Laws should regulate only harmful religious action, not thought

Kicking the can: The importance of education beyond the job market

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s presumed candidacy for president recently set off a discussion about the utility and necessity of a college degree. Walker never graduated from college, choosing to run for public office before finishing his degree.
Of course, pundits and everyday Americans alike asked whether the president should have a college degree in this day and age (the last president to only have a high school diploma was Harry Truman). However, those voices were vastly outnumbered by Walker’s supporters, who took the opportunity to lament the fact that a bachelor’s degree is considered a necessity for many occupations.
On the one hand, they have a point—it is terribly elitist to explicitly or implicitly require an academic qualification for an elected position that represents the whole of the United States. But it is not his lack of a college degree that should disqualify Walker from the White House. It is the utter contempt that Walker and many of his supporters have for the most respected system of higher education in the world that makes him a uniquely terrible candidate for the Oval Office.
When defending the liberal arts, we often point to the value that graduates of schools like Bowdoin add to the workforce. In a world that increasingly calls for technical skills, our alumni, administration, and faculty laud the liberal arts for preparing students to be versatile members of the workforce. Liberal arts students are praised for being “quick learners” and for their ability to “think critically” in the workplace.
That is all well and good, but it is a poor defense of academia and the liberal arts in particular. Education cannot be wholly about vocation. This, in particular, Walker does not understand. As part of a Walker-backed budget proposal, the charter of the University of Wisconsin had to be amended to strike the parts about seeking to “improve the human condition” and the “search for truth,” to be replaced by merely meeting “the state’s workforce needs.”
The ensuing dustup caused Walker to claim that the changes had just snuck their way in there, but clearly either Walker or one of his staffers thought they were a good enough idea to insert into the proposal.
The utility of education, and in particular the sort of “impractical” education offered by Bowdoin and its peer schools, cannot be confined to the workplace. To claim that education should exist merely to enable the next generation of worker drones to be more productive worker drones not only cheapens education, but also cheapens millennia of scholarship in the search for truth and meaning.
It shows immense disrespect for the giants upon whose shoulders we stand to claim that academia should turn its focus to workforce needs alone. Of course, we can all agree that people should have a skill that can get them ahead in the world and that a certain degree of vocational education is necessary for a productive and successful society.
But we should all also agree that while an understanding of the Federalist Papers helps very few job seekers, it helps us to be better citizens and voters. A deep understanding of history or the natural sciences or the wonders of mathematics may not always be the hard skill that we need, but it certainly helps us to navigate the world.
As we get older, many of us will have children. At that point, it will be our duty to impart our knowledge and values to the generation that will replace us. Our academic engagement will help us to present our children with a nuanced view of the world. When they ask us difficult questions about events yet to occur, we will be able to present a reasoned answer. Just as we are now taught, our children will be able to understand rather than to blindly follow.
A purely vocational notion of education does little to further our ability to understand where we came from and where we’re headed, and it does not encourage us to be valued members of a society in any way besides contributing to the GDP. (It must be noted that all of the benefits of education I mention theoretically contribute to GDP indirectly.)
Civic engagement, self-examination and cultural understanding are values that must be taught by parents or by the educational system. An academy that teaches the values of great artists, thinkers and scientists will help our civilization achieve its full potential.
Very few people would truly embrace the idea of an educational qualification for higher office. If Bill Gates announced tomorrow his candidacy for the White House, none would criticize his lack of a diploma. Being elected governor of one of the 50 states is no small feat, and especially considering Walker’s considerable accomplishments, his lack of a B.A. certificate hanging in his study should not disqualify him from the presidency.
However, his evident lack of understanding of why the academy exists is alarming, and Walker’s positions are exemplary of the anti-intellectualism that pervades certain circles in our country. Every member of society can derive value from learning for learning’s sake. Perhaps Walker should think about improving the nation’s secondary education systems and making higher education more accessible rather than attempting to eviscerate American learning. Plato, whose writings helped form the basis of modern Western civilization, envisioned a society headed by the “philosopher king.” He would be dismayed that we are contemplating the elevation of its antithesis to our highest office.

