A Good Day for Democracy

By Crispin Sartwell

Two dramatic defenses of freedom emerged from the American court system on June 27^th. The Supreme Court ruled that a school voucher program in Cleveland is constitutional, and the 9^th District Court of Appeals ruled that requiring kids to take the pledge of allegiance, which describes the US as being "under God," is not.

The ultimate test of the constitutionality of a law, it seems to me, is whether it increases or decreases the basic freedoms of the people as defined in the Bill of Rights. By that principle, both of these decisions were good ones.

A free nation has no business extracting loyalty oaths from anyone, much less its children.

We do not, for the most part, recognize contracts made by children. We don't allow young children to enter, for example, into marriage or commercial obligations of their own accord, because we believe that children don't understand such arrangements well enough to make valid voluntary decisions.

An asservation of loyalty such as the Pledge of Allegiance takes the form of a legal agreement. It mimics what philosophers such as Rousseau term the "social contract" that underlies the legitimacy of the state: whether explicitly or implicitly (for example, by accepting various benefits and protections), we have pledged our loyalty, according to Rousseau.

But no contract is valid if it is made under duress, if the parties do not know what they are doing and want to do it. If we think that children of a given age are too young to make contracts, then we cannot require them to take loyalty oaths. On the other hand, if we think they are able to make contracts, then we need to explain to them exactly what they are promising, and to whom, and we need to give them the option to refuse. In fact, children have been refusing to say it for years.

We can't have them chanting loyalty oaths in unison, or punish them for refusing: those are the actions of a Maoist or fascist state.

There's nothing wrong with loving your country. But.when recited by rote, the Pledge of Allegiance is an empty form, and when it's required of children it's a kind of totalitarian mimicry, something completely out of place in a democracy. That it contains references to religion only makes it perfectly clear that it is incompatible with our basic freedoms.

The pledge of allegiance violates the principle of the separation of church and state, but more importantly, it violates the basic freedom of conscience and speech that our nation was constituted to preserve. But school vouchers violate none of these, as a majority of the Supreme Court has now agreed.

In the case from Cleveland, the court ruled that even though most families that took advantage of vouchers sent their kids to religious schools, the program did not violate the separation of church and state.

Vouchers do not require people to send their kids to religious schools; they simply allow them to. They do not restrict, but expand freedom, and hence are fundamentally compatible with the spirit of our democracy.

In fact, compulsory education is difficult to square with freedom. But when the government not only requires you to send your kids to school but requires you to send your kids to a particular school, then it may be assuming dictatorial powers.

In cities where the public schools have failed utterly - cities such as my hometown, Washington D.C. - requiring students of poor parents to send their kids to public schools is tantamount to imprisonment without trial.

Anything that makes it possible to choose between schools not only gives parents and students more control of their lives, it puts pressure on the public schools to improve.

That just cannot be bad, and it cannot be a violation of the Bill of Rights.

June 27 was a good day for our democracy.

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Crispin Sartwell teaches philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Contact him through www.crispinsartwell.com