We have just learned that the smoldering war in the State of Kansas has produced a possible narrow election of School Board Members who will vote out remaining vestiges of “Intelligent Design” and its precursor, anti-evolutionism.
Battles for the control of minds go on all the time. Just think of the struggles parents have in getting children into a mindset to accept pronouncements on how to dress and behave in public. The struggle over teaching science in schools is not over despite a slight movement to allow evolution to be taught in science classes as science instead of the religious content of the Bible where it all starts with the WORD and GOD.
What this essay is about is not about the specifics of evolution or the exact words of which Bible you read. What it is about is that our nation is not only split on this topic but on many. Our earliest disputes by explorers, settlers, colonists, Loyalists, revolutionaries, pro-slavery and anti-slavery partisans have not gone away. They have been transmuted into the pros and cons, the fors and againsts - whatever topic du jour is.
It is easy to use catch-all labels such as Liberals, Conservatives, Moderates, radicals and reactionaries and they don’t mean much for you have to state the specifics of the particular argument that involves taking different sides. It is obvious that there are not jut two sides to each argument. There are many for the control of the minds of children in school differs from region to region and from one philosophical stronghold to another.
It is sad to note that there are winners and losers in the battles over the control of minds. Research into election results show that one political party or another is the winner and really has just a few more votes than the losers. What we call landslides are misnomers and while there are swings in the popular mind – found either in the street or the gutter – the whole of the country is more or less stable. The country leans in one direction or another at times.
Memorable are the periods when this country was tortured by the Green backers, the Populists, the Dries (anti-alcohol), isolationists and Jingoists. Right now we have a pro-war government and a sizeable get-out-of Iraq opposition. Do you remember the pro-slavery people and the abolitionists – the isolationists, Jazz and Rock Music? We swing one way or the other and in many ways at the same time.
Battles for control of the minds of Americans go on for that is the American way. Some times one side wins and at other times the other side wins – for a while.