Retired educator Rich Migliore knows that the current rightwing demands for censorship violate the Constitution. Sadly, the current Supreme Court seems determined to obliterate the long-honored tradition of separation of church and state, creating a breach into which religious zealots are eagerly pushing their creeds. The high court has signaled through several of its recent decisions that at least five, possibly six, of its members are willing to eviscerate that separation.
He writes:
Freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and the freedom to read books of our choice are among our most precious human rights. And the freedom from having other people’s religion and beliefs imposed upon us is among our basic human rights as a free people. That is why they were placed first in the Bill of Rights.
When we allow others to impose their religion and beliefs upon us we cease to be a free people. May I again quote from my favorite Supreme Court Opinion issued in the year that I graduated from high school.
“The vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools.” Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District; U.S. Supreme Court (1969), (quoting Justice Brennan in Keyishian v. Board of Regents.
“The classroom is peculiarly the ‘marketplace of ideas.’ The nation’s future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth ‘out of a multiple of tongues, (rather) than through any kind of authoritative selection.”
Our founders wisely separated church and state. And the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process clause protects our liberty interest in freedom of thought, freedom of belief and freedom of religion.
We do not give up those rights “when we cross the school house gates.” Nor do our children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I guess I harp on language because I think there are a few of you out there who see my point. This post is inadvertently illustrative of my view. What is so disturbing to me, and why I continue to be extremely pessimistic about our future as a polity, is that you can read any screed on the the right complaining about how their language and rights are being restricted by the Left, using exactly the same language. There are numerous public statements by the most extreme public fascists that are very similar to this post, using eerily similar language.
The difference is that one side is sincere and describing an actual state of affairs with facts and visual experience. The other uses exactly the same rhetoric with a meaning 180 degrees opposite. This allows the cult to diminish and make meaningless any comparative, descriptive political language upon which politics and governing can function in a pluralistic society. I could take the same piece above and make it support a reality that has nothing to do with its initial intent. Making this language meaningless makes it easier enforce laws with any goal in mind, whatever its letter may supposedly dictate.
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Exhibit A from the legislative leader of the cult:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?519821-1/representative-marjorie-taylor-greene-news-conference-free-speech
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GregB,
In 1990, I was invited to lecture about democracy at the Ministry of Education in Warsaw. This was shortly after the collapse of the Soviet regime. I spoke about rights and freedoms. Afterwards, a very intelligent woman who spoke excellent English told me that the Soviet overseers could have given the same speech with the same language. The only difference, she said, was that I think you were sincere.
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Your experience mirrors many of mine (and countless analogous stories from others) as I traveled many times to East Germany in my youth and early adulthood. One of the things that’s so hard to convey to young people today is the stark differences between worlds that existed then, literally side-by-side. I’m guessing the frustration I feel is akin to the adults of my youth trying to explain what the Depression was really like. And as we see with republicans and events as recent as Jan 6 and Covid, they can’t (won’t) even remember that history accurately, much less be able to describe what it was really like (remember when the afternoon celebrations of hospital workers in NYC and how good that made us feel for a few moments? republicans don’t and won’t even admit it happened). I miss the good old days when liberal punk like me and a cracker like Jesse Helms could even find a little common ground on foreign policy.
And thank you for understanding the intent of my comment.
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Or this goodie: “Are republicans doing enough to ensure free and fair elections.”
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NPR (6-4-2023) posted a story about right wing politicians like Ohio’s Frank LaRose who have withdrawn their states from the Electronic Registration Information Center. The Center is aimed at voter integrity. One of the people prominent in driving red states out of the Center is Cleta Mitchell who is linked to Charles Koch. J. Christian Adams has been a loud of critic of ERIC. Cory Byrd, Florida’s Secretary of State, an ally of DeSantis, is also mentioned in the article. Byrd is a graduate of the conservative Catholic University of St. Thomas.
A reporter, Anne Nelson wrote (8-26-2022) ,”A Rare Peak Inside the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.” The article identifies funding for a Council on National Policy event as coming from Koch’s Heritage Foundation. Cleta Mitchell is described as CNP’s election expert. J. Christian Adams is identified as a member of CNP. Also listed is Carrie Campbell Severino, president of Judicial Crisis Network. The following was written about her, “Severino convened a ‘war room’ of Catholic and CNP organizations after the death of Ginsberg.”
