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Recently, I watched a call-in television show discuss the contentious issue of whether we should remove the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. At the center of this emotional mini-maelstrom stands atheist Michael Newdow who is making his concerns a "federal case" by arguing his position before the Supreme Court of the United States. Since only about ten-percent of Americans might call themselves atheists, Mr. Newdow has come in for his fair share of vituperation (and death threats).
The legal merits of the Pledge problem, however, are not the main focus of this article. Neither Mr. Newdow nor any of his opponents that I have heard or read realize that they are directing their efforts at the symptoms rather than the roots of this question. The whole public uproar would disappear if government power was separated from the running of our schools, as it should be.
Scores of different churches can and do peacefully coexist since no one is forced to attend any particular church (or any church, at all). Having witnessed the abuses created by entanglements of the State with religion, the Founding Fathers wisely and presciently forbade the federal government from backing any particular sect or from prohibiting citizens from freely deciding how they would (or would not) practice their religious beliefs.
If the public and our political leaders respected and obeyed the Constitution, the State would immediately remove itself from funding, regulating, or directing education in this country. Since the federal government can legitimately exercise only those powers delegated to it, it should recognize that nowhere in the Constitution is there mention of any governmental authority for State involvement in educational choices or disagreements.
Even beyond this express lack of enumerated power in regard to education, the First Amendment prohibition against federal interference in freedom of speech, press, and peaceable assembly prevents State-meddling in this arena. While some might argue that the Tenth Amendment permits individual states to exercise authority in education as a power reserved to the states, consideration of the Ninth and the Fourteenth Amendments counters that point. In particular, the latter amendment applies the Bill of Rights to the states and hence precludes the individual states, as well, from interfering in the ability of citizens to exercise their rights to free expression and assembly.
Regardless of whether one wishes to grant ascendancy to the Tenth, the Ninth, or the Fourteenth Amendment, the strongest argument against State intervention in education -- on any level of government -- is a moral one. Specifically, each individual has the right to practice (peaceably) whatever ethical system he chooses to follow in making his everyday decisions. This freedom is no more important than in the realm of ideas and particularly in those ideals, principles, and facts that our children learn in school. For it is frequently those earliest absorbed ideas that will most strongly influence their beliefs, attitudes, and actions for the rest of their lives.
Sadly, State regulation of ideas is evident and prevalent today as never before in our society. For instance, governmental boards and bureaucrats require that they approve the textbooks, lesson plans, course content, and testing that schools and teachers can use. Whether done at the level of a city's school board, on a statewide basis, or when Congress directs that "no child shall be left behind," the government enforces its edicts even upon unwilling parents. The State also curtails freedom of assembly and speech when it either prohibits homeschooling or demands its permission for private schools or homeschoolers to operate and to do so only according to its standards rather than the best judgments of the parents and schools involved in the education of children outside the public realm.
People have the right to their own lives (a right that underpins all other rights) and the subsequent freedom to decide how to live those lives. The State must abstain from using its coercive power to favor one set of ideas over another or to prevent parents from guiding the educational course of their offspring. Neither parents nor their children are slaves. Neither their lives nor their property may properly be usurped by the State. Neither their freedom nor their moral judgments may properly be infringed upon by the very entity charged with defending those lives, that property, that liberty.
Only when the State crosses the line from defender to violator of rights are we subjected to endless and acrimonious debates and oppressive laws dictating how individuals should act in regard to an endless stream of controversies.
Rather than acting as a uniter of citizens in peaceful coexistence, the State's imperious dictates ensure that strive and contention will be maximized. Bitterness, anger, hopelessness, and defeat cannot help but result when people are forced to act in ways they abhor or are prevented from acting as they desire.
Many of the "problems" that local, state, and federal legislators, judges, and politicians devote so much time and (your) money to are wholly creatures of their own creation.
When your choices are delimited or eliminated by the State; when you are forced to act or not act on the whims of strangers; when you are backed into a corner and unable to correct unjust acts; when people have their freedom, their lives violated on a routine basis, no one should be surprised that mushrooming acrimony is the result.
Your recourse should you be on the losing side of any of the examples mentioned above? In a free society, you could take your money and your children out of an offending school and shop around for one that better fits your wants. Somehow, though, in the world we inhabit now, that approach is okay when buying groceries but becomes unthinkable when applied to educating our children.
You have only one choice today if you seek to switch your status from "loser" to "winner": seize the reins of State power and force others to adhere to your desires. Whether via election or lawsuit, the result is the same: loss of freedom, offended neighbors, and expanding rancor.
In regard to the placement of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, Mr. Newdow believes --rightly or wrongly -- that other people are interfering with his right as a parent to direct the education of his daughter. He says he does not want her "brainwashed" by the State to accept the reality of a deity. Perhaps he is making a mountain out of molehill. Perhaps he is striking a blow for freedom. Perhaps his lawsuit is nothing more than a backhanded way to attack his ex-wife.
Who knows?
But what we can know for certain is that his lawsuit would never have seen the light of day nor his personal pique have become a topic of national debate if the State butted out of an area where it can do only harm.
If we want to restore the "civil" in "civil society," citizens should recognize who is primarily responsible for promoting hatred and anger in our culture. Understandably, most people resent when others -- especially those who know nothing of their lives -- dictate what they may or may not do. Yet when it comes to "public" issues such as educational policy, those same people have no compunction forcing others via the coercive power of the State to act as the majority decides.
Perhaps someday Americans will learn to look to the State -- not to constrain the behavior of those with whom they disagree -- but to protect the rights of all people...including themselves.
