I think I made it clear in the body of my post that I share your pessimism. But, if even the remnant of morally responsible adults "read and heed" the implications of this decision, there are enough people still out there to wither this court's decision in the public eye. Millions of people fall into this category.
I agree that, failing something virtually miraculous, the long-term outlook for things in this country is pretty dismal. But perhaps this decision is being held out in front of us as something of a "last chance" to at least *try* to reverse the juggernaut of societal sin brought on by our own inaction. It seems to me that we have to at least *try* to do something. Defeatism is a self-fulfilling outlook on life.
Yes, but we each have only a limited amount of energy, resources, time, and "political capital" (whatever that is), so we need a realistic assessment of how best to expend them.
I do appreciate that this decision essentially says, "Your children are wards of the state - deal with it," and how outrageous that is. But I also have to wonder how many parents, in moment of anger, have said to their children, "You're only here because the condom broke," or "I could have had you aborted, you know." It's difficult to imagine, given the state of our culture, that the thought hasn't occurred to most parents at least once. Parents have quite willingly abdicated their responsibilities for raising their children to the government schools, and I'm sure that many are quite happy to be relieved of the burden. Children are consistenly depicted as a financial (and otherwise) burden in the popular culture, and families on TV and in the movies are almost always dysfunctional. A "lesson" is being taught by the media, and social statistics show that it has been taken up in large part by the populace.
Can the state-run school system be reformed? The conservative response has been to apply the principles of Federalism: abolish the federal Department of Education, and return control of the schools to more local government entities, to ensure more accountability. That would certainly be a step in the right direction. But Mr. Bush has done just the opposite with the "No Child Left Behind" initiative, increasing the federal DoE budget and centralizing control. And he's supposed to be one of the good guys. But the fact is that if the DoE were abolished, there would be a great howl among the constituents; there's just no discernable political will for this. I'm sorry, but we're not going to get anywhere trying to reform the current system, especially since we have no advocate in a position of political influence.
As Catholics, we can try to re-establish the system of parochial schools, but there we are facing several serious problems. All we can do is provide an alternative for those who are willing to take advantage of it; we can't know in advance how many will. Tuition costs have risen beyond many people's means, because we now must employ lay teachers, who require a decent wage, as opposed to religious who worked nearly for free. This is due to the decline in vocations in the teaching orders. And we must also ensure that the Catholic schools are providing an orthodox Catholic education, perhaps by extending the mandatum to elementary and secondary schools. We must continue to push for some method of tax-relief for families who opt-out of the government schools, but we've consistently met with resistance to this idea, back to the days of Paul Blanshard and his "Protestants and Others for Separation of Church and State".
And, of course, a similar analysis applies to other forms of private schooling, whether they be networks of home schoolers, Protestant private schools, or secular private schools. Still, the great majority of parents will continue to avail themselves of the government schools, which means we can expect a generational propagation of cultural degeneracy. That's the future voting public, consciences formed in the Culture of Death, if not obliterated entirely. None of this really new, either; its seeds can be found in the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf of the late 1800's in Germany, the ideas of which entered our public school system in particularly virulent form by means of Dewey et al.
We have to be realistic about this. We're dealing with the culmination of a trend which is faily long established, and with cultural premises which, though demonstrably destructive, have become ingrained. That's why the culture war was the only one ever worth fighting in the political domain, but the retreat was mostly sounded before the initial shots were fired.