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But, it’s often practiced, that if you can’t vote, then, you don’t have a voice. Think, if children get a say in their own, education, would they be learning, what they’re, learning in school right now? Of course not, because, the politicians are the ones who decide, what is taught in the, public, school systems, and, not all of us, are, rich enough, to, send our children into those, high-end, private, schools. And, most parents aren’t, attentive enough, to, vote for the schooling policies which are, beneficial, to, their own, young…
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Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, even if they may be feuding, represent (the behavior and thinking) of the extreme religious evangelical fundamentals driving the threat to our constitutional rights.
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Lloyd,
Greene and Boebert are typical of the fanatics who want the US to be declared “a Christian nation.” Defying the Founding Fathers.
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Raw Story 6-4-2023
“A former Tennessee Senate majority leader (R) blamed the state’s failure to expand Medicaid in 2020….the pivotal bill
‘single-handedly torpedoed’ by a Kansas City bishop.”
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I just watched an interview with James Comey. Even though Comey has been a life-long Republican, he said he will be voting for Job Biden because he is the only candidate that believes in the rule of law. That’s the sad state of the GOP.
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Right. But the cold fact is that many in power or who seek power don’t care. The Republicans have mostly lost any idealism, and they just say or do whatever gets them funding from their doners–who are often very wealthy people or groups–and endorsement from political action committees. Having severely compromised the electronic media by eliminating the Fairness Doctrine (requirement to cover “both” sides), Republicans now seek to eliminate PUBLIC, free education–or capture it for their purposes of propaganda. None of this is new, but it is the result of over 40 years of Republican extremism. To do otherwise, Republicans would have to develop some set of ideals and ideas of how to govern better than the Democrats without the government programs favored by Democrats and progressives. In short, Republicans can’t win by saying what they are really for–more money and power for the rich–so they try to control and scare enough voters to win. To counter this we must COMMUNICATE! And that includes communicating with folks in the hinterlands as well as the cities and coastal regions.
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“The Republicans have mostly lost any idealism…”
Mostly?
What ideals do they still have?
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Hate, cruelty, and division leading to favoritism seems to be an ideal. I mean, ideals don’t have to be good. Bill Gates, Elizabeth Holmes, and any republican in office comes to mind immediately.
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Well, if we’re going to be precise, we can’t know any person’s “ideals”–i.e. beliefs. We don’t know what anyone “thinks,” we only know what they do. So we have a Cheney opposing he fellow Republicans in a strong but politically dangerous way. What are Liz Cheney’s ideals? In Ohio, we have past Republican Governors Taft and Kasick opposing a Republican effort in the state to make it harder for citizens to change the Ohio Constitution–which they are trying to do so as to ban abortions and do other things as they might with their strong, gerrymandered control of the Legislature. We can find other examples; A dying John McCain showing up to vote to save “Obamacare,” Romney voting to remove Trump during impeachment. Etc. Politics, as life, is nuanced. Republicans often seem to understand that better than Democrats.
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Thank you Diane for using the quote that I posted. It is dear to my heart for several reasons. I encourage everyone to read the case. It is an excellent Opinion and very relevant to what is happening in our schools today.
“Tinker” is a First Amendment freedom of speech case where a group of public school students were suspended by their administration because they wore black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam war. When the principals got wind of their students’ plan, they adopted a policy where the students would be asked to remove it, and if the student refused, he or she would be suspended until he returned without the arm band. John Tinker, 15 years old, and a friend were suspended. He and his little sister filed a complaint for an injunction prohibiting the policy. They eventually prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Book banning is a big issue in our state and festering in the Central Bucks County School District. So are other constitutional issues. In today’s Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer, the newspaper published an op-ed by two students at Central Bucks H.S. about the hostility they were experiencing because of the hostile climate at their high school towards LGBTQ students.
