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education and schooling First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

Target: Government Schools

Former Attorney General William Barr gave a rather stark appraisal of the current politico-​cultural moment, last Saturday.

Speaking at a Christian conference in Chicago, Bill Barr said that our “whole civilization” is “under sustained attack by increasingly secular forces.”

Certainly, the western tradition in which we live is “Judeo-​Christian,” yet the explicitly religious aspect of our civilization is openly mocked and undermined by major progressive institutions. But is the civilization itself under attack?

Well, if you lean left you might say No. 

To others, the “woke” mob that dominatesso many major organizations in America is foursquare against freedom of speech and religion, and by demanding ideological conformity on a number of issues like sexual identity and racial “equity,” seems determined to re-​make society from the ground up, and have that work done under mob violence threat as well as corporate compliance and state command.

But especially interesting is what Barr said was the foundation for today’s secular revolutionaries: the public schools. 

“The variety of American beliefs now makes a monopoly on education untenable,” Barr argued, as quoted by The Federalist. “You can’t finesse it anymore. You can’t pretend what’s being taught in schools is compatible with traditional religion, nor can you pretend schools are neutral any more.”

This radical a critique of government schooling is something I used to hear only from libertarians. Barr’s advocacy of school choice is not as cautious as Republicans would advance decades ago. His is an attack on government-​run schools as such: the constitutional and existential crisis in American education requires,Barr said, a direct attack upon the government monopoly over the provision of education.

The culture war just ramped up a notch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 


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folly ideological culture

Swedish “Generosity”

The headline? Gaspworthy: “World’s First Lesbian Bishop Calls for Church to Remove Crosses, To Install Muslim Prayer Space.”

Are we being punked? Onion-ized?

I checked: apparently not.

The place is the Seamen’s mission church in the eastern docks of Stockholm. The Church of Sweden’s local bishop challenged the mission’s priest with a what-​if: Suppose a Muslim came off the boats and wanted a place to pray?

Had the encounter been just a one-​off, we could shrug it off. But this is one latitudinarian cleric, and she didn’t let it go:

Calling Muslim guests to the church “angels,” the Bishop later took to her official blog to explain that removing Christian symbols from the church and preparing the building for Muslim prayer doesn’t make a priest any less a defender of the faith. Rather, to do any less would make one “stingy towards people of other faiths.”

Generosity über alles strikes again!

I’ve long wondered about radicals who infiltrate religions. If you don’t like Catholicism, join or start something else; if you find the Baptist Conventions opprobrious, check out the Methodism, Greek Orthodoxy, or … Thelema. Why horn in on someone else’s religion?

But there is a reason it’s happening in the city that gave us “Stockholm Syndrome.” The Church of Sweden’s a state institution, while Scandinavia’s real religion is secular progressivism. You need no gift of prophecy to see where that’s bound to go.

Separation of church and state just makes sense. To each religion its own. There need be no fighting for adherents, or laying down of one’s own beliefs merely to appeal to “inclusion.”

Unless or until you get the government involved.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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