Yes, yes, that subtitle was a bit of an underhanded dig at a very old issue. But I do believe the thinking behind the knee-jerk reaction of conservatives to OBE (a tested and tried idea that actually works) is revealing about their worldview.
The title on your browser's title bar promises that I'll talk about an issue that is, at the moment, on the back burner in Washington. That means that we aren't hearing about it in the media, not that it isn't generating a lot of heat in D. C. But I want to consider the larger picture under which this has arrived.
I've heard a lot of talk about ideas and concepts not specifically mentioned in the constitution. A particular preacher has long criticized the term "a wall of separation between church and state." He says it isn't in the constitution. If you quit learning to read as soon as you could "bark at print" it isn't there. The religion clause of the first amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Here's how conservatives want to read and interpret the constitution.
As you can see, conservative constitutional interpretation is extremely narrow. This probably indicates a narrow mind. (More later.) That's part of their worldview. They seem to think human language is adequate for all expression and that ideas should never be enlarged upon. The rest of us recognize that "you have to take a Scotsman [constitutional author] for what he means, not what he says. The term "wall of separation" is an expression of a concept that helps us understand what the authors of the first amendment meant. It's a guideline for implementing the larger idea behind the words.
Here's where he really begins to get out of line. He tries to "prove" that the United States was originally a Christian nation. He's assuming that we don't know the difference between a Christian and a Deist. (Most of us don't because we've never met a Deist. Some would say we've probably never met a Christian either....) Deists believed in God, but they did not believe in Jesus Christ as God and they tended to be rather suspicious of most Christians. Probably the majority of the founding fathers were Deists.
This preacher also fails to mention two prominent founding fathers who were neither Christian nor Deist. Benjamin Franklin was an atheist who enjoyed all the benefits of his position as ambassador to France (if you catch my drift). And Thomas Paine was also an ardent atheist who wrote bitter diatribes against the Bible. The thinking of both of these men is reflected in this nation's Constitution and in its approach to religious liberty.
Most of us have at least heard of the "Golden Rule." It's expressed in Jesus' sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7). "In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 7:12 NIV) Jesus here expresses the concept of reciprocity. It's an idea conservatives allow only when it benefits them.
Reciprocity means that if you want to be able to choose to bring a child to term regardless of your ability to provide for it, you must also grant the right to others who believe that responsible parenting means NOT bringing the child into the world when your circumstances change. Reciprocity means that if you want to be able to send your child to a public institution of learning without that child being indoctrinated in other religions, you must also not seek to indoctrinate children in that institution with your own religion. Reciprocity means that if you choose to worship God on a day not authorized in the scriptures, you must allow others to practice things not authorized in scripture.
The "prohibiting free exercise" phrase in the first amendment means that the government should not make a law intended make life difficult for someone because of practices they believe they are required to perform by the universe's supreme being. It doesn't matter what "supreme being" is involved. For some today it is the human being him/herself. But woe to the jurist who interprets the first amendment in that way. They are now on the conservative hit list, judges to be replaced by narrow thinkers as soon as possible (even if you have to eliminate lifetime appointments).
Oops! Looks like I got into that currently dormant issue, the judicial filibuster. Like the wall of separation, the filibuster is not enshrined word for word in the Constitution. But there is a larger idea behind it that conservatives currently choose not to see. The founding fathers wisely understood the danger of mob rule. If the government were left solely to a majority vote, the majority could quickly become tyrannical in the extreme. That's why we have things like lifetime appointment of judges, separation of powers, a bicameral legislature, and so on.
The filibuster is a Senate institution designed to prevent abuse of majority power. When a particularly egregious abuse of power presents itself, the minority can block the action. Notice that the filibuster does NOT allow a minority to pass legislation, only to block it. Most conservatives pay lip service to the idea that we have too many laws already. So why are they so upset when someone tries to stop the creation of yet another law?!
Of course in this situation it's not laws that are being blocked; it's judicial nominees. Or is it? The role of the courts (something conservatives seem never to have grasped) is to interpret laws on the basis of the Constitution and to strike down laws that cannot be interpreted so as to pass constitutional muster. Strike down laws, eh? That's a good thing, isn't it? Yes, unless you like the law.
By the way, when the conservatives talk about a judicial crisis they're playing word games. If the current backlog of judicial nominees is a "crisis" the backlog during the Clinton years was absolute judicial mayhem. People keep forgetting that far more Clinton nominees went unconfirmed at this stage in his presidency than are currently unconfirmed in Bush's presidency.
Today's evangelical Christians are in a bind. They have been forced to agree that slavery was wrong. They've also been forced, reluctantly, it seems, to agree that the civil rights movement of the 1960s was just and honorable. But both of those were based on expanded interpretations of human rights as defined in the Constitution. Since they now wish to restrict your right to sin (yours only, not theirs) they want courts that will quit interpreting the Constitution so broadly.
I have come to the conclusion that humans, even Christians, will never completely agree on what the Bible means and therefore on what is and isn't sin. So the only way to live together in unity (Psalm 133) is to leave a large number of issues to personal choice. We don't have to agree with every action taken by other "Christians" and certainly not with those of non-Christians, but if we want to live together in peace we'll have to leave victimless crimes unpunished.
Granted that does bring up the definition of "victim." Conservatives today don't want people to think of themselves as victims. There's an obvious reason for that; their sins are NOT victimless. But it may be possible to narrow the definition of victim to something they can accept. Of course by reciprocity that means they'll have to narrow the list of activities they can define as criminal, but they'll just have to understand that the only sinners Jesus ever condemned were the religious conservatives of his day. Maybe they should become more like him.
Now since I mentioned OBE I guess I should say something about it and what I meant by it. The conservative worldview runs into problems when people start reading between the lines (for example, determining that a wall of separation is required to truly live up to the requirements of the first amendment). Narrow interpretation of reading material is required. That's easiest to do when reading is nothing more than "barking at print" (being able to say all the words on the page without really comprehending them or their meaning).
And that's where Outcomes Based Education ran into trouble with conservatives. OBE simply means that children progress when they can demonstrate that they have mastered the requirements of a certain level. This is not a radical idea. If you were involved in scouts or a similar organization then you've participated in outcomes based education. When you got your honor in knots you had to demonstrate knowledge about knots and the mechanical ability to tie some of them.
That's all that's meant by Outcomes Based Education. But conservatives live in abject fear that someone will teach the young people of this country to do more than bark at print. Someone just might teach them to see the issues behind the words, to question why someone thinks as they do, to imagine things that have not been and ask "Why not?" Those activities often lead to progress and change, the holy water that banishes conservatism.
So what did they do? The early proponents of OBE were, no surprise, liberal in their worldview. In promoting their ideas they drew up a potential list of outcomes to be included. They did NOT suggest (as a conservative certainly would have) that this list was mandatory, they only gave it as an example of how the system would work. So conservative leaders, quaking in their boots at the idea that public schools might actually turn out educated, thinking graduates, dug through that list to find outcomes they could twist to make them sound totally unacceptable to their political base. They told them these outcomes defined OBE, a bald-faced lie even accepting their twisted definition of the outcome.
No matter. The strategy worked, and the lap dog the media has become failed to bring up those lies when the conservatives set about to crucify Slick Willy on the basis that he lied.
But, you say, the political pendulum will eventually swing back toward the left. It might, if you accept the pendulum metaphor. But as I read the current political environment and Bible prophecy, by the time we determine that a return swing won't happen it will be too late to do anything about our liberties or about the level of intelligence applied to public issues. The two-horned beast will speak like a dragon and it will force worship on its half of the world. Too bad they'll be worshiping the anti-God force.