Category: American history

Afterword

Major early cultures name for thunder god: Thor (Norse), Zeus (Greek), Jupiter (Roman), Indra (Hindu), Perun (Slavic), Taranis (Celtic), Shango (Nigeria), Raijin (Japanese), Chaac (Mayan), Tlaloc (Aztec), Hadad (also Ba’al, Canaanite and Mesopotamian)

It seems natural to believe in the supernatural. Fundamentally, it is fear of the unknown. Early humans trembled in terror over lightning and thunder, earthquakes and floods, and scrambled together means of propitiation to these imagined supernatural beings who held such powers. Egyptians worshiped the sun god Ra, whose chariot rose in the east each morning and traversed the skin to pass into the underworld each evening. For the next four thousand years, everyone thought the sun moved around the earth rather than the earth around the sun as established by Nicolaus Copernicus in 1543.

Early gods reflected the stimulus for their creation, for example the original thunder deity Perkwunos from Proto-Indo-European mythology circa 6000 BC, often described as “the Striker” or “Lord of Oaks,” who fought a water-serpent to release rain. This root deity evolved into regional figures like Perun (Slavic), Thor (Germanic), Indra (Hindu), and Zeus (Greek).

In the same mental process, humans believed diseases came from non-living material, such as mud, dust, or decaying organic matter and were inflicted on humans by God’s judgment for sin, or in some faiths, caused by curses or demons. It wasn’t until the mid-to-late 19th century (1860s–1880s), that Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch developed the germ theory of disease, showing that germ-focused, preventative practices like antiseptics, sterilization, and vaccinations prevented disease.

The earliest formalized god is believed to be Inanna of Sumeria, goddess of love, war, and sex throughout ancient Mesopotamia circa 4000 BCE. Like the earliest fertility goddesses as far back as 30,000 years, these female forces embodied power, divine law, sensuality, and procreation. Inanna was known by the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians as Ishtar. Her primary title is “the Queen of Heaven.” Other cultures named her Astarte (Phoenician, Canaanite), Aphrodite (Greek), Venus (Roman), Shaushka (Hurrian, non-semitic, ancient near east), Pinikir (Elamite, Iraq), Libat (Mandaean).

Nearly six billion, or 84 percent of the global population, belong to a religion, and these figures are expected to rise in the coming decades.[1] In the U.S., surveys show 90 percent of adults believe in some higher power, spiritual force or God with a capital G, of which over 18,000 gods, goddesses, and spiritual entities are worshipped. Even self-proclaimed atheists have supernatural leanings. The same study found all atheists reject God, but one-in-five accept higher powers or spiritual forces. Increasingly, up to 34% of Americans believe that extraterrestrials may have created or guided human history. Which is, basically, the same kind of idea—except there is potential evidence of ET in the form of photographs of “unidentified anomalous phenomena.”

Most early religious worship involved sacrifice as a way to bargain with the appropriate god. If a certain valued person, animal, or object was “given” to that deity, a reward of some kind would be bestowed upon the supplicant. Or, at least, a reward of eliminating some form of distress.

  • An analysis of more than seven dozen Austronesian cultures[2] revealed that the practice of human sacrifices tended to make societies increasingly less egalitarian and eventually gave rise to strict, inherited class systems. In other words, ritual killings helped keep the powerful in power and everyone else in check.
  • The fear that sacrifices allowed the practice to function “as a stepping-stone to help build and maintain power in early hierarchical societies,” Watts, a psychologist at the University of Auckland, wrote on his website. Once their authority was absolute, elites could use more traditional methods—policing, taxation, war—to keep the class system in place. [3]

It’s important to realize that ritual killings and public executions served as a highly visible display of authority, demonstrating who held control over life and death. Researchers theorize that these gruesome rituals helped early egalitarian groups transition into complex, unequal societies by violently keeping the lower classes in check. By framing the sacrifices as supernatural decrees, elites shifted the blame for the violence away from themselves and onto the gods, minimizing the chance of retaliation. This tradition of sacrifice likely formed the context of God’s demand that Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac as well as being predecessor of Christianity’s core belief in Christ’s sacrifice to mitigate human sin. This is akin to the Spanish Inquisition and early Puritan witch burning.

Are the majority of U. S. citizens prepared to hand over our freedoms to a minority who wish to gain glory with their god by sacrificing the foundational principles of our republic?

