… but then I actually learned some stuff about the American Left, and I started to wonderr: Maybe there’s a reason why the Right is as it is?

First some background: This last week, I’ve been reading “The Right Nation: Conservative Power In America”, written by a couple of British “Economist” journalists. This is a book that maps the history and anatomy of Conservative America, from the early 1900s up ’till 2004. And it’s a fun read. However, as a person who feels closer to the Left than to the Right, I often shudder at all the idiocy my “allies” in the US have initiated. Like the phenomenon of “busing”, which I’m sure you’re all able to find out more about if you feel like it. But one thing that really, really surprised me, is this:

Michael Smith, the head of the Home School Legal Defense (an association working for the rights of homeschoolers), said to the British journalists that his first case “featured a five-year-old who was being homeschooled because her school punished her for saying grace silently before a meal.”

I am seriously bereft of words when I think of this case; how is it possible to distort freedom of religion and all that into such a monstrous parody of itself? I mean, I don’t mind the secularisation of education (I’m more likely to applaud it, really) and most kinds of bans on collective prayer in schools. But this? This is just stupid.