Depoliticise Creationism!

All the political arguments about Intelligent Design, and about how much teachers are paid and what their hours should be -- on all these issues Tibor Machan makes short and perfect sense: all of these arguments can be instantly de-politicised by the separation of school and state. As he says,

Whenever a controversy arises in government funded and administered educational(?) institutions, no one in the mainstream media mentions the real source of the problem. Whether it is making the study of sex, environment, or, currently, intelligent design mandatory, the real issue is systematically avoided. This is whether there ought to be government education in a free society at all...

It is because governments run schools that these matters become so politicized and dealt with by legislatures and courts."

It's no wonder the two biggest complaints every election year are about health and education: it's no coincidence both are run by government. If government ran the only legal shoe factories then we'd all be complaining about the shoes -- if we could get hold of any.

Commenting on Tibor's piece, Robert Winefield correctly observes the nub of the issue: "Both sides of [the Intelligent Design] argument believe it is moral to pay for their educational vision with taxes partly taken from their opponents. All that has happened in the intervening years between the Scopes Monkey trial and the upcoming trial in Kansas is that the shoe has been moved to the other foot." True enough.

Linked Article: Why Teaching Intelligent Design is Such a Problem