We’ve all got our hot-button issues, experiences deeply embedded in our subconscious minds that political candidates can trip by what they say–for good or bad. Quote Bobby Kennedy on poverty, I’m there with you. Works every time; I’m like Pavlov’s dog. What makes me bite the furniture? Candidates who promise, as two did within my earshot last week, that they’ll defend our right to hang the Ten Commandments on the classroom wall. Bless me, Father, I’m about to chew something.
Yes, it’s an odd one to get so worked up about, I suppose. And let me hasten to say, in case I ever run for dog catcher myself and these words are found by my worthy opponent, I am not–let the record show–against the Ten Commandments on classroom walls. I’m all for hanging them in parochial schools (they were there in mine, right next to Jesus and the Virgin Mary). Hang lessons from the Koran, the Torah, Confucius, whatever you want. It’s a free country. In the public schools, go ahead and hang the Ten Commandments and the Koran and the Torah and any other religious texts that are relevant to the study–the study, not the practice–of religion. There is no law whatsoever against doing that, the Supreme Court is fine with it, and there’s no need to defend our rights in this regard. They ain’t under attack.
I’m open to argument about taxes, trade, drugs, even school vouchers. (Note to the teachers association: I am firmly against vouchers, however. I have never said a word in their favor, and I never, ever will. See above.)
On just about every issue, hey, I’m a liberal–I can see other points of view. But a few matters once in dispute are now settled, in my opinion. The Earth is not flat. Evolution is a theory, and creationism–so far–isn’t. (Theories, based on observable facts, are what education is all about.) And in America, unlike Iraq or Iran, people do not have a God-given right to impose their religious tenets on everyone else’s kids. It’s right in the Constitution, you could look it up. When candidates say they do, and they’ll defend it from the heathens, I hear voices down deep inside of me saying, laddie, where’s that wood? Can’t they think of real problems to worry about, or is it only that they can’t think of any real answers? In the auld country, my people were in the religious minority and damn near got wiped out in the potato famine because of it. Come to think of it, I’m in the minority here, too, I guess.
Thank you. I’m Bob Geary, and I paid for this negative ad with the unflattering picture of certain candidates. And I paid for the broomstick I’m chewing on as well.
