PROVEN LEADERSHIP

Home

Columns

Know what, we're on the front lines! Not Afghanistan, of course, but of the culture wars! Part of that battle was recently fought on the Newton County School Board: the issue of what to call that well known break at the end of December ignited tempers and rhetoric.

Both sides brought in reinforcements to argue their case. Both sides misbehaved. Some "call it Christmas" supporters made impassioned pleas on purely religious grounds, which only entrenched their opposition. The "call it anything else" side didn't do so well either, vaulting easily into the realm of the ridiculous with an accusation of "anti-semitism."

Shouting aside, this front of the culture wars is particularly interesting, because it involves a seeming conflict between several of the great founding principles of our nation. Even more interesting is how a look below the surface makes the apparent conflict begin to fade.

The first principle in question is the idea that governments should serve the needs and desires of the people, and not the other way around. Well, democracy is our means of doing this, and democracy is driven by majorities. It's a plain and simple fact that a significant majority of Newton's citizens celebrate Christmas, for religious or secular reasons, and refer to the break by that name. That's why the break exists to begin with. Were Newton peopled by Buddhists, I suspect there'd be an altogether different break schedule.

Now, first at bat for the Principles in Conflict team is protection of minorities. The founding fathers nearly had a complex over the idea of a "tyranny of the majority" (after they'd witnessed the French Revolution, can you blame them?). It was this fear of froth at the mouth mob rule that dominated much of their design of the U.S. Constitution. While the document's main goal is creating government for benefit of the governed, it spends most of its time creating structures to control rambunctious majorities. Checks and balances, judicial oversight, nearly the whole Bill of Rights: there are numerous tools for keeping majorities from inflicting any real harm on political minorities. And we all know that subsequent centuries have brought a dramatic expansion of such controls, as well as of the definition of minorities to protect. Point is, the options left open to a school board, an entity mighty low on the totem pole of power, are profoundly constrained. If a power is still available to this body, it's probably quite tame. To argue that naming a break, a rather toothless act of calling a spade a spade, is injurious - well, let's just say it begs the limits of credulity.

The other presumed principle in conflict is separation of church and state. The First Amendment puts it thus: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Subsequent generations have bemoaned the brevity of this statement, wishing for a more extensive guidebook of intent. Yet one distinction does stand out pretty clearly: active measures are the no no. Government shouldn't force a particular religion on you, nor should it restrain you from practicing one.

Unmentioned in those phrases are passive measures - acts which merely recognize or accommodate the current state of practiced faith. The U.S. Congress understands; "In God We Trust" is still the national motto, and "one nation under God" is still in the Pledge of Allegiance. What more, this distinction is the ground that allows us to pursue George W. Bush's faith based initiative. Coming back home, dubbing a break "Christmas" surely doesn't force anyone to practice Christianity, nor does it sunder anyone from the exercise of their own faith. It is passive in the extreme.

So, having viewed the collapse of the supposed "conflict" which has superficially fueled this debate, what's left? To what "principle" do we ascribe the victory of the contra-Christmas advocates? To none other than our modern literary plague, the liberal flavor-of-the-moment, Political Correctness. Isn't it wonderful that such idiocy is driving our public policy?

Copyright ã, Douglas Holt, 2001