The modern age with its industrialization and now a digital universe speeding toward us like a meteorite has affected each of us in different ways. Up until about one hundred years ago, the majority of humans had spent their lives growing food, harnessing the usefulness of domesticated animals, and enjoying the home fires surrounded by loved ones. Suddenly, within less than a couple of centuries, we have been displaced by machines. New inventions function in god-like ways through radio, telephones, television, automobiles, and machinery like looms that produce textiles which only human hands had previously made. Who can understand how artificial intelligence operates or how scientists can look inside our cells or examine our DNA to determine our ancestry backwards in time?

All these rapid changes, incomprehensible to most of us, disrupt the flow of human existence in a global flood of new ideas and information, displacing us from traditional daily lives. One response to these rapid changes has been to embrace religion for comfort. Nothing is more reassuring than a set of rules governed by a supposedly loving God, and nothing might seem more important than to do everything possible to obey and enforce those rules. Such efforts to impose God’s will surely buy entry to the Promised Land.

This particular segment of our society (and of other nations) will continue to shrink in fear of so many changes, which drive them further into their mythological havens. There is nothing inherently wrong with religious beliefs. What we address in this booklet is the compulsion of a small minority of religious believers to force everyone else to live by the minority’s beliefs. The more they don’t understand, the more the details of their daily lives are forced to change, the greater is their fervent embrace of religion. Therein lies the conundrum of our times.

Without question, forcing religion upon others is a fear-based response. Psychological and sociological perspectives show that this behavior typically stems from deep-seated fears regarding one’s own existential anxiety, the need for community validation, or a terror of perceived spiritual threats. In environments where people are uncertain or afraid, they often gravitate toward strict, absolute truths to regain a sense of control. Forcing others to conform to these absolutes serves as an emotional defense against ambiguity. People may use coercion because they perceive outsiders or differing views as direct threats to their own salvation, cultural identity, or worldview. When ideologies rely on fear-based doctrines (such as eternal damnation or divine wrath), followers often internalize this terror. This compels them to convert others as a way to “save” them, or to validate their own righteousness and ensure security.[4]

While I may have sympathy for those whose lack of understanding for science leaves them terrified in the face of human experience, I find I also have little patience for their choice not to understand. It is a choice. Plenty among us have pursued greater understanding, seeing within ourselves and our societies the power to prevent or cure disease or anticipate and mitigate the damage from violent storms. The same type of intellect which has created cell phones or heart surgery has also figured out that the use of fossil fuels has filled our atmosphere with enough carbon dioxide to cause the atmosphere to heat up, melting glaciers which in turn causes sea levels to rise. And that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old. And that over twenty pre-human hominid species have existed in the human lineage over the last seven million years—their bones have been found and dated by radiocarbon, radiometric dating on surrounding volcanic rock or by biostratigraphy, and preserved for further study.

The cognitive dissonance affecting the Christian Nationalists in the face of these facts is powerful. The result is what we see occurring with their flight from the facts to hide in words written by humans over the last three thousand years. It’s not that these folks can’t understand; it’s that they’ve been taught since leaving the womb that they should believe only one ‘truth’ or face violent punishment. But Neolithic religion is grossly inadequate to understanding what we are experiencing in the 21st century.

Those who learned to believe religious dogma rather than how to gather and process information for themselves are in great distress. They can’t get rid of the programming they’ve been subjected to since infancy. The only solution for them is to attempt forcing their religious dogma onto the rest of us, our children, and our nation in order to settle their internal conflict. This puts them in the same position as medieval priests who inflicted torture and cruel death to anyone who didn’t accept their religion.

This in turn puts the future of our republic in extreme danger. And we face enough danger without this. We need all Americans to help in the oncoming fight for not only our rights to personal liberty, but also the onslaught of climate change and the nightmares it will bring to our water and food supply. We need all hands on deck to deal with the inevitable rounds of pandemics including mutations of existing disease alongside new pathogens. It will take our communal effort as loving humans to protect the planet’s wonders—wildlife, wild rivers, vast forests, springs of fresh pure water. Most of all, we must find a way to protect and encourage truth telling, currently under severe attack and driven by an escalating crisis of misinformation, political polarization, and the rapid spread of AI-generated content. This information landscape has deeply eroded public trust in democratic institutions and the media.

While we must respect the rights of those among us who choose to embrace a religious path in life, the best we can do for the most extreme of them is not enable their delusional approach to the 21st century, hiding their heads in the sand while using our tax dollars to spread their narrow beliefs.  They have the right to worship however they believe. They do not have the right to force anyone else to believe it. No matter how desperately they wish to coerce their children and their neighbors’ children to believe as they believe, we as taxpaying Americans have a patriotic duty to not let that happen on our dime.

