A thought on "Separation of Church and State"

From my Constitution class on Coursera.

This weeks lectures were on the First Amendment. I had many thoughts about the whole week, but I wanted to bring one up here.

They were talking about removing prayer from public schools in the 60's (which were only added in the late 40's and 50's) and people's reaction to it. "the Catholic cardinal of New York blasted the justices for crippling the 'very heart of the godly tradition in which America's children have so long been raised.' " I have a problem with that. In the past, parent's raised children, not schools. If you want to raise your children in a godly tradition (as I have chosen to do myself), then don't send them to public schools. Find a private school that teaches in your religion, or teach them yourself as people have done for thousands of years.

The problem is that secular state/government has taken over the role of parent. They've brainwashed everyone into thinking you need a professional trained by the state to educate children. It's just not true. If you can read, write, and do basic math, then you are perfectly capable of passing that along to another human being. With the internet and public libraries, there is no excuse for anyone not to that wants to. If you want your children raised a specific way, then raise them yourself. Don't send them off to a publicly funded institution and expect them to do things your way.

Thoughts from my Constitution Class Reading

"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties." - John Milton

And from my text book Chapter 6, "These cases, however, gradually introduced a new perspective on the value of free speech in a democracy, namely, the belief that truth is best reached by the free trade of ideas." (emphasis mine)

Free speech. The First Amendment to the Constitution. I didn't realize how much the idea of what free speech is has changed over the last 200 years. And dramatically over the last 80 years. One of my thoughts as I read the last line quoted above was, "Of course truth is best reached by the free trade of ideas!" I guess it is a matter of how you view government.

If you believe government is created to guide and protect the people, to control and move the people in better directions, then the free trade of ideas would be very bad. People may sway other people to follow them, or change the way they feel about something the government (in its infinite wisdom) is doing.

If you believe government is created to serve the people, then the free trade of ideas is very good. The people themselves need to bat around new ideas to see if they stand up to criticism. They may be better than what we have now and make us stronger. We could try on some new ideas for a while but find them unhelpful and discard them. But it is up to the people themselves.

And as for John Milton's quote, well, I think people generally don't want this anymore. They may want to know truth, but they don't want to work towards it. They want it handed to them by someone else. It doesn't work that way. Truth and enlightenment should be one of our first goals in life, not something we try to get to if we have time after the dishes, the tv show, or baseball game. Is that just me?