In its Tuesday editorial, the Daily Editorial Board once again missed the mark on the school prayer/moment of silence issue. Frankly, even if this was a religious matter, I fail to understand why the Board is so concerned about Virginia’s policy on religion in its schools.

How is Virginia relevant to you and what’s wrong with a little local autonomy?

By prohibiting Congress from legislating on religious matters, the Constitution clearly left religious matters to state and local governments.

Indeed, the religious language of many state constitutions reflects this freedom. Someone will argue that religion has no place in public schools. Fine. But that is a subjective value judgment.

Those who share that opinion ought to feel free to vote accordingly in their individual school districts, and leave the rest of the nation to decide for itself. Why impose the same secular ideology on every school district in the nation?

At any rate, it’s clear that a large percentage of American parents value a religious education more than a secular one.

It’s not difficult to see why so many Americans feel this way when the test scores of private-schooled and home-schooled students are compared to those students of the abysmal secular public school system.

But according to our liberal friends, the statistics and facts can be ignored since parents have no business deciding for themselves whether or not their hard-earned tax dollars are used to finance a religious or secular education for their own children. Supposedly, it’s the government’s job to decide such matters for the people.

Liberals would probably argue they are just protecting your freedom.

Indeed, in addition to keeping us free from being offended, they are also trying to give us freedom from responsibility. God help us.

Rather than always feeling compelled to force their values (or lack thereof) on others, it’s time for liberals to practice what they preach and exercise a little tolerance for a change. Don’t worry about Virginia. It’s Virginia’s business.

Paul Armstrong

Sophomore

Aerospace engineering