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AS WE WERE SAYING
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Stout Shout
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By ROBERT E. SEGAL
(A Seven Arts Feature)
There’s no point in destroying
the type in those New York ads
p r oc 1 a i ming “Steve Brown
couldn’t take a public school
driver training -course; the law
locked him out” and “Rosa Or
tega has trouble with reading;
but you can’t give her any help.”
The ads were intended to marshal
support tar voter acceptance cxf
the proposed New York State
Constitution, with repeal at the
so-called Blaine Amendment
riding along.
But the Empire State’s voters
thundered down the revised Con
stitution, 2% to 1, thanks largely
to the determination of political
and church leaders to give paro
chial school aid a free ride—a
stubborn thrust that backfired.
The people didn’t buy that just
as they didn’t buy the maudlin
and misreading ads proclaiming
that Steve Brown and Rosa Or
tega were locked out of all sorts
of benefits for children because
their parents chose not to send
them to public schools.
The ads can and probably will
be used again. They were in the
best tradition of the ad writers’
sell by the stout shout. And even
though many people found them
misleading and confusing, they
most likely will be dusted off and
put to work later on. For Amer
ica’s unending quarrel over sep
aration of church and state seems
p re-destined to breed that kind
of emotional buncombe.
Over and above the thousands
and thousands of dollars spent by
Citizens For Educational Free
dom and other protagonists de
termined to smash a hole in the
wall of church-state separation,
the state of New York is said to
have pu,t some $10,000,000 into*
the effort to produce the revised
state constitution. No Constitution
al Convention had been held since
1938. Through a good portion of
1967, the convention worked at
the almost impossible job of try
ing to give New York State a
document geared to the 21st Cen
tury instead of the late 18th.
Governor Rockefeller, who
seemed at election time caught
between his desire not to anta
gonize Catholic voters and his
strong wish to put through his
$2,500,000,000 transportation bond
issue (which did win eventual
voter approval), put the matter
well at the start of the conven
tion thus:
“We are increasingly an urban
society—a society bristling with
demands for schools, housing,
roads, mass transportation, rec
reational health and social serv
ices. We are a society Whose pro-
ductivity and vast growth place
heavy burdens on our national
resources — our waters and the
very air we breathe.”
Indeed, had it been possible to
separate repeal of the Blaine
amendment from the rest of the
proposals, New York undoubted
ly would have accepted the new
charter arid would thus have ef
fected judicial reform, put forth
a program of tremendous im-
improvement in the field of con
servation, lifted some of the onus
on, welfare costs, nailed down the
principle of “one man, one vote,”
advanbedi civil rights, made it
possible for government to join
with private enterprise in pro
viding more hospitals and meet
ing other pressing human needs,
and made headway in protecting
the beleaguered consumer.
Not the least of the gains would
be the grant to tuiy citizen of the
right to bring suit to test the con
stitutionality of any statute. This
pressing issue now seems destined
to be settled at a federal level,
thanks to a recent Supreme Court
assurance.
But regardless of the impres
sive array of pluses developed by
the New York Constitution re
writers, the drive for capitula
tion on the fundamental issue of
permitting taxes collected from
the public to be used for religi
ous indoctrination threw a huge
shadow over the documents. Say
ing this will bring cries of fury
and outrage from some of the
groups favoring the use of pub
lic funds for parochial education;
but it needs to be said again and
often. The Union of Orthodox
Jewish Congregations of Amer
ica, Agudath Israel of America,
the heavily Catholic Citizens For
Education Freedom, end a Negro
group known as Citizens United
For Repeal of Blaine all have every
right to stump the countryside
demanding tax funds for sectar
ian projects; but the fracture of
a principle of conscience to
achieve any end—.including the
highly laudable abjective of re
ligious education — is a grievous
Mistake, certain to haunt our pos
terity.
The casualties of this race far
public funds for parochial eduoa-
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THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
tion could be not only our public
schools, so greatly needed now,
but also the fortresses ot new in
ter-faith understanding* labori
ously built after yean of exper
imentation. The exacerbation of
relationships among Catholics,
Jews and Protestants is an in
evitable outcome of New Y<
fierce fight to remove the
an. the use of public
parochial schooling.
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