July/August 2000

On the Way to the Forum

Thou Shalt Not Make the Ten Commandments An Instrument of Government

The cost of freedom is incalculable. Ask those of the Second Ranger Battalion who climbed the 300-foot (100-meter) cliff at Pointe?du?Hoc on June 6, 1944, under constant fire. They silenced the guns on Pointe?du?Hoc. And they saved many lives on Utah and Omaha beaches. Thousands on those beaches were being raked by the heavy guns in the hilltop pillboxes. But it cost the Rangers: at the end of that "longest day," only 50 of the more than 200 who had landed were still able to fight.

An Issue That Is Testing the Waters of Governmental Intrusion

Joanne Van Halteren was a valued and well-liked employee of Markham-Stouffville Hospital in Ontario, Canada. She was so skilled in emergency resuscitation that when a baby in delivery was in trouble she was paged to snatch the infant from the jaws of death. The hospital, recognizing her expertise, recruited her to train other nurses in the procedure. And she put in countless unpaid hours in the breast-feeding clinic. This model employee had 16 years of experience under her belt when she was asked to do the unthinkable: commit murder. Her refusal resulted in her dismissal.

Once upon a time there was a course called civics. It taught students about citizenship in a free society. Today civics seems to have been supplanted by social studies, which lumps history, civics, government, sociology, psychology, and other humanities into one category. Much has been sacrificed by this incorporation.

As a history teacher I am often alarmed at the ignorance of high school students regarding the affairs of this nation. But their apathy is even more distressing. I fear that many young people, reflecting the tendency of their parents' generation, are losing connection with their nation's heritage and history. In a society of moral relativism, individualism, and subjective morality, citizenship is fast becoming a bygone characteristic of American culture.