I taught reading for 20 years at University City H.S. in Philadelphia for twenty years and taught English and Law a couple years after that. There was no subject or issue which went undiscussed and unread about in my classroom and in our schoolhouse between and among the faculty as well. No one told me what to teach or how to teach it. As a reading teacher I found books, stories and articles that were interesting, meaningful and inspirational to my students. We read law cases in my law class and in my reading classes like Brown v. Board of Education. We had our books and our curriculum, but they were not limiting. We had our moral compasses in our hearts and in our minds.
I began my teaching career in 1975 at the tail end of the civil rights era. Today, those very same civil rights are being attacked. I recently spoke with one of my black colleagues from back at “Uni” who was also a colleague when we were administrators. I said to her, “Lydia, I thought we settled this stuff back in our day! What has happened to us?”
I revisited and cited Tinker because I now represent a teacher who taught at Constitution High in Philadelphia. He stood up for his students during the pandemic and fought to have them returned to school as soon as possible because of the harm they were experiencing from not being in their school. When he challenged the District’s covid surveillance testing plan because of its incompetence, he was immediately fired in violation of his teacher tenure rights.
Yes, Constitution High is right next to Independence Hall where our Constitution was signed and our Democracy was born, right by the U.S. Constitution Center, and right down the street from the Liberty Bell. Constitution High is in the Heart of the birthplace of our Democracy.
We do see the irony of the moment, don’t we?
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Enjoyed this. Only thing I would amend is that we’re way past irony at the point. That I can deal with. But about half of the U.S. can’t.
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Cute!
Tonight at America’s Town Hall at the National Constitution Center in Philly the topic is entitled — The State of Free Expression in the U.S. and Abroad.
I mean — ironically speaking.
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Rich,
I fear that if the Tinker case went to the current SCOTUS, the ruling would be different.
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That would be a possibility. I am just now reading the case again. There are several great quotes and legal principles pertaining to our First Amendment rights in public schools discussed in it.
Interestingly, in my client’s teacher tenure case, he wanted to have his Covid surveillance tests conducted through his doctor and a licensed, competent testing practitioner. The company that the Philadelphia School District hired to test his students and the teachers made him and his students consent to giving up all rights to the test results. Instead of allowing him to do so, the administration placed him on forced leave without pay and then dismissed him without compliance with the mandatory due process procedures in Pennsylvania.
As I was writing in my brief that it was a violation of his and his students’ right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, voila, an email popped up on my IMac exclaiming, “Roe v. Wade overturned!” “No constitutionally protected right to privacy to have an abortion.” It was shocking.
So this simple little dispute over covid surveillance testing has now turned into a major legal dispute over the constitutional rights of teachers in our public schools.
Just last week, we had our oral argument before the Pennsylvania Secretary of Education’s hearing officer. The Secretary will decide the case.
Sparks flew during that argument. I am passionate when it comes to student and teacher rights.
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Education Vouchers: The issue of family choice in American Education” (1986). Master’s Thesis accepted, University of New Orleans. In 1986 I completed my Master’s Degree in the college of urban studies and public policy. The college of education did not, until the 90’s have a space for my thesis. The 1st Amendment and “Separation of Church and State” at that time “clearly” prevented a full blown Voucher System, I.e., as a means to do an end run around desegregation in the South, nor to let Evangelicals and Catholics fully participate! Ronald Reagan inspired Republicans have worked state by state, ALEC, for decades to change this! As was done in the country of Chile with Milton Friedman’s guidance, out of the University of Chicago.
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Good news is coming from Illinois.
Illinois becomes the first state to ban book bans
Gov. JB Pritzker this afternoon signed into law a measure that blocks state grant funding to public libraries and schools that don’t follow a set of guidelines for removing or restricting books, reports my colleague Alex Degman.
These institutions can craft their own guidelines or adhere to the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, a set of rules that says reading materials shouldn’t be removed or restricted due to “partisan or personal disapproval.”
“Book bans are about censorship, marginalizing people, marginalizing ideas and facts,” Pritzker declared at the Harold Washington Library, the crown jewel of Chicago’s public library system. “Regimes ban books, not democracies.”
Illinois’ law, which goes into effect next year, comes as efforts to ban books have skyrocketed in recent years, with conservatives mostly targeting books by or for LGBTQ+ people.
The American Library Association said there were 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since they began tracking data more than 20 years ago. [WBEZ]
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