Franklin I. Gamwell's book, The Meaning of Religious Freedom, sets forth a theory that, if followed, would require some response (change) in education (from educators). Among other things, a philosophy of education should indicate curricula choices and instructional practices that follow from, or would lead to, a theory such as Gamwell's. John Dewey, the preeminent 20th Century American philosopher, to whom Gamwell refers numerous times, believed that “[e]ducation is the laboratory in which philosophic[al] distinctions become concrete and are tested.” I will raise some questions that are not so much criticisms of Gamwell's argument as they are attempts to start a discussion about what the theory would require from education.

Gamwell makes it clear that his argument, and the definitions from which it works, is “formal,” that is, not tied to any particular set of circumstances, let alone the United States, because he does not want to privilege or preclude at the outset any, what he calls, “candidate answers.” (13) His argument is compact and intricate. He earlier gave an outline of the argument in a paper on “Religion and Reason in American Politics” read at a conference in 1986. His concern is that there is a tendency to treat religion as inconsistent with politics, indeed as adversarial, and as non-rational, or not liable to criticism. (This is the same concern that Stephen Carter addresses in The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, though Carter's treatment is “popularized,” not formal, and, in my judgement, is superficial).

In a familiar passage, R.H. Tawney has spoken of the transformation of natural law in the seventeenth century—an age in which the concept of “Nature” came to “connote not divine ordinance, but human appetites, and natural rights were invoked by the individualism of the age as a reason why self-interest should be given free play.” “Natural rights” replaced “natural law” in the context of an ongoing inquiry into the sources and limits of political authority. Central to this discussion remains the enigmatic figure of John Locke. A common refrain in the literature identifies Locke—that many-faceted “man in whose name the American Revolution was made, … the man above all whom hysterical conservatives all over Europe would blame for the collapse of the Ancien Régime”—as, in addition, a religious thinker whose Christianity colors the entire fabric of his political philosophy; as, even more specifically, the “heir of puritan political theorists.” In this vein, at least one writer has ventured to connect Locke with a now largely forgotten piece of 17th century political theory, Lex, Rex, the work of puritan pastor, theologian and political controversialist, Samuel Rutherford. The general impression seems to be that Locke's Calvinist upbringing places him in a long line of Reformed Christian resistance theorists. On the other hand, Lex, Rex has been called “a deeply Thomistic book” for its close adherence to natural law principles in the scholastic tradition.

George Washington's home, Mount Vernon, is among America's most visited sites. But one of the most fascinating things at Mount Vernon is one of the least noticed — the key to the Bastille, the forbidding Paris fortress whose fall on July 14th, 1789, became the symbol of the French Revolution.

The key hangs in the hall at Mount Vernon, oversized for its classically-proportioned surroundings and often overlooked. But it once spoke eloquently for the highest hopes in both nations. Six weeks after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in September 1787, Jefferson rejoiced at the meeting of the Estates General and the prospect of applying revolutionary American principles to France. In that same spirit, the Marquis de Lafayette took the key of the Bastille in 1789 and sent it to his good friend Washington as a symbol of their common vision of the future. Their hopes were to be dashed. Sobered by the reign of terror and the revolutionary ugliness from Robespierre and Danton to Napoleon, both Americans and French supporters of the United States revised their views. For example, Gouverneur Morris, the U.S. Ambassador to France, wrote home in disgust: “They want an American Constitution with the exception of a King instead of a President, without reflecting that they have not American citizens to support that constitution.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights.” With these familiar words of the Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers set forth their vision of this country. Among those inalienable rights is the right of religious liberty.

Is this right of religious liberty self-evident? Perhaps in our country, perhaps even taken too much for granted. Most of the world, however, does not regard this truth as self-evident. There are violent conflicts in the Middle East not just between Arabs and Jews, but between Jews and fellow Jews, between Arabs and fellow Arabs, between Hindus and Sikhs in India, between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. The self-evident character of the truth of religious liberty has certainly evaded the great masses of mankind.

It was a bad summer for lawyers. Just when we were getting used to the possibility that Tom Cruise might be a fine young JAG lawyer capable of ferreting out evil in high places in “A Few Good Men,” it seems that he's just another Harvard lawyer on the make and on the lamb both from the Mob and the FBI in “The Firm.” And who can forget the scene in “Jurassic Park” when a mouthy lawyer gets et alive by tyrannosaurus rex redivivus, to the cheers of the vulgar mobs in the theaters? The good news is that the consumption of the lawyer occurs off camera.

Last summer 6,321 new lawyer jokes were added to the genre. My favorite asks why lawyers are buried 20 feet down instead of 6, with the reply that deep down lawyers are really good.

It wasn't much better two summers ago, when one of the most famous of the lawyer jokers, J. Danforth Quayle, gave his “too many lawyers” speech at the summer meeting of the ABA. Actually I thought the Vice-President made some good points, but was quite unfocused, omitting any consideration, for example, of the maldistribution of lawyers in our society that causes many real needs for legal services to go unmet. Those of you with an empirical bent will be pleased to learn that shortly after Quayle's speech, his statistics were repudiated as wildly inaccurate.