Kicking the can: A lifetime of lessons: what I learned at Bowdoin

It’s a scene that most seniors are familiar with: you’re with a few friends, chatting, having a good time, perhaps celebrating the coming of spring. A lull in the conversation comes, and one of your friends starts staring intently at his drink. After that silence lasts just a second too long, he says, prematurely nostalgic, “I’m going to miss this place.”
The mood instantly turns melancholy, and for a minute everyone stares into his drink, mumbling in agreement. Finally, someone says he just doesn’t want to think about it or that whatever, he is super excited for the real world.
With finals and then graduation uncomfortably soon, there’s a question worth asking ourselves and our peers: What have we learned in our undergraduate years at Bowdoin—four years that are promised to be the best of our lives?
I’ve learned a few things. I’ve learned that high-school me was dead wrong and that I’ll use math quite a lot throughout my career.
I’ve learned about the allegory of the cave, and that I unquestionably want to see more than the shadows on the wall and that I am mystified when others do not. I’ve learned that I love studying law, legal reasoning and all the implications of the rules we write for society, and that I will probably go to law school. I’ve learned that people from all walks of life have a shared humanity and that no matter what, a person is a person, and should be treated as such.
I’ve learned that I’m not, as I believed when I arrived on campus nearly four years ago, a socialist. Instead of drifting to the left at Bowdoin, my studies, my friends and my professors have put me on a political tract much closer to Michael Bloomberg than Ralph Nader.
As living proof that you can leave Bowdoin more conservative than you went in, I would like to congratulate the National Association of Scholars and all right-wing alarmists for being so stunningly wrong about Bowdoin being a liberal indoctrination machine. To be fair, to have become more liberal than I was four years ago, I would need to wave around a copy of Mao’s “Little Red Book” and think that Russell Brand’s ravings are even a little coherent. I also didn’t exactly turn into Ronald Reagan.
I’ve learned that moral relativism has to be much more limited than many of us might like. Obviously not every society and subset of society needs to share exactly the same rules and morals, but fundamental human rights are well worth defending—even when that defense looks an awful lot like imperialism.
We are willing to label certain behaviors or practices patently wrong within our own society, and there is no reason we should not extend our analysis—carefully—beyond our borders. We’re not right about everything, however, and we must be willing to accept that and strive to improve. But we must also be willing to accept that there are certain things we are very much right about—for instance, that the right to dissent must be inalienable.
To claim that values are relative and that atrocities such as the Charlie Hebdo massacre could be excused because of cultural differences embodies a very dark form of nihilism that throws away millennia of human social progress.
Rather than waste our breath on misplaced sensitivity, we should think of what values can help humanity exist freely without fear of violent reprisal for real or imagined slights.
I’ve learned that my peers have an immense amount to teach me, and that your worldviews might be best fleshed out late at night with your roommates while you try to finish that one last piece of homework before bed. I’ve learned that columns can be written in an hour if you’re sufficiently desperate. I’ve learned to accept criticism and to give it. I’ve learned to learn by doing. I’ve learned to better appreciate all the arts and sciences and to be fascinated by disciplines about which I know little.
I’ve learned to learn at Bowdoin, and I’ll carry these four years of knowledge with me for the rest of my life.

Kicking the can

Laws should regulate only harmful religious action, not thought

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

April 9, 2015

To effectively govern a civil society, people develop sets of laws by which all members must abide. We start with the obvious ones: Don’t kill and don’t steal.

From there, we work through the particulars and derivations of those rules, outlawing assaults and deciding that some forms of theft (grand theft auto, bank robbery) are worse than others (palming a pack of gum). We regulate substances, trade, education and relationships, presumably in the hope that such guidelines or restrictions will make people’s lives easier and more productive.

As the body of laws grows, some laws that burden one group of people over another and compel them to do something contrary to their beliefs or heritage develop. At that point, we have three choices. First, we can say tough beans and enforce compliance. Second, we can re-evaluate the necessity of the law. Third, we can make an exception.

The trend in the United States has been towards the third option. In 1993, Congress passed the federal version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in response to the State of Oregon’s refusal to extend unemployment benefits to two American Indians. The State of Oregon refused on the grounds that the American Indians had ingested peyote, an illegal drug, during a religious ceremony.

A Supreme Court decision—penned by Antonin Scalia—upheld Oregon’s judgment.
The RFRA passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. After another Court decision limiting the scope of the RFRA to federal laws under the 14th Amendment, 21 states have passed their own versions of the RFRA with varying degrees of fidelity to the original law.

The primary function of the law is to prohibit the government from “substantially burden[ing]” the free exercise of religion, even with a law of “general applicability,” unless the government could show both that the law is pursuant to a “compelling government interest” and that the law is the “least restrictive” method of furthering that interest. That is, it must withstand “strict scrutiny,” the most stringent test for evaluating the constitutionality of a law.

The first test of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment went in front of the Supreme Court in 1878 in “Reynolds v. United States.” In Reynolds, the Court upheld an anti-bigamy law, worrying that if it granted a religious exception to the law then religious convictions would trump societal and governmental authority and every citizen would “become a law unto himself.” The Court was right. Civil society does not function well when citizens can opt out of certain rules.

However those rules should not be too onerous. We should heed John Stuart Mill’s declaration that “the only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns him, his independence is, of right, absolute.” That is, it is antithetical to our notions of liberty to restrict behavior that does not do harm to others.

Disfavored behaviors tied to certain religious beliefs, such as the use of hallucinogens, should not be legislated against so long as they do no harm to the public. If we are to permit an exception to a law on religious grounds, we ought to strike down the law altogether.

Seeking to control every aspect of life is illiberal, and we ought to avoid it. Otherwise we might, out of respect to religious freedom, end up with a body of laws with so many religious holes it it that it resembles Albert Hall in “A Day in the Life.”

Lacking a definition of religious liberty in the Constitution, in the Reynolds case, the Court turned to a law passed in the Virginia House of Delegates and drafted by Thomas Jefferson to define the term. It found that the limit of religious liberty came and government could interfere “when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order.” This should continue to be the standard against which religious liberty is measured. Obviously, the government cannot turn into the thought police, but society can and must regulate behavior in a measured and uniform way.

In a later letter, Jefferson wrote that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions” and that he and the nation would be steadfast in defense of a citizen’s right of conscience but that “he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.” We must write our laws precisely and with a light touch so that they do not require religious exemptions and we must be careful to regulate action, not thought.

Where we are inclined to offer an exemption, we should ask one question: Are we as a society comfortable extending this right to all, regardless of religious belief? If we answer yes, then we should realize that the law has no place in a liberal society. If the thought makes us shudder, we should consider the law one of Jefferson’s social duties, against which an individual’s claim to a natural right might be harmful to others and thus must fail.

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