Gilles On Dwyer

[Rick Duncan]

For a devastatingly persuasive deconstruction of Prof. Dwyer's book on
Religious Schools, see Steve Gilles' review: "Hey, Christians, Leave Your
Kids Alone!, 16 Const. Comm. 149 (1999). Gilles concludes:

"[A]lthough Dwyer's insistence on children's best interests as the benchmark
for regulation of childrearing is illuminating at times, the radical reforms
he proposes would disserve the best interests of children while trampling
their parents' religious liberty and freedom of speech. Making aggressive,
coercive use of government power to subvert traditionalist religious
education would be imprudent as well as intolerant. When, in a liberal
democracy, one side's deepest values and commitments clash with the other's
on a wide range of public issues, the result is culture war. When one side
tries to take away the other side's *children* by force--whether of arms or
law, and whether by abducting or indoctrinating them--the result is all too
likely to be battles of a less metaphorical kind." Id. at 210-11.

Gilles is right. We need to declare education a demilitarized zone in the
culture wars. So long as there is a government monopoly controlling the
hearts and minds of our children's formative years, the culture war will
rage over control of that monopoly. If Dwyer succeeds and the state shuts
down the kinds of religious schools he dislikes, there will be civil war
between the tyrants who come to padlock our schools and those of us who dig
in to defend them.

Prof. Rick Duncan (keaggy at mailexcite.com)

"It is not my style to offer 'correct' or 'incorrect' interpretations of the
Constitution."  --Sandy Levinson




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