2,000 years of oppression, but that’s fine because it was oh so democratic?
And might I remind you that the Jim Crow laws were passed democratically also. The ACLU exists in part to protect us from positions like yours.
Religion was given a great deal of curricular time when I was in high school. I remember it being a big part of social studies, sociology and philosophy. My sociology teacher in particular went to great lengths. We had a different speaker every week for a couple of months: A priest, a rabbi, and I think even some Hare Krishnas among others. When I was a teacher I saw some similar stuff.
I think ITR’s “militant scourging of all religion” from public school curricula is at best an exaggeration. At worst… well, just paranoid silliness. Sorry, but there it is.
I’ve already candidly admitted that my perception of their racial composition is shaped by only one group. Perhaps ACLU offices elsewhere are stuffed with blacks and Hispanics, but I doubt it. The fact is, however, that voucher programs provide the biggest advantages to students of those races, because students of those races typically live in urban areas that have the worst schools. Hence, killing voucher programs has an extra-large effect on minorities.
For example, just look at Washington D. C., and its notorious worst-in-the-nation school system. The public school student body is 96% minority and 4% white.. By contrast, the city itself is 61% minority and 39% white. It seems that nearly all the white people send their kids to private schools, while minority kids mainly get stuck in the public schools (unless they’re named ‘Obama’). Hence an anti-voucher stance hurts blacks and Hispanics more than whites. I doubt that most ACLU members are personally racist, but it’s a plain fact that their anti-voucher stance hurts black and Hispanic kids.
Studies have shown that voucher programs not only let some kids get a better education in private schools, but also improve nearby public schools because the competition keeps 'em honest. Vouchers also save money.
While the ACLU always thumps its chest about the 1st amendment, their cases actually rest on the 14th amendment. They claim that the 1st prevents federal religious observance, while the 14th expands that to state and local. But the founders never meant the Constitution to curtail religious expression by government employees. That’s demonstrated clearly enough by the words of every president from George Washington to Barack Obama. Nor did the Congress of the reconstruction era intend for the 14th to have anything to do with the running of public schools. All of that is extra meaning tacked on by judges in the last 50 years or so.
And no one, even the ACLU, is claiming that government employees can’t observe religion – what they’re claiming is that you can’t do it in a way that may potentially influence students.
You mean, engage in centuries of bloody factional conflicts, pogroms, and holy wars?
Not true. The ACLU’s issue in Salazar has nothing to do with the fact that the cross was erected with private money–but that it was erected on government land. The fact that private money is used is simply irrelevant to the issue in the case.
I don’t think anyone has suggested this. For one thing, the constitution only limits the actions of federal (and after XIV, state) government. So I don’t see where you’re getting this argument.
We have a process of democracy, subject to the constitutional protection of certain rights–such that there are things the majority can’t do, even if they want to. That is the nature of constitutional rights today–inherently antimajoritarian–for, ironically, exactly the reason you point out–that the majority gets its own way even if no rights exist.
Funnily enough, as I understand the history, Public schools weren’t systematically created as a service for all students until the middle of the nineteenth century. More importantly, public schools, as part of state governments, weren’t subject to the first amendment until 1868. So a good half of our history is simply irrelevant to his debate.
Or, alternatively, the ACLU has forced the government to take our constitutional rights seriously. This is not a necessary result of that right existing. See, for example, the fact that it took nearly a hundred years to go from the Fourteenth Amendment to Brown v. Board of Education, or (assuming, arguendo, that Heller v. DC is correct, more than two centuries to go from the Second Amendment to its proper interpretation being upheld by the courts.) Should we ignore the second amendment, or repudiate Heller because the system where governments got to regulate firearm ownership has worked fine for generations?
So the fact that it took a long time to effectively enforce the right is neither here nor there.
Furthermore, regardless of the history–here and now, the clear understanding of federal constitutional law is that school-sponsored religious observances in public school are forbidden. To, for example, have teachers pray at the start of class is a simple violation of the law as it is now.
So, just to be clear: Do you support school administrators today who intentionally choose to violate federal law, as it now stands? Do you think others should support them?
This is exactly why the right is protected–to stop people deciding that others should just “deal with it.”
What would happen if enough non-Catholics–say, 7th-Day Adventists–began going to a Catholic school that the majority was able to get religious instruction to include some themes that blatantly violate Catholic teachings?
You mean governing them by law?
ITR, what exactly is that you want? Do you want students to be educated thoroughly immersed in religious environment so as to bring down divine intervention, or so that a lot of students become Saved, or at very least that they grow up to be highly religious citizens?
Or are you saying, what’s the big deal, it’s only the occasional little non-sectarian prayer? If that’s the case, then what is the big deal? What religious profit is there in religious expression so watered down that anything less amounts to a “militant scourging of all religion”?
(Nice victim playing there, Hamlet. These aren’t cases where the ACLU is simply being extreme sticklers for Separation of Church and State, no, they’re militantly assaulting religion, and getting it out of government is just the beginning. )
It seems to me that the more significant an expression is religiously, the more significant it is constitutionally. And we have to draw the line somewhere, you know.
This just in from the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/us/24crime.html?exprod=myyahoo
None other than Ed Meese realizes that an organization like the ACLU has its place in protecting Constitutional rights.
Those numbers suggest that there is a good deal of confusion about the meaning of the word “minority.”
Whites are a minority, blacks are plurality in DC.
That data set, at least as it was presented by ITR is somewhat confusing, yes.
