Cal Thomas writes:
The decision by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III to bar the teaching of “intelligent design” in the Dover public school district on grounds it is a thinly veiled effort to introduce a religious view of the world’s origins is welcome for at least two reasons.
First, it exposes the sham attempt to take through the back door what proponents have no chance of getting through the front door. Judge Jones rebuked advocates of “intelligent design,” saying they repeatedly lied about their true intentions.
He noted many of them had said publicly that their intent was to introduce into the schools a biblical account of creation. Judge Jones properly wondered how people who claim to have such strong religious convictions could lie, thus violating prohibitions in the book they proclaim as their source of truth and standard for living.
This is false and true. True we shouldn’t lie. We ought to be up front. False, in that “proponents have no chance of getting through the front door,” a different perspective, religious, moral, or otherwise.
What Mr. Thomas neglects to say, when he goes on to promote homeschooling and private education as the only options to save this country, is that we have a right to freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, period. Our text book writers do, our administrators do, our teachers do, our students do – and on this ground alone, all perspectives ought to be open for debate, and just because the socialists have come thus far and crushed that debate, he is wrong that it shall always be this way.
We have rights, and we had better assert them or the same controls will soon be exercised over the private and homeschool. In fact, in many cases, they already have.
It’s time to take a stand, not act like a coward. Sorry Cal, you are dead wrong. Christians must not, and will not retreat.
You advised that we ought not look back to the past. Well, it was your generation, the past generation, whose lack of responsibility and guts put us in this mess. We won’t look back to that. We look forward to a more couragious and inspired exercise of our freedoms.
Centre Daily Times 12/28/2005 Best hope lies in private or home schools
