, is explicit in this teaching:

"What faith teaches about the dignity of the human person and about the sacredness of every human life helps us see more clearly the same truths that also come to us through the gift of human reason. Because we are people of both faith and reason, it is appropriate and necessary for us to bring this essential truth about human life and dignity to the public square. We are called to practice Christ's commandment to 'love one another' (Jn. 113:34) and to protect the lives and dignity of all, especially the weak, the vulnerable, the voiceless."

Not convinced? Still think that the church is trying to slant people only to the abortion issue? How about this?

The Catholic bishops have spoken out against the war in Iraq, and called on the US government to begin to transition that country toward peace. They have called on the legislative and executive branches of our government to find a permanent and solid solution to adequate health care for the poor. They seek fair living wages for all workers and for access to decent affordable housing. They seek an end to the death penalty, racism and torture - acts that never can be justified. It's all in Faithful Citizenship.

Here in New Jersey, the Catholic bishops have been instrumental in helping to abolish the death penalty, in calling for adequate healthcare funding for the poor and affordable housing, in calling for access to quality education for the poor, for justice for victims of the modern-day slavery of human trafficking, and for immigration reform. Again, Faithful Citizenship echoes these themes.

If there is a one-issue focus at work here, it is this: all human life matters.

Too often, politics is a contest of powerful interests, partisan attacks, and nano-messages. Through Faithful Citizenship, the bishops call for a different kind of examination: one shaped by moral convictions of well-formed consciences and focused on the dignity of every human being, protection of the weak and vulnerable, and the common good.

That is an agenda that transcends political parties and campaign promises.

I have a problem with pundits, candidates and even the average person in the street bristling when a bishop speaks about the need for Catholics to make decisions about political issues based on the centrality of the dignity of human life. Political parties censure their members all the time for not toeing the line. The members comply and no one complains. But when a bishop reminds Catholics to reach back into their faith when deciding issues, or accepting the responsibility of public life, the clamor of false indignation is deafening.

What am I looking for? The same thing that every solid American citizen should be looking for. I seek a candidate who knows that every one of us alive today began life on a very elementary nature, and understands that all future rights to which each of us is entitled wouldn't mean a thing if this life were not allowed to develop.

I seek a candidate who is dedicated to nurturing a person's opportunity for growth from the moment of conception through birth, early childhood, education, years in the workforce, retirement, final years and natural passing.

I am looking for a candidate who will work to ensure that we do not accept short-term answers to problems, or quick fixes, or solutions that sweep problems under the rug and out of sight. Such expedient measures are done at a cost to human life and dignity.

Rather than damn the bishops, as some critics would, for "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship," I urge everyone - Catholics and non-Catholics alike - to read the document and learn for themselves that it is an insightful and responsible challenge to look for the higher values in political life today.

Isn't this what America is all about?

John J. Myers is the archbishop of the Newark Archdiocese.


My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 03/11/08 at 4:25PM
Joe Feuerherd, in his February 24, 2004 article, condemns the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for their "right-wing lurch." He then calls for "Universal Healthcare" and "social justice" ( a euphemism for coercive government exploitation of the productive members of society)." But on these issues, at least, Mr. Feuerherd and Mr. Myers are on the same page.

Mr. Myers calls on us to respect "the dignity of the human person and...the sacredness of every human life." Then he calls for "fair living wages for all workers and for access to decent affordable housing...[and] adequate healthcare funding for the poor and affordable housing,...[and] access to quality education for the poor."

How will these goals be attained? By the same means employed by every "humanitarian" who seeks to practice "charity" with other peoples tax money...by brute, physical force. Or, to use Mr. Myers' more polite terminology, through "the legislative and executive branches of our government."

What about the "dignity" of the job-producing businessman who will be compelled to pay his employees more than they are worth to him? Or the "dignity" of the low-skilled worker who will find himself priced out of a job? Or the "dignity" of the young entry-level worker who finds the economic ladder closed to him because the lower rungs have been kicked out by arbitrary, coercive government "living wage" edicts?

What about the "dignity" of all those who would be trapped into dependence on government, at the expense of the violation of the rights of their fellow citizens?

And what about the "dignity" of the self-reliant, productive citizens at all income levels who have provided for their own welfare by their own efforts only to see their earnings drained away for the unearned benefit of others through the legalized theft of income redistributionist "government funding" (an injustice that should be eliminated, not expanded)?