Not really. The word “minority” is commonly used in the United States to refer to racial groups other than whites. However, if you don’t like it, you may mentally replace each occurrence of it with “blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and various other groups that represent only a tiny fraction of the population.”
None of that, however, has much effect on the main argument that our current system allows the wealthy, chiefly white population to have a good education in private schools, while confining large sections of the poor, chiefly black and Hispanic population to crummy, inner-city public schools.
The cross was not erected on government land. It was erected as a monument to American soldiers on unclaimed land, which later became part of a federal preserve. No government effort has ever been put into it in any way, shape, or form. The ACLU’s claim is that because one person finds it “offensive”, it needs to be torn down. Nothing in the Constitution can rationally be construed as meaning that war memorials on government land should be vandalized at taxpayers expense merely because there’s a person who finds them offensive.
The time up to 1868 is not a good half our history. Of the time when the Constitution has been in effect, it’s barely a third. But, in any case, judges did not start reaching these far-fetched conclusions about the fourteenth amendment demanding a ban on all religious expressions on government property until the late 20th century. The fourteenth was intended to protect people from slavery, unlawful imprisonment, and so forth. The Congressmen who passed the it in 1868 would be utterly baffled by the way that the ACLU uses it to enforce censorship.
That is the clear understanding of people who understand it that way, which is certainly not everybody. It is certainly not a straightforward interpretation of the words of the Constitution, nor is it based on the intent of the founders, nor is it traditional, nor is it based on popular opinion. So, in the final analysis, it’s based on the decision of a few judges in very recent times, and nothing more. And, of course, there’s no guarantee that judges will maintain this odd interpretation indefinitely.
As I said in my first post, the ACLU governs by lawsuit for a reason. There is no way that the voting public would ever choose, through it legislators, to imprison people for praying, or to vandalize crosses erected in honor of our soldiers, or to censor the publications of local governments, or any of the other bizarre attacks on free expression that the ACLU routinely makes. Hence, the ACLU’s only hope in these cases is the uses the judiciary to overrule democracy. To point to historical cases in which the judiciary overruled law justly does make not the process just in these cases.
I will answer by quoting the words of another man who went to jail for saying things that the government disapproved of.
That’s a pretty good quote. Here’s another one, from the same gentleman, on the subject of the courts finding against prayer in public school:
From here: http://blog.au.org/2006/01/13/speaking_truth_/
Brother Wallace is, of course, Alabama segregationist George Wallace.
Again, ITR, you seem to be more interseted in playing the victim and indulging in hyperbole rather than clarifying what you think the proper role of religion in government should be.
After all, religion consists of a lot of dubious and often contradictory claims about supernatural forces.
Shouldn’t government be reality-based? It’s one thing to condone a bit of “ceremonial deism” slipping through, but we don’t rely on majoritarianism to tell us that one religion is right and the others–and science–are wrong.
I don’t believe that government should be entangled with religion at all, neither for promoting it nor for vilifying it and trying to stamp it out in schools or anywhere else. A voucher program that allowed parents to choose their child’s school would be ideal, as it would reduce conflicts about religion in schools while also saving taxpayer money and improving education. With such a program in place, there would be more customers for private education, and we’d see more groups (secular and religious) setting up schools and more choice for everyone.
In the meantime, however, I find it perfectly reasonable to have a law like the one we had in Kentucky until a judge shot it down, where the students got to vote on whether to have a prayer at graduation. Most people who work in public schools do not view themselves as part of a government, but rather as teachers and support staff. They entered education because they wanted to help kids. That’s also how the students at the community at large view them: as educators, not as part of government. Basic things like prayers at graduation and sporting events are parts of a ceremony that most people don’t associate with the government at all. When a majority of participants want them, having them is natural. Having the courts intervene to ban them is, by contrast, a major intrusion of the government into community life.
(And I think that government is roughly the least “reality-based” organization in the world, as demonstrated by Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, corn ethanol requirements, Cash for Clunkers, and countless other examples. Having the federal government attack anyone else on the grounds that they make “dubious and often contradictory claims” is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.)
The first part of your sentence is why they are doing the second part.
How do you propose disentangling government and religion, when you are adamantly opposed to any effort to prevent the government from funding religious observances? In these threads, you’ve consistently characterized any attempts to keep government religiously neutral as an unconscionable intrusion of government into people’s religious freedoms. Can you provide an example (hypothetical, if necessary, but real world would be ideal) of a government taking a positive stand on religion that you would view as an unconstitutional entanglement of government and religion?
Regardless of how they view themselves, how is someone who receives their paycheck from the government anything other than an employee of the government? What standard are you using to define whether someone is part of the government or not? The only reasoning I see here is how the person views his role. If a congressperson says that he doesn’t “view himself as part of the government,” and only got into the field because he wants to “help people,” does that make him not a part of the government, and therefore, immune to laws regulating government action? If not, how is our hypothetical congressperson different from teachers?
If a majority of students are devout Catholics and decide the school should pray a novena to the Blessed Virgin, should that be binding on other students? Is having a religious faith a prerequisite to playing football?
The these people are just plain wrong because public schools are government intitutions and that’s all there is to it.
Don’t be ridiculous. These recent issues are far, far, FAR too narrow to be definitional of secular government as a basic principle to be upheld.
And even so, they were indeed reality-based: Global warming and attacks by WMDs are reality-based fears; fears of evil spells or the wrath of God are not. Reducing inefficient fuel consumption and sending in troops are reality-based solutions; prayer or sending in witch doctors are not.
It’s also reality-based to acknowledge that the government is fallible.