In a current Supreme Court case, Michael Newdow has challenged
the constitutionality of reading the Pledge of Allegiance in
public schools. Newdow, an atheist, argues that the pledge’s
reference to America as “one nation, under God,” constitutes
governmental establishment of religion. The Bush administration
counters that the pledge is “a patriotic exercise, not
a religious testimonial,” and should be allowed.
This might seem to be a trivial case. But
as part of a “culture
war” between the religious Right and the secular Left,
it has taken on an ominous significance. Both sides have demonstrated
naked hostility to the independent mind: the Right, by its
desire to force school-aged children to profess religious belief;
the
Left, by its demands for governmental support for secular ideas.
The First Amendment established what Thomas
Jefferson termed a “wall of separation” between
Church and State—a
deliberate break with the then-standard European practice of
establishing an official church by governmental edict and supporting
it by taxes. The purpose of Church/State separation was to
protect the right to disagree in matters of religion: to ensure
that
the power of the government would never be used to force a
person to profess or support a religious idea he does not agree
with.
Government officials may make, as individuals, whatever religious
pronouncements they wish, but they may not use the power of
the government to promote their ideas.
On religion or any other topic, an individual’s
ideas are the matter of his own mind, decided by the application
(or misapplication)
of his own rational faculty. To force a man to adhere to a
particular doctrine is to subvert the very faculty that makes
real agreement
possible and meaningful, and thereby to paralyze the mechanism
for recognizing truth. The kind of forced “agreement” obtained
by governmental edict is every bit as meaningless as was the
Iraqis’ “love” for Saddam.
Yet it is precisely this kind of forced
agreement that the political Right seeks, through its support
of religion. The
Pledge of Allegiance
is a perfect example: in 1954, when Congress replaced its original
language, “one nation indivisible” with “one
nation, under God,” then-President Eisenhower expressed
pride that “millions of our school children will daily
proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse,
the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.” This
can only mean the attempt to demand religious agreement by
the power of the government, which means ultimately “agreement” at
gunpoint. Whether this premise is implemented by means of a
nativity scene on public property, prayer in public schools,
or the Ten
Commandments in a public courthouse, government is dictating
the contents of the individual’s mind.
The political Left has properly condemned
governmental support of religious ideas, but at the same time,
it demands that taxpayers
support secular ideas via a number of agencies such as the
National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. If the Right’s
attempt to impose religion by force is destructive of intellectual
freedom, the Left’s demand that taxpayers support their
ideas is also contemptuous of the intellect. Liberals do not
care whether you or I in fact agree with or approve of the
ideas and images our tax dollars support—be they the
latest collection of paint splotches or a Madonna smeared with
elephant dung—just
as long as we hand over our taxes. Thus, our minds have been
rendered irrelevant, our agreement or disagreement pointless,
as long as we serve as cash cows for the “artist” or “intellectual” to
exploit.
Conservatives, who properly argue against
public support for secular ideas, endorse the use of publicly
funded institutions
to promote religious ideas. Liberals, who properly object to
religious displays on public property, advocate public funding
for their pet ideas. It’s politics without mirrors: each
group feels free to attack its opponents for violating rights,
as long as they don’t have to notice that they are committing
the exact same crime.
This so-called “Culture War” is
actually a war against the individual mind. It is a particularly
dirty kind
of war,
with both sides of the political spectrum vying for the right
to enslave the minds of legally disarmed victims, and to do
it by means of money expropriated from the victims themselves.
The
only way to end this war is to re-assert the First Amendment,
with its guarantee of intellectual freedom. And the only
way to do that is to get government out of the business of
supporting
ideas.
Robert Garmong, Ph.D. in philosophy, is a writer for the
Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. Send reactions to
reaction@aynrand.org
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