School choice, the code word behind the battle to break the monopoly of the public schools, has begun in earnest. Long in the political shadows, the recent election and confirmation as Secretary of Education of a pro-school choice advocate, Betsy DeVos, has moved it into the light.
Religious Americans, in particular, have been and are still the victims of the prejudice behind our country's public educational system. They have been bamboozled by the phrase "separation of church and state," and the erroneous belief that it means our tax monies cannot and should not be used to support an education that includes instruction in one's religion. First, the phrase "separation of church and state" is nowhere found in our United States Constitution.
There have been many articles and posts in the last several days on the student mob who prevented Charles Murray from speaking at Middlebury College, the elite Vermont school where tuition runs $61,000 a year. Mr. Murray is a highly distinguished political scientist, sociologist, and author. He is also a Fellow at the influential conservative think tank, American Enterprise Institute. His books enrage many progressives, not the least because they contain reams of data, which make his arguments hard to refute. The extreme left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) condemns Mr. Murray, so we know that he is doing something right. The SPLC calls him a "white nationalist," which is totally nonsensical as Mr. Murray has multi-racial children.
While the Middlebury mob (and many in the Academy) considered themselves doing the public a service by preventing Mr. Murray from speaking, because he represents the alleged fascists in the current Trump administration, the mob of students are the real fascists. Let us dial back 84 years to Nazi Germany where undesirable books were consigned to the flames.
