Pennsylvania lawmaker Republican Rep. Rick Saccone is calling for “In God We Trust,” the same motto on the nation’s currency, to be placed on prominent display at all of the schools in the state. The bill has already passed the House Education Committee, 14 to9” It’s being called the “National Motto Display Act.”

Let’s be honest. Most people trust government more than they trust God. That’s why it’s so easy to grow the government.

The public schools that most Americans send their children to are government schools. Americans have the freedom to educate their children in any number of ways, but most people choose government schools over homeschooling, private schools, and church-run schools. And they wonder why Americans vote the way they do. Government schools teach a government curriculum that espouses a government worldview.

People who object to healthcare subsidies are the same people who are getting educational subsidies. Most conservatives would think that Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) is a political scoundrel because “Obamacare will save him money by subsidizing an insurance policy for his 33-year-old son.”

Families that send their children to government schools are not paying the full cost. The real costs are being subsidized by other people.

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike are a German family trying to seek asylum in the United States because the German government will not allow them to educate their children at home.

“The German Christian couple did not agree with some of the teaching children receive in public schools in their country. They began homeschooling, which is illegal in Germany. . . . All German parents are required by law to send their children to a state-recognized school, whether public or private. . . . Other German families have lost custody of their children because they persist in home schooling.”

A number of American judges have denied the asylum request. The Sixth Circuit Court stated “that Germany’s harsh treatment of homeschoolers did not amount to persecution and that the German authorities were not motivated by an improper purpose. In the case, the U.S. Justice Department argued that the freedom to choose to educate one’s own children is not a fundamental right.”

This means that American parents who are educating their children at home could suffer the same fate as homeschooling parents in Germany. Once we give this type of authority to the State, where can we say it stops? We can’t. If we do, it may be too late. Consider how the government is taking away our healthcare decisions “for our own good.”

Another German family is not permitted to leave Germany with their children because they want to educate their children outside the German government school system. For that act of defiance, their children were taken from them. “The Wunderlichs had to agree to send their kids to public school before their kids were returned to them.” They are prisoners in their own country. There is a new ideological Berlin Wall being erected based on a Nazi-era law, and it’s quickly being built in America right before our eyes.

Some people might object that it’s not that they trust government more than God; it’s that other educational options cost more money and more time, and their schools are not as bad as everybody else’s schools. Of course, the parents of those other bad schools are saying the same thing about their government schools.

Non-government education requires sacrifice. Freedom costs more in the short term, but its long-term rewards are considerable.

If we’re going to criticize Obama and Co. for subsidizing healthcare, then we need to consider subsidies from which we are benefiting. “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matt. 7:3).