The second issue I was talking about the other day in my June 7 blog is the issue of education versus ignorance.

The masses are suspicious of education. Governments are suspicious of education. The media is suspicious of education. Does it seem like to you that everyone is getting a college education these days? Actually that is not the case. Three fourths of Americans who are of the age to have obtained a college degree, do not have one. The uneducated are certain that they are doing just fine, thank you very much and they are pretty sure that more education may be what some need, but it is not necessary and not for them. They know enough to navigate life.

Many of the constituents of the Republican Party come from a culture of ignorance. For example, consider the following. The fundamentalist Christians (a culture that I grew up in and with which I am very familiar), do everything possible to keep themselves isolated and uneducated (pure and untainted by the world in their minds). Even when they go to school, they try to do it in such a way that they are not exposed to a broad based education and they never even encounter any "liberal ideas." The preachers rail against public education, higher education controlled by liberal professors, ivy league think tanks and liberal seminaries. If you must go to college it should be a church controlled college, and you must stay away from those state universities at all cost. I went to one of those liberal seminaries, the old (pre-fundamentalist take over) Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. (It was considered a conservative seminary by the whole world except the right wing fundamentalists, who considered it "liberal.") I heard the hue and cry of the fundies about our professors. I sat in the professors' classes. I read their books. I heard them speak in chapel four or five mornings a week for 2 and 1/2 years. I could not figure out the "liberal apostate" charges against these teachers. Rather, I found that they were brilliant men and women, who had spent their lives in the liberal (almost criminal) activity of searching without blinders for the truth about God's word and man's relationship with God in the past. For searching without being guided by dogmatism, they were ridiculed by the right, harrassed at school by implanted rebel rousing students, libeled in the press, slandered from the pulpit, and many lost their jobs. None, however, I imagine, lost their faith. Their sin was being able to ask any question, even the questions that challenged the dogma.

Why the cry that all American institutions of higher learning are "liberal?" (Why do all those scientists believe in that evolution nonsense?) I find there is a direct correlation between education and liberal thinking. Open minded education points out to the learner how little he or she knows about that particular subject and indeed about anything. When I have studied a subject area, I find it is usually infinitely more complicated than I anticipated. With this perspective on life, I find that my answers to life's questions may not be significant to everyone. Religious leaders do not want complicated answers to questions. They want simple answers, short sentences, easy to understand words.

Think about the last presidential election. Mr. Bush could answer questions in cowboy language with downhome simplicity. His answers were not accurate and I think he has some awareness of that, but he kept it simple and he could stay on message. No hint of indecision, no possiblity of question. Mr. Kerry would hear the question and begin to roll the permutations around in his head. The answers were "Yes, but" or "No, except when". He took longer to answer and didn't necessarily come to a conclusion. Sometime his answer was that he didn't know. And he was supposed to be so smart!

When the fundies get in charge, they throw out the intelligencia. Take the communist chinese. University professors who were not slaughtered were sent to "re-education camps" for up to a decade. Those who survived never uttered another liberal thought the rest of their lives. Their voices were muted. In the current government take over in the United States, the educated are being slandered, ignored, demoted, used, and muted. It doesn't matter what those crazy scientists come up with about the environment. Pollute more air, more water, clear cut more trees, fish more oceans, these are the political answers of this administration. Twist science to say what we want it to say.

Twist intelligence to say what we want. Who cares what those CIA agents think they know? Fire the agents who say the facts disagree. Disembowel public television for daring to ask questions that challenge our dogma. Do you remember what public television was called when I was growing up? We never called it public television. It was called "educational" TV. The house of representatives has voted draconian cuts in funding for educational TV. Many rural areas will lose access to the voice of public television if the legislation passes. And that of course is the point. Where is the strength of the Republican party. In the rural, undereducated areas of the country. Cutting off the voice of public television to those areas is a no brainer. It strengthens their political base.

Remember all the Republican campaign workers in Florida during the election debacale, in their white shirts and ties. Their bosses had flown them straight from work without a change of clothes to get to Florida and harrass precint workers, to appear to the media as a crowd of angry locals, protesting the recounts. They truly believe that shouting down the truth (no recount, no recount, no recount), makes the truth go away. You can mute education. You can strangle it. For an hour, or a day, or perhaps for an age. But people will ask their questions eventually. And if they find out the truth of this generation of politicos, they will come and hang them.