[1] Alex, Bridget. “The Human Brain Evolved to Believe in Gods,” Discover, Oct 15, 2018. https://www.discovermagazine.com/ planet-earth/the-human-brain-evolved-to-believe-in-gods

[2] These cultures inhabit island Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Madagascar, with key populations in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and New Zealand.

[3] Kaplan, Sarah. “The ‘darker link’ between ancient human sacrifice and our modern world,” The Washington Post, Apr 5, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/05/the-darker-link-between-ancient-human-sacrifice-and-our-modern-world/

[4] See Tietjen RR. Fear, Fanaticism, and Fragile Identities. J Ethics. 2023;27(2):211-230. doi: 10.1007/s10892-023-09418-9. Epub 2023 Jan 26. PMID: 37180409; PMCID: PMC10169874.

This is the final chapter in the booklet  New Puritans and the U. S. Peerage: The Willful Destruction of Public Education

In Conclusion

The drumbeat of Puritan religious beliefs has never ceased in the four hundred years since those colonists landed on North American shores, carrying forward the intolerance of the Dark Ages. In the last century as industrialization has expanded into the digital age, the zealous efforts of these extremists have entered a feeding frenzy over the social changes which have arrived in tandem with cultural advancement. As women have become more empowered by gaining the right to vote and ensuring bodily autonomy, as well as taking their place alongside men in the workplace, horrified conservatives pushing the ‘way back’ button have been joined by a new class of super-wealthy tech industrialists looking for more power over the government.

While serving as early leaders in support of education and representative governance, never think for a minute that Puritans only fostered positive change in society. They supported and participated in slavery. They encouraged child labor and state-sanctioned corporal and capital punishments, warfare against Indigenous peoples including women and children, and the persecution of religious dissenters. Their use of violence was heavily shaped by their strict religious adherence to Old Testament laws.

“If a horse knew as much as a man, I should be loth to be his rider… To make the Society Happy and People Easy under the meanest Circumstances, it is requisite that great numbers of them should be Ignorant as well as Poor.”
Bernard Mandeville 1670-1733

Commonalities between the British peerage and today’s super-rich include immense concentrated wealth, significant influence over infrastructure and information, and the creation of insular, exclusive, and self-reinforcing social networks. Both groups operate outside traditional constraints, using their resources to shape policy, maintain elite status, and protect their assets for their heirs, a trademark of aristocracy in earlier regimes. Traditionally, the peerage leaned conservative and was historically resistant to rapid social change, a stance shared by many of today’s economic elites who support the expansion of existing power structures. Both the traditional British peerage and today’s U.S. peerage need voters in order to penetrate the nation’s seats of power, centering on the desire to enforce a specific cultural identity, uphold traditional power structures, and leverage a “golden era” narrative for political influence. While separated by centuries, both often position themselves as guardians of a Christian national heritage.

“However specious in theory the project might be, of giving education to the labouring classes of the poor, it would, in effect, be found to be prejudicial to their morals and happiness; it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture, and other laborious employments; instead of teaching them subordination, it would render them factious and refractory… it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books, and publications calculated to poison the principles of that class of society… It would be subversive of the very foundations of all social order.”
Davies Gilbert 1767-1839
Member of Parliament, President of the Royal Society

To date, the forward thrust of the super-rich, especially those with interests in artificial intelligence, is applauded by approximately one-third of the United States electorate, largely religious extremists, racists, and xenophobes, who remain in lockstep with the Trump Administration despite Trump’s conspicuous violation of basic Christian tenets.

Despite Trump’s conspicuous abuse of the exacting moral standards advocated by Christian Nationalists, the new Puritans embrace him because they view him as a “chosen” leader ordained by God to protect their interests, restore the United States to a perceived Christian foundation, and battle against secular, liberal, and globalist forces. Despite his personal history being flagrantly in violation of traditional Christian moral standards, his support among white evangelicals and Christian Nationalists is strong.

It’s worthy of note that Christian Nationalism has gained strength in tandem with the termination of the Fairness Doctrine, a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) policy (1949–1987) requiring radio and television broadcasters to cover controversial issues of public importance and present contrasting viewpoints fairly. It aimed to ensure balanced public discourse due to limited broadcast frequencies, but was repealed in 1987 under President Reagan. Ronald Reagan knew Rupert Murdoch before the Reagan FCC formally ended the Fairness Doctrine, and records show the two men met in the Oval Office in early 1983. Murdoch had already developed connections with Reagan’s inner circle in the early 1980s.That repeal was pivotal to Rupert Murdoch’s expansion in the U.S.

