Prayer in school
Topics: Education, Rights
16 Nov 1994
From: "DG Ervan Darnell"
Today, a letter from American Catholic bishops (1) said that sexism is
unnacceptable, the church should fight it, and, oh, by the way, women still
will not be allowed to be priests.
With that fine bit of hypocrisy as background, Bill Clinton chose what is
probably the worst part of the Republican "Contract" to agree with, a
constitutional amendment for "voluntary school prayer". Bill Clinton needs
to pray for the survival of the Democratic party instead perhaps. Actually,
if he spent his time mumbling in the dark instead of proposing more
regulations, we'd be a lot better off, but that's a different issue.
The pro-Democrat argument (among people with any economic sense that is) has
been that the Republicans would press their moral agenda if in power. Thus,
we needed Democrats to keep abortion legal, put pro-civil liberties judges
on the Supreme Court, be in less of hurry to give the police summary
execution powers, etc. That used to be an argument with some merit.
Clinton has just cratered and proven that the Democrats, in so far as he
represents them, have no redeeming features whatsoever (2). Now that they
are temporarily stymied on their quest to take all of our money, they are
happy to switch gears and turn the public schools into propoganda organs for
the majority religion. Prayer in school just by itself is not really that
big of a deal, but its symbolic value is large because it has a been a focal
point for civil-libertarian type liberals (not necessarily mainstream
Democrats) in the opposition to the Republican agenda.
As I mentioned before, one of the dangers of public schools is that the
government controls the content and the nature of government is that the
content will be manipulated for political purposes, not for the purpose of
producing a good education. I doubt that "voluntary prayer" will pass, but
there is significant support behind this as a constitutional amendment. The
thin reed which is the constitution is in danger of being run over with a
tank. The majority cannot resist the temptation to use such an instrument
as public schools to attempt to enforce the one true morality. If they
never existed, this sort of thing would be made much more difficult (though
historically the public schools were created for exactly this purpose, to
make Catholic immigrants, circa 1890, into good patriotic Protestants).
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(1) This may have been in a papal letter and the bishop's letter was on
welfare. I started watching in the middle of the piece.
(2) We even have the spectacle of Scalia, a Reagan appointee, being one of
the stronger votes for free speech, though he is dreadful on rights of the
accused.
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