A student answers the theocratic right

Jim Higtower -  An essential part of our children’s education is learning proper moral behavior. And who better to deliver that ethical guidance than politicians?

Huh? Bizarre, yet this is the conclusion of the GOP’s theocratic Christian Nationalist faction. They are demanding that legislatures across the country must intervene in local educational policy to require that all public schools plaster every classroom with Christianity’s Ten Commandments. It’s in-your-face religiosity, forcing one religious dogma on students of every faith. It’s also ludicrously hypocritical – after all, legislators are notorious for committing adultery, stealing from the poor, killing in the name of the state, bearing false witness against immigrants, bowing down to false gods… and otherwise mocking the Christian religion’s own commandments. Who do these nationalists and their politicians think they’re fooling?

Certainly not America’s free-thinking students. If you wonder whether young people will just go along, take heart in the uplifting thoughts of Arjun Sharda, a high-school freshman in Round Rock, Texas. In a recent op-ed piece, he went right at the humbuggery of the state’s Republican leaders: “The same lawmakers who preach about freedom and limited government,” he wrote, “are now legislating what we must hang on our classroom walls... But faith loses its power when it’s forced. True belief comes from conviction, not compulsion… Texas prides itself in independence, yet this law enforces conformity.”

The Christian Nationalist autocrats are not only trying to turn public classrooms into their exclusive pulpits, but to establish their repressive theology as America’s official religion. As Sharda warns, “Texas should stop confusing religion with righteousness – before the wall between church and state becomes just another thing we’ve torn down.”