Murdoch is widely recognized as a conservative media mogul whose outlets, including Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post, generally promote right-of-center, populist, and conservative viewpoints. While he has self-identified as a libertarian focusing on free markets and reduced regulation, his career has centered on supporting conservative politicians and parties globally. This deregulation enabled the rise of modern ideological talk radio and cable news.

“The state should not step in to do that which a parent is bound to do… [State control] would rapidly secularize the minds of our people and lead to infidel democracy.”
Anthony Ashley-Cooper 1801-1885
7th Earl of Shaftesbury

By Reagan’s removal of the Fairness Doctrine requirements, Murdoch was able to launch Fox News in 1996 as a distinctly conservative and partisan channel. It should not pass notice that Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network (colloquially Dominion v. Fox) was a U.S. defamation lawsuit filed in March 2021 by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News Channel and its corporate parent Fox Corporation. Dominion’s complaint sought $1.6 billion in damages, alleging several Fox programs had broadcast false statements that Dominion’s voting machines had been rigged to steal the 2020 United States presidential election from then-president Donald Trump. Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million and acknowledged the court’s earlier ruling that Fox had broadcast false statements about Dominion. The settlement did not require Fox News to apologize.

With the door open to dishonest and/or slanted ‘news,’ what we stand to lose is no less than the backbone of our constitution. Perhaps in 1975 no one could have foreseen that Congress, strapped financially by nearly 20 years of war in Vietnam, would refuse to fully fund the IDEA program. Reagan essentially guaranteed our current crisis in his tax cuts, signing into law in August 1981 a top marginal income tax rate for the highest earners from 70% to 50% and lowered the maximum capital gains tax rate from 28% to 20%. In 1986, a further drop in wealth tax dropped the top individual income tax rate to 35% in 1987, and eventually down to 28% in 1988.

Even now, many legislators cringe at the prospect of providing adequate financial support for this mandate. Yet the outcome is clear. Real and perceived failures of the public school system has led to a crisis wherein religious advocates and their advocates such as Fox News, acting on their perception of their Christian duty, have managed to work their way through the court system to force tax dollars to support religious education.

The effort to at least gain sufficient funding for the IDEA legislation continues. As reported by Peter Greene for Forbes magazine, published April 17-18, 2026, a Senate bill introduced by Senators Mark Kelly, Mazie Hirono, and an additional 28 senators have introduced the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act.

  • One portion of the President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” was a federal school voucher program that any state could join. But before that plan can go into effect, a new Senate bill has been proposed that would undo the vouchers entirely.
  • … The act would strike IRS Code Section 25, the portion of the IRS code that was inserted to create the federal school voucher program, eliminating that program.
  • The new voucher program was sold as a tax credit program. It would allow taxpayers to claim a $1,700 tax credit by diverting that payment from the IRS to a scholarship granting organization that would then award at least $1,530 of that donation to a student (the rules governing the program allow SGOs to keep 10% of the donated funds).
  • Kelly cites his home state of Arizona as a cautionary tale, where taxpayer-funded school vouchers have become costly:
  • “Since 2022, our state’s universal voucher program has diverted and drained money from public schools; last year alone cost Arizona taxpayers nearly $1 billion. Instead of investing in classrooms, special education services, or school safety, lawmakers pushed massive tax giveaways and created a parallel education system that lacks transparency and accountability.”[1]

News reporters including Craig Harris have run a series of reports showing much of voucher money has gone to questionable and disallowed purposes, including dirt bikes, custom tires and luxury hotel stays. Voucher advocates such as EdChoice have pushed back, but have had difficulty debunking Harris’s results. [2]

  • “In Arizona, we’ve already seen how universal vouchers are leading to rampant fraud and benefiting people who already had the means to send their kids to private school, while decimating public education for everyone else,” said Kelly.
  • …When Kentucky’s similarly-structured tax credit scholarship program was challenged in court, the state made a similar argument that the program did not use any public taxpayer funds. But when the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled against the program, they rejected that argument. “The money at issue cannot be characterized as simply private funds,” they wrote, “rather it represents the tax liability that the taxpayer would otherwise owe.”
  • When it comes to granting tax credits, the federal government has one power that states do not. Most states require a balanced budget; the state needs to find a way to cover the money it lost by offering credits rather than collecting on the tax liability. The federal government can just add the uncollected taxes to its deficit tab. Kelly noted in an interview, “It is a deficit bomb, this federal program.”
  • The Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan entity that assists Congress on tax legislation, estimated that the credit could cost $25.9 billion between 2025 and 2034 or around $3 billion to $4 billion a year. That would mean potential income of $300-$400 million for SGOs [Scholarship Granting Organizations]; several organizations are preparing to launch national SGOs to work with the federal voucher program.

