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 he
lot of a school-board member in Madison, Wisconsin, these days is
not a happy one.
In a gesture
demonstrating what can happen when your reading habits run the gamut
from The Nation to Mother Jones and back again, the
board last week sought to override a state law requiring students
to either recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the national anthem.
School board members in Madison, you see, are different; they take
literally, without any sense of the intended irony, Dr. Johnson's
remark that "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."
Some kids,
after all, may not believe in God, so the Pledge of course had to
go. The anthem's sentiments, for their part, were, well, dangerously
one-sided and jingoistic — you know, all that stuff about "bombs
bursting in air" and "conquer[ing]... when our cause is
just" might convey the wrong lessons about September 11. Indeed,
the statutory requirement, taken whole, was little more than an
un-American exercise in coercive patriotism. And never mind that
the statute itself specifically stated that children would not have
to participate if they or their parents declined. We know not what
course others in Wisconsin may take, said the school board patriots,
but as for us, we will comply with state law only insofar as allowing
the lil' darlins to endure an instrumental version of the national
anthem. Allowing them to sing the actual words, after all, might
prompt inappropriate thoughts.
So much for
freedom of speech in Madison. Having done their duty, by way of
protecting the dissenting consciences of the young, board members
retired to their beds on October 8 with dreams of ACLU awards dancing
in their heads. Then all hell broke loose. Within hours, the school
system was inundated with hostile calls and e-mails, rising to some
20,000 by week's end. Virtually every elected official in the state
from governor to dogcatcher (other than the board members themselves)
joined in the critical chorus. Mumbling about being misunderstood
and indicating a willingness to reconsider, the board scheduled
an emergency session for October 15.
Chalk one up
for reality therapy. More than a thousand citizens came to Monday's
meeting, which had to be re-sited to a local high-school auditorium
to accommodate the overflow crowd. The session began even before
it was gaveled into order, when the audience rose in a spontaneous
recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by much flag-waving,
huzzahs, and occasional heckling of board supporters. This prompted
board member Bill Keys, author of last week's gag rule, to protest
that the adults present only confirmed his fears that schoolchildren
would be "pressured" to behave patriotically. He was concerned,
he said, with "litmus tests and artificial displays of patriotism."
Eight hours
and 165 speakers later, the Keys gag rule dropped into the dustbin
of history. The board voted 6-1 to rescind its earlier prohibition,
with Keys the only dissenter. Wisconsin's version of Madisonian
enlightenment being what it is, however, the board didn't go down
without staging a symbolic fight. Schools may now offer a recitation
of the Pledge or a singing of the anthem, as state law requires,
but only if preceded by this announcement: "We live in a nation
of freedom. Participation in the pledge is voluntary. Whoever wishes
to participate may stand, those who do not may sit."
Nothing better
captures the disposition of intellectual elites who dictate the
fashions of many university towns. At one level, of course, the
required announcement is nothing more than an expression of sound
constitutional law which the state statute itself explicitly recognized.
So considered, very few would disagree with the sentiment. But in
the context of the week's events, Madison's new dispensation has
precisely the character of a package warning label. The shibboleths
of the Sixties are dying, but they die hard: Although the board
couldn't quarantine kids against the expression of patriotic sentiment,
it nevertheless felt obliged to warn them against its potentially
injurious effects. Patriotism, for some, has become a toxic substance.
In the wake
of September 11, the reflexive Leftists lullaby themselves to sleep
with cheap symbolic victories of just this sort. The rest of America,
however, now seems poised to ensure that their nights will be long
and restless. Maybe the Madison school board should move to Manhattan
to see how the warning-label idea plays there. Failing that, it
looks as if the good citizens of Wisconsin will do what has to be
done.
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