During the past few weeks we’ve talked a lot about keeping government out of our personal lives. This is a key element that protects our liberty. If you ask someone whether the government should interfere in their private affairs I would say that 99 percent of the time, the answer will be “absolutely not.”
Unfortunately, the devil is in the details. If we accept the premise that government intervention in our personal affairs is a bad thing we have to accept the fact that we are not going to be happy about the choices that some people will make with that freedom.
Let’s start with a hot topic.
Religion.
There has been a lot of discussion lately about the separation of church and state as defined by the framers of the constitution. Keep in mind that many of these folks had fled England because of the religious persecution being inflicted on Protestants by the Church of England. They had first-hand experience with the evils of a theocracy and were determined not to let that happen here. Most of the founding fathers had deep religious beliefs and it’s obvious that the influence of those beliefs were called upon as they crafted our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. But having been a “minority” group themselves they wisely decided that the roles of government and religion should not cross in order to protect minority rights.
What this means is that there is no state sponsored or endorsed religion in this country. It means, in the same way that pro-life folks don’t want their tax dollars used to fund abortions, members of minority religious groups don’t want their tax dollars used to support religious expression in publicly owned facilities. While it sounds harmless to have prayer in school, is it right to force someone to financially support the preaching of a morality they may not agree with? Or to require your children to be taught things that you find objectionable? We are a free country. If you want your children to have religious instruction you can send them to parochial school, church or do it in your home. Quite frankly, we don’t need God in our schools but in our hearts.
There are numerous examples of what happens to a nation that allows religion to influence government. Iran is the first that comes to mind. Government policy is strictly set by the religious clerics and government officials are in office only if they follow the directives of the religious establishment. I guess that’s great if you are in the majority but you probably wouldn’t want to be Christian in that country.
I know that sometimes it seems extreme (no Christmas trees, winter break instead of Christmas recess, etc.) but once you cross the line it’s a pretty slippery slope.
As a final note, I would like to apologize for an error I made in a previous article. I wrote about an Internet letter that was going around regarding members of Congress. I received the letter from someone who has generally been a reliable source so I didn’t take the time to verify the contents. My bad. It’s something I’m usually pretty careful about but it was getting close to deadline and I took a shortcut. It turns out that the letter was an Internet hoax and had a great deal of misinformation in it. Next week, I will correct those errors and have a frank discussion on what’s really going on in Congress these days along with a discussion on how to fix it.
Mayor Jon Shevelew
