Monday, March 23, 2026

"WE TOLD YOU SO": THE FOUNDING FATHERS ON SCHOOL VOUCHERS, RELIGIOUS STRIFE, AND THE SLOW-MOTION DEMOLITION OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY #NoKings

"WE TOLD YOU SO": THE FOUNDING FATHERS ON SCHOOL VOUCHERS, RELIGIOUS STRIFE, AND THE SLOW-MOTION DEMOLITION OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Imagine, if you will, a tavern somewhere outside of Philadelphia. The year is 2026. The powdered wigs are itching. The brandy is warm. And Thomas Jefferson is absolutely losing his mind.

The Tavern Scene Nobody Asked For (But Everyone Needs)

Jefferson slaps a copy of the Texas Education Freedom Accounts legislation on the table, rattling Madison's inkwell.

"James," he says, with the weary exasperation of a man who wrote Notes on the State of Virginia specifically to prevent this, "did we or did we not put it in the Constitution?"

Madison, who personally drafted the First Amendment and wrote the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments — essentially a 1785 op-ed screaming "DO NOT DO THIS" — simply stares into his glass.

"We put it in the Constitution, Thomas."

"We built a wall, James."

"We built a wall."

"And now they're using the wall as a doorway."

John Adams, from the corner, does not look up from his copy of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 — the oldest still-functioning state constitution in the world, which he personally wrote to include a government duty to "cherish" public schools. He simply says:

"I told you they'd do this. I told you in 1780. Nobody listens to the short one."

What the Founders Actually Built — And Why It Matters Now

Here's the uncomfortable truth that the modern school choice movement would prefer you not dwell on: the Founding Fathers were not ambiguous about public education. This wasn't a footnote. This was a cornerstone.

Thomas Jefferson proposed the Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge — arguing that an educated public was the only reliable defense against tyranny. He believed talent should be "raked from the rubbish" of every social class, not reserved for those whose parents could afford a $10,474 voucher lottery ticket.
John Adams wrote public education support directly into the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, calling it a governmental duty — not a suggestion, not a talking point, not a campaign promise to be quietly defunded after the election.
Horace Mann, expanding on the Founders' vision, gave us the Common School ideal — the radical, beautiful, deeply American notion that children of different faiths, different classes, and different backgrounds should sit side by side and forge something called a shared civic identity.

That idea — unremarkable to most of us who attended public school — is precisely what a $1 billion voucher program is designed to dismantle.

The Founders didn't just build a public education system. They built it as a bulwark against the very oligarchic, theocratic drift we are currently watching unfold in Austin, Texas.

The Constitutional Collision Course

The Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) program sits at the precise intersection of two constitutional clauses that were never meant to be in conflict — and yet here we are, in 2026, watching them collide like two freight trains while a federal judge takes notes.

The Establishment Clause Problem

James Madison didn't mince words. In his Memorial and Remonstrance, he argued that compelling a citizen to contribute even "three pence" to support a religious institution was a violation of their fundamental liberty. (Even one pence is one too many, Sorry Mike, Trump 1st VP)

Three. Pence.

The man would have combusted at the sight of a $10,474 annual voucher flowing from public tax coffers into religious school operating budgets. And yet, the Supreme Court — in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris and later Carson v. Makin (2022) — has essentially said: "It's fine, as long as the money passes through a parent's hands first."

Madison's ghost would like a word about legal fictions.

The Free Exercise Clause Trap

Here is where the voucher movement's legal strategy becomes genuinely clever, and genuinely dangerous. By successfully arguing that states cannot exclude religious schools from public benefit programs, voucher proponents have created a legal framework where:

"You don't have to fund private schools — but if you fund one, you must fund all."

This is the sword that the Islamic schools of Texas are now turning directly on Attorney General Ken Paxton — and the irony is so thick you could spread it on cornbread.

Legal Milestone	Year	What It Did
Zelman v. Simmons-Harris	2002	Approved vouchers as constitutional via "parental choice" pass-through
Espinoza v. Montana	2020	States cannot exclude schools because they are religious
Carson v. Makin	2022	States cannot exclude schools even if they use funds for religious instruction
TEFA Launch + Islamic School Exclusion	2026	Paxton's own legal victories weaponized against him

Paxton spent years dismantling the Blaine Amendments — 19th-century state constitutional provisions that barred public funding of religious schools — to open the door for Christian schools. He succeeded. The door is now open. And the Houston Qur'an Academy just walked through it, lawsuit in hand.

You simply cannot make this up.

