Education should be funded by vouchers granted to individual families, not public schools.

The point of providing a "voucher" instead of cash is that the voucher can only be spent in a certain way. Education vouchers could only be spent on education. If there are to be no standards on what qualifies as education, as you're suggesting, then there is absolutely no point in providing vouchers -- cash could be used instead. If there are some kind of standards to be applied to who can receive the vouchers, then this means the government will be setting the standards, thus regulating and controlling schools and turning all private schools into public schools -- just as has happened with colleges. The above is irrefutable. Your "free market" argument is laughable. The free market is what I'm arguing for -- you're arguing for wealth redistribution. Someone who has ten children would receive ten vouchers' worth of subsidies, while someone who has one child would only receive one voucher's worth of subsidies. If the vouchers can be spent on anything, then this is just a crude wealth redistribution plan -- and you're saying, yes, despite the fact that it makes absolutely no sense to provide vouchers that can be spent on anything (defeating the entire purpose of a voucher vs. cash), the vouchers in your system would be able to be spent on ANYTHING. It's doubly ridiculous to suggest that parents wouldn't make poor choices, such as sending their children to the Video Arcade Academy. Do parents not make poor choices now with their own money? Of course they do! Although a true free market would provide better quality education and more choices, there would still be parents who made poor choices. WHAT ABOUT HOMESCHOOLING? Would homeschoolers not be eligible for the vouchers? Would their taxes pay for them either way? If they would be eligible for the vouchers, to be paid to themselves, then isn't this obviously open to massive fraud and abuse? Unscrupulous parents could have ten or twelve children and collect $8,000 to $10,000 per year, PER CHILD, for "educating" them, whether they actually educated them or not! And if homeschoolers are not able to receive the vouchers, then is this not an outright assault on the freedom to homeschool? You are arguing for tyranny and cloaking your words in the parlance of freedom. It is truly Orwellian. It is downright blasphemous to use the "invisible hand" metaphor when you're talking about a big-government, wealth-redistribution program. Do you honestly believe your own rhetoric? Vouchers are a neoconservative transfer-payment apparatus. That conservatives and libertarians have fallen for this charade is one thing, but to disingeuously use "free market" rhetoric in order to justify the case for the socialization of education is downright insulting to people's intelligence. Your understanding of the Constitution and Original Intent is horrid. If the First Amendment's "separation of church and state" applied to the states, then why did official state churches in Massachusetts and Connecticut endure until 1833, and why were they abolished through state legislative process, not the federal government's enforcement of the First Amendment? You have a very liberal, big-government understanding of the Constitution. The Constitution clearly says "CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW..." That's what it says, and it doesn't matter what FDR's judges have said since. Of course, the above has nothing to do with the debate at hand, but it merely shows your lack of constitutional logic, and the Rooseveltian liberalism that informs your supposedly "libertarian" stand for wealth redistribution and state-sponsored education camps. A voucher system would take the partially monopolized education system and make the monopoly complete. There are only two colleges that refuse federal money. There are many more private schools at the K-12 level. If your system were adopted, then truly private schools would become as rare as truly private colleges, thus effectively abolishing the private alternative to public education. AND AGAIN, WHAT ABOUT HOMESCHOOLING? Every worthwhile argument you've made for a voucher system can also be made for a truly free market in education. You've done nothing to show why vouchers are better than a true free market. I have shown why a true free market is better than vouchers -- which are NOT a "free market" (PLEASE!). I will go further to say even the status quo is better, because at least now, parents are able to send their children to truly private schools. Under your system, that would cease to be the case.