by Michael David Rawlings
The underlying problem of the public education system's ills is the peoples' lose of control, and the only cure for the problem is to send the unions and the agenda hounds packing. This problem is twofold. It is both political and structural, but stems from a misunderstanding that is widely bandied about in America and rightly countered by few.
The Warren Court attached this misunderstanding to the First Amendment when it mangled the principle of the wall of separation between church and state in the '50s and '60s. While Jefferson rightly championed a separation, he would not recommend the Warren Court's ridiculous version of the principle. Now, nearly fifty years after the Warren Court confounded it, far too many conservatives, most, if not all, liberals and even some libertarians have lost all prospective of the original intent of the First Amendment as it should apply to the public education system.
The political problem, therefore, is one of confusion and entails the challenge of building a political coalition of unwavering consensus, for the structural problem is deeply entrenched and defended by a recalcitrant mob of self-serving nitwits who are indifferent to the woeful state of public education in America and cannot be reasoned with at all.
While the political problem is self-evident, the opponents of real reform are not intellectually honest enough to openly acknowledge what they already know to be true against their seemingly irrepressible propensity to impose their cultural agenda on others. This peculiar human frailty has evolved into an art form among liberalism's cultural and political elite. While it is possible and necessary to separate church and state, it is not possible to separate ideology from education. Conservatives rightly repudiate the absurdity of the latter, yet tend to deny the urgency of the former, wrongfully concluding that just because the First Amendment does not contain a literal expression of a Jeffersonian separation, natural and constitutional law do not require it. Liberals, on the other hand, perversely insist that ideology and education can be separated in public schools as they happily fill the void left by traditional values with values that infuriate conservatives.
The Warren Court engendered the illusion that ideological tyranny in the public schools appertains to the imposition of manifestly religious systems of thought only. Since this illusion is now well-entrenched in America's political consciousness, the conservative's stance is self-defeating. While liberals are free to introduce any secular notion of reality they please with little or no resistance, conservatives are relentlessly challenged in the courts and accused of imposing their religious values, even in those instances when they are merely trying to stave off the imposition of lefty's rot.
Though most atheists don't get it, the sociopolitical ramifications of Judeo-Christianity show us how to institute a secular government that will secure and preserve liberty for all—theist, atheist and agnostic alike.
Most of libertarianism's intelligentsia understand that religious speculation arises from the inescapable realities of human consciousness and, therefore, understand that the idea of establishing religiously neutral institutions of education is preposterous. But some of its adherents, particularly its atheists, make the same mistake as liberals/socialists and mindlessly castigate earnest conservatives—their best allies in realizing the ideological liberty they envision. Hence, they stupidly lend their voices to those who perpetuate the fallacy that sustains the very thing they wish to end.
Conservatives need to realize that while it is true that the Lockean construct expressed in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence was directly extrapolated from the sociopolitical ramifications of Judeo-Christianity's ethical system of thought, this does not mean that the public schools must actively inculcate Christian values in order to preserve the Republic. The Republic will take care of itself as long as its people are not forced to subsidize the consequences of stupidity, including lefty's imposition of secular humanism and its delusions in the schools.
Libertarians need to lose their pie-in-the-sky expectations and realize that public funding for education is not going to go away anytime soon; hence, it's time for them to join enlightened conservatives in their efforts to bring about a system of universal educational choice. Empathy is the essence of apprehending the true nature of the Warren Court's judicial ploy, whereby it effectively established secular humanism as the Republic's official religion and the public education system as the Republic's church. If we are stuck with public funding of education, then let us at least have a system that promotes ideological freedom within. In other words, while privatization cannot be achieved monetarily, it can be achieved structurally.
Liberals will continue to tyrannically impose their garbage in the schools. They are a gang of demagogues abetted by mindless sheep. One does not reason with such; one defeats them by building winning coalitions.
It's time for conservatives and libertarians to lift their voices as one. It's time to join Milton Friedman, Lawrence W. Reed and others, and support school-choice vouchers and educational-choice tax credits. It's time for the people who pay the taxes for public education to take the system back from the teacher unions and the agenda hounds of leftistdumb. It's time for the people to take back what belongs to them and educate their children as they see fit, at home or in a school of their choice.
It's time that we reassert the original intent of the First Amendment: the wall of separation does not pertain to the protection of the state against being exposed to any notions of belief that might be held by the people; it pertains to the protection of the people against being disposed to adopt any foreign notions of belief that might be foisted on them by others via an instrument of the state!
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