Separation Anxiety
10th July 2023
When a charter board in Oklahoma recently approved an explicitly Roman Catholic charter school, it received opposition from some conservatives and libertarians, in addition to the usual hyperventilation from progressives about the separation of church and state.
Critics on the Right fundamentally misunderstand the nature of church-state relations and the American historical experience more broadly.
David French recently used his Sunday New York Times column to argue that the charter violates the Establishment Clause and is harmful to both church and state. He contended that schools must be neutral and state funding of any institution that had a particular metaphysical commitment violates the Establishment Clause. But French wrongly equivocated any institution funded by the state with the state itself. Schools, for example, can’t raise armies or police forces; they can’t raise taxes; they can’t even be self-governing. The state does those things. Confusing church and state, and state and school, is an interesting mistake for someone intent on maintaining that they’re different and necessarily separate.
David French is a supine tool of the progressive left. Nobody with the IQ of a carrot accepts his pretense that he is either conservative or even-handed.