Civics U: What Form is Best, and What’s the Difference? Part 4 – Reflections: Foundations and Issues
The previous article reviewed a few key principles, practices, and problems of American government. This article will reflect further on two founding principles of the American political and social system and their application in the present circumstances.
Right to life. Does this encompass and necessitate the right to the means needed to sustain life? Does this include food, housing, education, due process?
Historically the right to life meant the right to work to be able to provide oneself with food and housing. Local communities and churches often provided food for those in need. Today, welfare programs, SNCC, etc. providing food stamps and such are operated or funded by the federal government, as are public housing and legal aid programs. Does this mean that a person has a “right” to food and a “right” to housing? Today there is still debate about when such help is helpful to both individuals and the society, and when it gets exploited or nurtures dependency.
Education is often necessary for individuals to enable them to do certain work. But public education was also founded on the idea that education (an educated citizenry) is necessary to (have) a free society, and this is based on the need for and right of citizens to be informed participants and voters. But there is debate about whether the education system itself promotes full freedom. There are debates and laws about whether schooling should be entirely or only in English. And today there is some heated debate about how American values and history are to be taught.
A fundamental matter regarding education is the right and responsibility of parents. Who do children belong to? Who “owns” them? Parents & family and a society have a natural right to pass on their identity, beliefs, culture, and history to their next generation. When a society forms a “school” its function likewise includes passing on these things. (Various kinds of “schools” – not like Western schools, but involving formal instruction – are found in different cultures.) But when the society, whether local or national, includes more than one identity group, each with its own unique identity and history and culture – when it is multicultural and pluralistic – then the design of its school education system must – or may – reflect these considerations. In the U.S. there are currently both laws and lawsuits addressing these considerations.
What is meant by “life”? Questions in recent years have asked whether the right to life necessarily and logically includes a right to health, and if so, therefore, to health care – and thus also to clean air, clean water, and clean energy. There are federal laws that apply to these areas, though incompletely. Further concerns get raised about the quality of life, and then about poverty and its causes and solutions. These cover the physical, and the economic, social, and spiritual life of individuals, communities, and country; and debate about possible governmental and non-governmental responses and programs and policies – about what are individual and government responsibilities.
Freedom of religion. (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….)
Historically freedom of religion seemed to be presumed as a “given.” But the religion that was often presumed was some form of Christianity. Providing for and protecting such freedom derived from the early colonists’ experience and the desire to follow their consciences in their faith and worship practices.
But it is not so simple. The indigenous American peoples, as part of their religion held that certain land features and areas were sacred and to be respected. But the American government and people have taken over and used many of these sites in ways that violate Native people’s beliefs.
Various peoples’ may find that rules and regulation come into conflict with their religious practices. For example, Muslim girls’ dress (head coverings) may violate school dress codes, and Muslim students may be required to pray in certain ways during the day. Native students’ long hair, which has cultural and even religious meaning, may violate school codes (or vice versa); and schools have at times punished Christian students for praying and having a Bible in school. Various religions may require certain dress practices, certain body markings, observance of certain holidays (holy days), or may prohibit participating in certain practices (Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, are not to observe birthdays.)
Even within the Christian church there are many divisions and disagreements about doctrine and practice, each one, right or wrong, protected by the First Amendment.
So today many government programs are supported or opposed based on religious beliefs. One of the most divisive, support for abortion, is opposed based on a baby’s sacredness and right to life, and defended based on a mother’s right/freedom to choose; and the Mexico City policy has been alternately instituted and rescinded by Republican and Democrat presidents.
The freedom of religion means freedom of belief and thought. It must necessarily include the right to ‘practice’ (to freely exercise) and express one’s religion.
But of course in the American system this does not include license to violate another person’s right to life and liberty. Therefore, the American system must maintain the legal system and mechanisms needed to protect the practice of this right and this freedom.