Haven't we all had an argument and later thought, "Oh, why didn't I say that? That's what I really should have said!"
Following the Deliberative Session about the Hampton warrant article granting public funds to a religious school, Mad Dog upbraided himself for what he failed to say.
In his defense, he had been so conditioned by the "three minute rule" that he was trying to limit the time he spoke, only to be told by the session moderator (after the session) that no such limit applies during Deliberative Sessions.
Here is the youtube of the Deliberative Session. The real business begins at 8 minutes in and continues for an hour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CClNXNeYBIw&t=23s
But that's what blogs are for--even blogs which are nearly invisible and read by only three people on a regular basis. (Actually, the blog gets a thousand hits weekly, but most of those are from Asia and Europe.)
So here's how Mad Dog would have ended his oration, had he been quick of mind and prepared for his opportunity at the Deliberative Session.
"And finally, tonight, I would like to point out that neither the principal nor the chairperson have used those five words, 'Separation of Church and State' in a sentence, even tonight when they've been directly challenged to do so. We can draw our own conclusions about why that is.
In fact, the only person, aside from me, to use those words was the lawyer, and she did so to say that this warrant article does not violate Church/State because of a court advisory from 1969, which she claims locks into settled law the practice of granting public funds to religious schools, when, in fact, when you look at it, that 1969 advisory said just the opposite.
So the settled law she claims is no such thing.
And she cited "Everson," a case she also claimed makes this article permissible, which, again, is wrong. Everson said if you are going to provide a service to all the kids in town, like busing them to school, you cannot say, "well you get a bus to school, unless you go to the Catholic school." A service to all kids must be to all kids, and you cannot deny that service because a kid goes to a religious school.
But, of course, this is not what is happening in Hampton, where we are not talking about providing a simple service to all kids in town, but we are providing a special slush fund, to a special group of kids at one religious school.
There is one aspect of Everson which might apply to Hampton: The town wants to provide for a school nurse for every Hampton child and it funds that nurse using the slush fund of the warrant article. But last year, when a group tried to amend the article to say that nurse's position was the only thing to be funded, that was defeated.
The attorney did not mention that in the decision was the famous dissent by Justice Robert Jackson, (who represented America at the Nuremberg Trials) who noted you cannot separate a church school from the church, because without the school, the church goes extinct and so they are inseparable, inextricably linked. Jackson noted the Church would give up everything, anything, before it would ever give up its school, because without the school, the church disappears within a generation. Nobody has ever denied that.
And that is why opponents of the article have no problem with state funds for Catholic charities like soup kitchens, because those activities are not inherently religious, whereas a church school has an inherently religious feature, no matter how many non sectarian roles it may fill.
The attorney did not mention the case in Maine, where the US Supreme Court said if there were no public school in a remote area of a state, the state could fund a religious school--an execrable decision which will surely be reversed once the composition of today's SCOTUS changes.
But even that case is not as extreme as what we do every year in Hampton. There is no town in America which simply establishes its own town church, in defiance of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
Not even in Utah, the one state in the union dominated by a single church: even in Utah, the kids file out of the public schools at lunch, and go next do to the church school, where they do church things before going back to the public school for their secular education.
How do you establish a church for a state? Either you state as much: "The Anglican Church is the church of England," or you simply fund a church. That is route Hampton has taken.
No other town in America, at least of which I am aware, simply sets up a slush fund for a church and writes checks to cover its expenses.
Hampton is unique.
And yet, those people who have made a living defending the First Amendment and Separation of church and state have refused to join this fight for church/state separation: The American Civil Liberties Union and the Americans for Separation of Church and State have cowered and wailed: "It's all a losing cause." They have shown themselves to be empty suits. As Martin Luther King once said, "In the end, it is not the voices and arguments of those who oppose you you will remember, but the silence of your friends."
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| Dudley Dudley Kept Fighting |
Mad Dog began by saying he would convince nobody at the meeting, and he was right. Those who came to vote for the article would do so against all argument; had the skies parted and twelve angels with horns arrived, the parishioners would still have done what they came to do, vote for the article.
As Upton Sinclair observed so long ago: 'It is difficult to bring a man to understanding when his income depends on his not understanding.'"
One thing Mad Dog did not say, one thing he edited out, and he is glad he did: When Mad Dog was in college Martin Luther King delivered a speech on campus, which he likely had given in front of a hundred audiences, and his theme was that it is possible to gain the world and yet lose your soul. He elaborated on all the wealth America had gained, but how despite all these wonderful accomplishments, it might yet lose its soul because it turned a blind eye to injustices within its own lands and injustices it wrought abroad. And Mad Dog thought: This article is about $52,000 and this parish is in the same danger Martin Luther King warned about.
PS:
Watching the youtube, Mad Dog notes the blonde woman, sitting in the audience, behind the speakers, who came to support the opposition to the warrant article, and he is reminded even if they are few in number, there are still people who stand up against the prevailing crowd and are counted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WewRMOImNH4&t=1839s
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