Conservative Donnybrook

I saw this story on one of the news channels the other day and thought of LTG. We have had a number of sparring bouts over the role of parents versus the role the of the State. This story is interesting because the State is recognizing the rights of the parent (and every right carries with it a corresponding duty) to provide for his child’s education. Unfortunately for Mr. Gegner, he was found in dereliction of his duty to educate his daughter when she failed the mathematics section of her General Education Development exam. Mr. Gegner was charged with “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” after the court had ordered him to see that his daughter passed the exam. She had a previous history of truancy.

If, as LTG likes to point out, a child’s education is entirely within the purview of the parents, isn’t this an appropriate ruling? With the right, comes the responsibility. Of course, the flipside is: If the onus were on the State to educate the child, would then the delinquency of this minor fall upon her public school teachers? As tempting as it is for me to endorse that outcome, I find both results absurd. After all, the world needs ditch diggers too.

Share This

This afternoon my wife and I went to see Ben Stein’s documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. As one reviewer pointed out, one’s opinion of the film is almost guaranteed to be determined by one’s stance on the Evolutionism v. Intelligent Design “debate.”

The point of the film is not whether ID is superior to Evolutionism, but rather that the mere suggestion that ID might provide some explanation as to the origins of life is strictly verboten in academic and scientific circles. Stein introduces his viewers to several scientists who have been drummed out of their positions because they had the audacity to mention Intelligent Design in their research.

One proponent of evolutionism, William Provine, an avowed atheist science historian at Cornell University, objected to the teaching of intelligent design in part on the basis that it’s “BOOOORING. I can’t think of any topic that is more BOOOORING!” Of course, when asked about the origins of life, Provine posited that aliens might have seeded life on this planet, deftly pushing back the question one generation (How did the seed scattering aliens come to exist, Professor Provine?).

Perhaps no single point shows that Stein was not attempting to advocate for the Intelligent Design position than the fact that Stein did not interview Michael Behe, a microbiologist whose book Darwin’s Black Box I found to provide much evidentiary support for intelligent design. Behe’s argument proceeded by examining the simplest of life forms, a single celled creature, and examined it at the microbiological level. At that level there are mechanisms (Behe uses a flagella as one example) that are incredibly complex structurally and functionally such that they could not have evolved happenstance. He coined the term “irreducible complexity”: Take away any of the structure’s complexity and it would cease to function and therefore would not confer an advantage which would be selected for. Indeed, extra baggage which provided no function would put the organism at a disadvantage, which Darwin predicted would ultimately cause its extinction. Critics of Behe have noted that some of the proteins that make up some of these structures that Behe used as examples occur in other contexts within the cell, however, that still fails to account for their combination into a specific structure which is much more complex than the joining of a few proteins randomly.

Continue Reading »

Share This

Mr. Martinez has an excellent article on taking the Catholic out of Catholic colleges and universities.  A number, in fact all, of the authors of this site at some point attended exceptional Catholic educational facilities.  Will the Pope address this concerning issue?  Will American Catholic educational institutions continue their fall from grace?

Find out next time on “The Pope Pontificates” or “Benedict Benefits America!”

Share This

SCOTLAND - A large number of preschools have adopted a zero-tolerance policy on the despicable act of toddlers playing with toy guns and pretending to shoot their classmates. In addition, administrators and teachers have discouraged superhero play which, they say, leads to fighting and aggression. However, Penny Holland, a social science experimenter (i.e. she messes with your kids to see what happens), recently concluded, “If children are constantly being told no, we don’t play with guns here’, they absorb the sense that they’re bad. They may seek negative attention and in the end the whole thing becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.

“A ban won’t stop them playing violent games. When the guns and swords are taken away they simply do what children have always done - make weapons out of twigs and Sticklebricks.”

Well, of course, the last thing we want to do is to dent these kids’ fragile self-esteem especially when it results in self-perpetuating cycles. Children should NEVER think they are bad. Even when they’re bad.

I think what’s really interesting about these “findings” is that when you outlaw (toy) guns in the classroom, only the outlaw children will turn their fingers into guns. Besides, if you can’t have fake guns, what are you supposed to do with the Indians once you catch them? Talk sternly to them? They’re already onto the whole make-a-treaty-with-them routine. Maybe we should just learn about the environment from them.

Ellen Donald, a nursery school administrator said, “We divert their attention away from this type of fighting and role play which they see on TV, on programmes like Batman and Superman, and provide them with a lot of curriculum activities which include running, jumping, tumbling. Children just want to run and roll about. They just need to play and vent all their energy.”  Well, sure, running and jumping and tumbling, but when they catch up to the bad guy they will want to shoot them or at least beat them up so as to make the world (or at least Scotland) safe for Truth, Justice and the American (or Scottish, in this case) Way.

Share This

I have posted this in response to Karl’s post on the recent homeschooling case in California. While I do not agree with Karl’s assertion that this case turns on the 1st Amendment’s Free Exercise clause, I have chosen to analyze the issue from this standpoint.  In all reality, the issue is further muddled by the application of the Free Exercise clause.  I will not attempt to analyze the case as thoroughly as would be required under a claim of religious intolerance as this would require me to discuss the test for religion in the first instance, valid beliefs in the second and so on.  Instead, I will simply tackle the issue from an over simplistic legal perspective accepting Karl’s First Amendment premise.

The free exercise of religion is a right guaranteed by the 1st Amendment.  Many Supreme Court cases have demonstrated the importance of this clause.  In deciding cases based on a claim of free exercise, the Court traditionally applied a compelling interest test.  The Court also has expressed that facially neutral laws will not be subject to heightened or special scrutiny. 

Following the decision in Employment Division v. Smith, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. (P.L. 103-141).  The RFRA required courts to apply strict scrutiny to cases involving government regulation and restrictions on the free exercise of religion.  Both the left and the right sides of the aisle joined hands to sing Kumbaya and celebrate their victory.  Yet the song was not long lived.  The Act was struck down as a violation of the Separation of Powers doctrine.    Continue Reading »

Share This