Before she became a U.S. senator and then President Joe Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris was a progressive California politician.

As the San Francisco district attorney, Harris launched a campaign to get “tough” on truancy, not just to ensure that children were properly educated but also to reduce crime. She was concerned that “a disproportionate number of the city’s homicide victims were high school dropouts, and that dropouts are more likely to become perpetrators or victims of crimes.”

Harris then persuaded the California legislature to adopt harsher penalties for truancy like fining parents $2,500 or more or sentencing them to a year in jail. After she won election as the state’s attorney general, Harris put parents on notice: “If you fail in your responsibility to your kids, we are going to work to make sure you face the full force and consequences of the law.”

(According to Politico, “California lawmakers are quietly advancing a bill that would undo controversial anti-truancy legislation Kamala Harris pushed more than a decade ago.” Turns out that Harris may run for governor in 2026.)

But it’s not just progressive states like California that rigorously enforce truancy laws. In my red state of Florida, a judge recently sentenced one parent to a six-month jail sentence and another parent to a 90-day jail sentence for ignoring court orders to send their children to school. …

There is, in fact, no difference between compulsory schooling and compulsory religion laws.

Americans of every religious affiliation — including those of no religious affiliation — would be outraged if each state government established churches in every town in their states; compelled all residents in a geographic area to attend church every Sunday under threat of fine or imprisonment; published a list of approved songs for congregations to sing; established sacraments and ordinances to be observed; hired minsters to preach, teach, and administer the sacraments and ordinances; drew up a confession of faith for adults to subscribe to and a catechism for children to recite; and instituted a local tax to pay for the church, its ministers, and its ministries.

So why no outrage over compulsory schooling? After all, the numerous comparisons to compulsory religion are obvious. …

In a free society, parents, not the state, decide how, where, and to what extent their children are educated, just like parents, not the state, decide how, where, and to what extent their children take part in religious activities.

This comparison is even more apt today that it was when this was written because the teachers have become rabid progressive/lefty/collectivist/Marxist/socialist/communist/murderers and pedophiles. Why, for the sake of the state, should people have to attend state religious training and have it be compulsory. Let people take their own responsibility to make sure their kids are educated without the force of the gun state behind it. People realize that education is importantly for their kids and will respond to that responsibility the way they feel appropriate. FTS