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Political dialogue on some of the most significant issues of our day is distorted because of lack of public understanding of fundamental principles underlying our liberty.

A few years ago, Michael Ledeen said, "Our educational system has long since banished religion from its texts, and an amazing number of Americans are intellectually unprepared for a discussion in which religion is the central organizing principle."

In a speech in Germany, the Pope observed:

"A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures."

Ledeen put his finger on a problem that long stifled meaningful debate in America on important things. Censors [disguised as "protectors" (the Radical Left's ACLU, NEA, education bureaucracies, etc., etc.)] have imposed their limited understanding of liberty upon generations of school children.

From America's founding to the 1950's, ideas derived from religious literature were included in textbooks, through the poetry and prose used to teach children to read and to identify with their world and their country.

Suddenly, those ideas began to disappear from textbooks, until now, faceless, mindless copy editors sit in cubicles in the nation's textbook publishing companies, instructed by their supervisors to remove mere words that refer to family, to the Divine, and to any of the ancient ideas that have sustained intelligent discourse for centuries.

Now, it is the ACLU which accuses middle Americans of "censorship" if they dare object to books, films, etc., that offend their sensibilities and undermine the character training of their young. Sadly, many of those books and films are themselves products of the minds that have been robbed of exposure to wisdom literature in the nation's schools and universities.

From economic principles to an understanding that our rights, in the words of JFK, "come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God," generations of Americans have not been taught the philosophy upon which their constitutional protections rested.

It's not the job of the state to teach religion. Do you want the state teaching Islam in Dearborne. Michigan? If Christians can't get their message across from their Churches then the fault lies with them. Jews manage to rear their children to thoroughly understand the Torah and lead a Temple service by the age 13. Usually the voices decrying that religion is banned from public schools would be happy for the state to establish a fundamental version of Christianity. One has to wonder what they think the First Amendment means?

Intelligent analysis, but it's not just a lack of understanding of the principles and philosophy of liberty. In general, students hate history so schools and textbook writers shortchange students by trying to make the subject "interesting," to avoid controversy according to liberal doctrine, and to achieve a form of social engineering.

Furthermore, with our emphasis on multiple choice tests, students score higher if they can recall a "given" single answer to what normally is a complex multifaceted event, thus bypassing the need to think and understand historical relationships, IMHO.

Our society wants to identify a "villain" to make them feel good about themselves and to exact revenge against corporations, the rich, the well-born, the able, etc. Much of it flows from liberal/socialist class warfare doctrines as promoted by the Frankfurt School to divide society against itself.