Conservatives, in their ongoing bid to keep government out of people's lives, made sweeping changes to the Texas curriculum yesterday. My guess is their aim is to keep people in Texas (already stupid for re-electing Rick Perry) as dumb as humanly possible.
What is at the heart of this problem? Some conservatives feel like the line of separation of church and state should be a little more blurry:
The contentious decision in curriculum standards for U.S. government classes appeared to signal the unhappiness of several board members with court rulings that have affirmed the separation of church and state – including a longtime ban on school-sponsored prayer.
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Knight said all she was trying to do in her proposal was to let students study the First Amendment language that states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." A succession of court rulings have relied on that language to uphold the separation of church and state in a section of the Bill of Rights referred to as the "Establishment Clause." But many religious conservatives – including a board-appointed curriculum expert – contend that separation of church and state was established in the law only by activist judges and not the Constitution or Bill of Rights.
Yeah. "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion" is fraught with ambiguity.
If you want to see what the combination religion and politics will get you, I invite you to visit the World Trade Center.