Mr. Myers' sop to "human reason" and "moral convictions" is a veneer. Reason and morality end when force, governmental or otherwise, becomes the means to any end. To call for an end to war, only to advocate the use of force by the "legislative and executive branches of our government" against its own citizens is, to be polite, a profound contradiction in one's "moral convictions". To talk of the "dignity of every human being" rings hollow to someone forced into "modern-day slavery" for the sake of "the weak, the vulnerable, the voiceless". All to be accomplished in the name of "the common good"...that sinister historical siren song of all those who seek forcible domination over the lives, property, and productive work of others.

There is no "different kind of examination" here. Mr. Myers, the Bishops, and their "Faithful Citizenship" agenda do not transcend politics. It is an alignment with the political Left...a tired old call for the tyranny of Socialism, the political system that turns everyone into either a slave or a moocher...or both. There is no dignity for the human being that has been stripped of his individual rights.

There is only one social system that is truly based on "the commitment to the sanctity and dignity of every human life", Capitalism (which does not exist in America today). It is the only system based on the individual's inalienable right to his life, and the derivative rights to his liberty, property, and the pursuit of his own welfare and happiness. It is the only system whose government is limited to the protection, not violation, of those rights of not only the "weak and vulnerable", but of all people...the able, the talented, the intelligent, the inventive, the productive, i.e., the life-givers... the strong and successful. It is the only system that protects men from exploitation by power-lusters and seekers of the unearned by banishing all use of physical force in human relationships, except in self-defense. As a consequence, it is the only social system that establishes the necessary conditions required to lift people out of poverty (and into a life of prosperity and dignity)...the freedom to engage in mutually advantageous production and trade.

If the bishops were truly committed to "the sanctity and dignity of every human life", it would embrace Capitalism, renounce the use of force by "the legislative and executive branches of our government", and leave care of the "the weak, the vulnerable, the voiceless"...i.e.,the truly helpless needy of which the bishops claim to champion... to the domain of voluntary, uncoerced charity.

Commentary 1

Morality or economics?
Posted by Terry Golway November 07, 2007 8:43AM
Categories: Politics
I wouldn't be so quick to view the failure of the stem-cell bond question as a referendum on the state's finances. That's how it's being played in the media today, but I think it's a rush to judgment.

As Professor Joseph Marbach of Seton Hall University points out in today's Star-Ledger, lots of church-going voters went to the polls thinking not about the state's debt, but about the morality of stem-cell research.

Most political observers, I would argue, fail to take into account the many conversations that took place in and around houses of worship before Election Day. Professor Marbach noted that some voters may have been influenced by clergy who oppose stem cell research, or who believe that such research requires a broader discussion of ethical implications.

I think he's absolutely right.

And, by the way, there's nothing wrong that that. When the sacred intersects with the secular, clerics have every right to speak up from the pulpit.

But I found that people who complain about this mix of church and state generally are inconsistent in their concerns. Conservatives were aghast two decades ago when many clergy in the U.S. supported the nuclear freeze movement, and when American Catholic bishops called for more affordable housing and cuts to defense spending.

Liberals welcomed the clergy's support. But when today's clerics denounce abortion or gay marriage or stem cell research, liberals invariably raise the issue of church-state separation. In general, I've found, political activists welcome clerical support but turn into strict constructionists when clergy oppose their views.

Stem cell research is not just another political issue. For many people of faith, the issue is loaded with moral and ethical implications that have yet to be resolved. To see the bond question's failure in strictly political terms is to be blind to the concerns of voters who weren't thinking of the state's grim finances. They were concerned about ethics and morality -- issues that are not necessarily associated with politics and government these days.

There's no question that stem cell research holds a great deal of promise. But it may be that the state's voters want to hear more about how the research will be conducted, and less about how they will pay for the research.




My Commentary:


Zemack on 11/09/07 at 4:52PM
I agree that the state's fiscal problems is unlikely to have been the reason for the defeat of the stem cell bond issue. But I don't think that the vote was a referendum on the level of support for this area of medical research either.

I strongly support unfeddered stem cell research, and I voted against the bond issue. This is not a contradictary position.

Stem cell research, including embryonic, is a highly moral area of study; moral, that is, if human life is the standard of value. Try looking at a loved one or dear friend and then declaring that their lives are less valuable than a cluster of cells called an embryo, which is a potential, not an actual, human being.

But to claim support for stem cell research on the basis of man's value while simultaneously violating the rights of those who disagree by forcing them to pay for your beliefs through their taxes is a contradiction in terms. Supporters can use charitable contributions, investments in private research companies and other means to voluntarily finance stem cell research. Opponents can refuse to by medical products resulting from this work.

No one should be forced to act against his own judgement.

Referenced Link