🕌✝️✡️ Three Religions, One Origin Story, Zero Ability to Play Nice

Let us pause here for a moment of theological irony so profound that even the Almighty — whichever name you prefer — must occasionally facepalm.

The three religious traditions at the center of this Texas legal battle — Christianity, Judaism, and Islam — are not strangers. They are, in the most literal theological sense, family.

All three trace their lineage to Abraham (Ibrahim in Arabic).
All three consider Jerusalem sacred.
All three study Noah, Moses, David, Solomon, and Joseph as prophets and patriarchs.
All three are built on the same ethical DNA: charity, hospitality, and justice for the poor.

In a Yeshiva in Dallas, a Catholic Academy in San Antonio, and an Islamic school in Houston, students are — right now — learning about the same God, the same prophets, and the same moral imperatives.

And yet the state of Texas approved 2,200+ Christian and Jewish schools while initially approving zero Islamic schools, on the grounds that some of them had hosted a "Know Your Rights" civil rights seminar.

Madison warned us. He called it "bitter dissensions." He warned that government involvement in religious funding would produce exactly this kind of sectarian political warfare — where the state inevitably becomes a theological gatekeeper, deciding which version of Abraham's children deserves taxpayer support.

He was right. He is always right. Nobody listens to Madison.

The Shared-Origin Scorecard in Texas (March 2026)

Faith Tradition	Voucher Status	State's Rationale
Christian Schools (2,200+)	✅ Fully Approved	Standard accreditation accepted
Jewish Schools	✅ Fully Approved	Standard accreditation accepted
Islamic Schools	⚠️ Partially Restored (post-lawsuit)	"Security reviews" citing CAIR designation

The plaintiffs in Cherkaoui v. Hancock made the obvious argument: if hosting a civil rights seminar disqualifies an Islamic school, why doesn't hosting a political rally disqualify a Christian one? The judge — U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett — noted with considerable judicial understatement that the odds of zero Islamic schools qualifying by pure chance were "statistically improbable."

That is federal judge for: "This reeks, and everyone in this courtroom knows it."

The Billionaire Blueprint and the Benedict Arnold Problem

Let's be honest about what's actually happening here, because the Founders — who had very strong opinions about concentrated wealth and its relationship to tyranny — would recognize it immediately.

The push to defund public education and replace it with a privatized, voucher-driven system did not emerge organically from concerned parents at PTA meetings. It was decreed by a billionaire oligarchy that has spent decades methodically:

Underfunding public schools until they struggle
Pointing at the struggling schools as evidence of failure
Proposing private alternatives funded by public money
Ensuring those private alternatives face zero equivalent accountability

Jefferson called public education a defense against tyranny. The people dismantling it are, by his own definition, doing tyranny's work.

History has a name for Americans who betray the foundational institutions of their country for personal gain and ideological ambition. That name is Benedict Arnold — and history has not been kind to it.

The Founders built something extraordinary: a public school system designed to take the child of a sharecropper and the child of a merchant and give them, for a few hours a day, the same shot at the same knowledge. It was imperfect. It remains imperfect. But it was — and is — the great equalizer, and it belongs to all of us.

A $1 billion voucher program that creates a tiered system, siphons resources from the schools serving the most vulnerable children, and then discriminates between religions in its implementation is not "school choice."

It is the systematic demolition of a democratic institution, dressed up in the language of liberty.

The Pots, the Pans, and the Point

The Founders marched. They organized. They made noise — sometimes literal, sometimes legislative, sometimes revolutionary.

In 2026, the tradition continues. The No Kings 3.0 marches are happening everywhere — and if you have ever believed that public schools matter, that the Constitution means what it says, that three religions sharing the same God deserve the same treatment under the law, and that billionaires do not get to quietly dismantle 250 years of democratic infrastructure while everyone is distracted —

Then grab a pot. Grab a pan. Make a sign.

Write on it: Jefferson Was Right. Or Madison Warned You. Or simply: Public Schools Are Not For Sale.

The Founders built something worth defending. The least we can do is show up.

"The diffusion of knowledge among the people [is] the only guardian of true liberty." — Thomas Jefferson, who is currently somewhere in the afterlife saying "I told you so" at considerable volume.

#NoKings3 | #PublicSchoolsForAll | #SeparationOfChurchAndState | #NoKingsEverywhere

This Saturday, March 28th, show them you are.

For more information on protecting public education funding, visit ProtectPublicEd.org. For No Kings 3.0 rally locations near you, check local listings and national event pages.

ProtectPublicEd.org https://www.protectpubliced.org/

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