In addition to Kelly and Hirono, the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act is cosponsored by 28 other Democratic senators.

Response to the bill has come from multiple arenas of American society.

  • In response to the introduction of the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act, Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, President and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, said:
  • “Public schools are sacred to our multi-faith democracy. They are fertile ground for religious freedom — places where students from all walks of life can learn and grow together, no matter their faith. We should be strengthening our public schools, not abandoning them and violating religious freedom in the process.”
  • “This disastrous federal voucher scheme is straight from the Christian nationalist playbook. It would force every taxpayer to pay for religious education, bolster private schools that can advance extreme religious agendas, and invite the government into religious education, undermining the autonomy of families, houses of worship, and religious schools. To reject this assault on religious freedom and help set students up to thrive in our multi-faith democracy, Congress must pass the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act.”[3]

First Focus on Children is a bipartisan advocacy organization dedicated to making children and families the priority in federal policy and budget decisions. In November 2024, the organization issued the following statement: [4]

  • Voucher programs may use terminology like “education savings accounts,” “opportunity scholarships,” or “tax credit scholarships.” While policymakers use a range of terms to describe voucher programs, they all function similarly: by diverting public school funding to private schools. Since the term “voucher” can be associated with negative perceptions by constituents, using alternative terminology has become a common strategy to pass unpopular policies.
  • While “school choice” sounds good in theory, the privatization of public school funds exacerbates educational inequity and increases the disparities it claims to mend. Data continues to reaffirm that school vouchers are riddled with fraud, show unimpressive results, defund public education, and amount to a handout to the wealthy. Supporters argue that vouchers expand equity and opportunity, but in fact, vouchers divert public money to the private, often religious, education of a handful of students.

The Economic Policy Institute examined the economics involved with vouchers versus public schools: [5]

  • The growing popularity of vouchers raises a host of crucial questions and concerns. Key to informing the debate are questions of public finance and education quality. Is allowing public money to leave the public school system and follow kids to private schools the most effective or equitable way to make sure every child has access to an excellent education? Our view is that it’s not. Public dollars allocated to education should go to boosting spending in public systems, not subsidizing private education.
  • Proponents of vouchers try to claim that expanding them would not harm public resources for education. Their argument hinges on the fact that public school spending is generally determined by governments setting a per-pupil allocation and then multiplying this allocation by projected enrollment. This funding model allows voucher proponents to claim that if vouchers pull children out of public schools, it still leaves per-pupil spending untouched, even though vouchers might reduce overall spending. In effect, proponents are arguing that vouchers would not degrade public schools’ ability to provide educational services.
  • But there are many flaws in this argument. Most obviously, introducing any new demand on public expenditures will lead to some pressure throughout public budgets—including school budgets—even if it does not immediately come directly from public school allocations. Many vouchers end up going to students who have never been in public schools, so funding these students’ private school expenses introduces new pressures on public budgets.

This perverse drive to compromise public education by using tax dollars in support of religious teaching didn’t happen overnight, nor will it end any time soon. But what’s at risk is nothing less than our nation itself, founded on principles now dangling on a precipice. Equal opportunity to education means not only that each child has the right to an education, but also that all education provides balanced exposure to the same fundamental subject matter. The current divide in this nation’s society cannot be remedied without a truly equal education of our young. Our tax dollars must not support religious education.[6]

[1] Greene, Petere. “Senate Bill Proposes Rollback of Federal School Vouchers,” Forbes, Apr 17, 2026. https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/ 2026/04/17/senate-bill-proposes-rollback-of-federal-school-vouchers/

[2] Links provided in the article include the full text of the proposed bill. https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2026/04/17/senate-bill-proposes-rollback-of-federal-school-vouchers/

[3] McDonald, Tranée. “Keep Public Funds in Public Schools,” Interfaith Alliance, April 16, 2026. https://www.interfaithalliance.org/post/keep-public-funds-in-public-schools

