RE: Moscow's right wing conspiracy?

["Steve Cooke" <scooke@uidaho.edu>]

Dear Bill,
	Perhaps I am slower to judge the religion right's school system negatively
because I went to Catholic elementary school in Vermont. Around St. Mary's
elementary school in Middlebury, the issue was not left or right (so much),
but Catholic vs. Protestant in Yankee New England. Irish and French Canadian
immigrants in the region used the church schools to hold onto their identity
in a hostile cultural environment. These Catholics were not conspirators
(the claims of the local Know Nothings to the contrary notwithstanding) but
rather members of the community who were willing to tax themselves twice for
education to maintain a religious and ethnic identity.
Now I don't subscribe to the religious right's ill-informed notions of the
creation and evolution of homo sapiens. But I don't have a big problem with
their separate schools nor with their using the political process to make
changes. Those are rules of the US game. The onus is on those of us who
disagree to get off our duffs and move the ball in the other direction. I
believe that was Jim Fisher's point as well.
Steve Cooke