Plato's Republic

[Justin Schwartz]

I grew up as a Jew in the '60s South where the public schools taught Jesus 
Saves. Let me tell you it was a lot of fuin being the class Christ-killer. 
You can take your class basis and put it where the sun don't shine. There is 
nothing NOTHING illiberal about telling the public schools that they may not 
promote a particular religion. Nor is it illiberal to say that public tax 
money should not be used to promore religiosity. Whom does that coerce? Give 
me a fucking a break. What's coercive is to have the state support 
religion--not that it doesn't already through tax braeks. Liberalism is 
hated because every faantic thinks he knows what's right for everyone else, 
and making concessions to that isn't going make libearlsim less hated, it's 
just goingto undermine liberalism. As you know, I don't tolerate Clintonian 
compromises. Write me down as a hard-line, brass-bottomed, nickle-plated 
fundamentalsit ACLUnik. I'm proud to be hated for that.

jks


>From: "Nathan Newman" <nathan at newman.org>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Subject: Re: Plato's Republic
>Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 17:43:54 -0400
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Brad DeLong" <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU>
>
> >So is public education a form of coercion?
>
>-Damned right--and a good one, too! People must be Taught to be
>-Liberal if the necessary political regime to Force Them to be Free is
>-to be stable.
>
>Well and honestly said.  And a big reason why many of the religious have
>turned against a host of related liberal values.   The Establishment Clause
>decisions of the 60s came at a high tide of secularism and were followed, I
>don't think coincidentally, by a massive upsurge in religious mobilization.
>
>Liberalism cannot be imposed and by its nature builds allies by its
>practice, not its dictates.  Those times when liberalism seeks supremacy by
>illiberal means and coercive means is where it loses most decisively.
>
>I think the secularism cases, reflecting the class nature of the secular
>elite, is rightly resented for its coercion and has been largely
>counterproductive.
>
>-- Nathan Newman
>

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