OPINION
Vladimir Lenin once famously said: “Give me your children to teach for four years, and the seed that I sow will never be uprooted.” It seems the results of the Nov. 3 election are an important reminder of that.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, John J. Miller points out that while winning the next election always matters, “even more important is winning the next generation.”
“Conservatives and other friends of free enterprise must play a long game as they seek to recover from the rout of 2026. Their strategy should include the liberation of America’s schools from state control.”
Miller, a Free Expression columnist at WSJ Opinion and founder of The College Fix, cited stats showing how the under 30 voting bloc overwhelmingly voted for and support Democratic socialism. They’re never taught about the horrors socialism, Marxism, and communism have wrought.
To combat this omission and ensure America’s youth are taught truth instead of propaganda, school choice must be the mantle Republicans champion hard in coming years, Miller wrote:
What American education needs is a counterrevolution. It’s already under way, with the rise of a school-choice movement that seeks to release teachers, students and parents from state control. Since the 1990s, when its first pilot programs sprouted in places like Milwaukee, that movement has won political and legal victories and grown to include more than 1.5 million children in 34 states, according to EdChoice, an education freedom nonprofit. Today, the most robust programs allow parents to select among an astonishing diversity of charter schools, religious schools, classical schools, home schools and even old-fashioned public schools.
School choice will face new pressures from freshly elected Democratic governors. But it may be on the brink of a breakthrough. Next year, taxpayers can take advantage of tax credits of up to $1,700 for individuals and $3,400 for married couples who make donations to certified groups that award scholarships for everything from private-school tuition to special-needs therapies to afterschool tutoring. To benefit from the Education Freedom Tax Credit, states must opt in, as New Mexico did on Nov. 4, joining Texas, Florida, New York, Ohio and 27 other states. The Treasury Department estimates that by 2030 the tax credit could involve more than 11 million taxpayers who contribute nearly $26 billion and fund 2.2 million scholarships each year.
Democrats in the next Congress will strive to stop it. Eliminating the tax credit will be among their most urgent legislative priorities. They’ll succeed, too, unless Republicans decide to defend school choice. Doing so would give them at least one piece of the positive agenda that they so conspicuously lacked this year. The alternative is to keep losing, in 2028 and beyond, as state-run schools turn out new generations of socialist voters.
Read the full column at The Wall Street Journal.