[4] Klam, Lily. “Privatizing Public Schools Funds: Threats to Equity, Access, and Educational Quality,” First Focus on Children, Nov 15, 2024. https://firstfocus.org/resource/privatizing-public-school-funds-threats-to-equity-access-and-educational-quality/

[5] Wething, Hilary. “How vouchers harm public schools,” Economic Policy Institute, Dec 19, 2024.  https://www.epi.org/publication/vouchers-harm-public-schools/

[6] For insights on how minorities can rule over the majority in our republic, see https://www.ie.edu/insights/articles/minority-rules-in-the-united-states/

This is the 8th chapter in the booklet  New Puritans and the U. S. Peerage: The Willful Destruction of Public Education

Why the Puritan Agenda Must Not Prevail

The Founding Fathers’ collective vision of education in a democratic republic reflected their profound understanding of education’s essential role in ensuring the sustainability and robustness of the new nation. We were fortunate that the wealthy early leadership of the nation—Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and George Washington—shared a common conviction: that education was indispensable for self-government and the preservation of liberty. Jefferson and Madison insisted on the widespread diffusion of knowledge as foundational to liberty. They were acutely aware that an ignorant populace could be easily manipulated, that education was the bulwark against tyranny and mob rule.

Today in the United States, secular education is seen as a threat to religious belief by about ten percent of the population, which to a thinking person would hint at a problem with their religious beliefs. But it seems this small portion of the population instead sees the outlier status of their beliefs as a badge of honor, somehow proving they are right and everyone else is wrong. Yet while most Christian extremists rely on the science behind cell phones, modern medicine, and public health standards governing water and air quality, they suffer cognitive dissonance between their religious mythology and the realities of scientific advancement. The fear of new information is so deeply ingrained that these religionists cannot escape it. This is the kind of ‘knowledge’ and ‘faith’ that Christian extremists seek to embed in the minds of their children, and not just theirs.  

The intention is to force institutional ignorance onto the entire nation. For our own good, of course. Because otherwise their loving God will condemn us all to burn in hell for eternity.

We’ve seen this before, as elaborated in the first chapter, times when religious power brokers forced a population to adhere to specific doctrines and if refused, initiated imprisonment, torture, and death for the “infidels.” Christian Nationalist ideas of proper acceptance of authority are rooted in a belief that God holds supreme authority and has delegated power to specific earthly institutions—primarily the church, family, and state—to maintain order and enforce a Christian social hierarchy.

Adherents believe that specific leaders are chosen by God to “save the country,” as demonstrated by their continuing support of presidents such as Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George Bush, and now Donald Trump. A significant segment of Christian Nationalists and their supporters believe that Trump is a divinely ordained leader sent to save the United States, viewing him as a “warrior for Christ” tasked with restoring America to its perceived Christian roots. Because such leaders are seen as advancing a divine plan, supporters can overlook their breaches of democratic rules or norms as well as their personal immorality and perfidiousness, believing such actions are necessary to uphold a rightly ordered society.

It follows then that control over education and tax support for schools teaching these theories are a primary objective. But that was not the vision of the Founding Fathers or the visionary early 19th century government in establishing tax-support public schools. Fortunately, as science and other fields of study have advanced over the last 250 years, religious power over learning has diminished.

Leading us to this point has been the “common school,” established in the 1830s and 1840s in the new United States, comparable to today’s standardized public school. Considered the father of American education, Horace Mann envisioned common schools as institutions that were free and open to all students. In his role as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education (1837–1848), he established teacher training schools, improved school infrastructure, and raised educational standards. [1] He wanted those teachers to teach standardized curricula that instilled students with civic values. Catholic and other parochial schools in particular objected to Mann’s belief that schools should not adhere to any specific Christian sect, an argument that continues to the present day.

An obvious drawback of religious schools that is often overlooked is the inevitable assumption of such schools and their adherents that their beliefs are the only truth, that anything other than specific Christian dogma is a lie. Denial of science is the best example of this prejudice as scientific discoveries have slowly dismantled much of the institutionalized mythology enshrined by religion. As myth becomes ingrained in students of religious schools, their beliefs serve as a wedge between the people practicing that belief system and the needs of a nation to move forward in all areas such as advancing industry and the economy with new inventions based on new scientific discoveries and the acceptance of facts about human life previously not understood.

For the 68% of Americans who do not adhere or sympathize with the strict religious views of Christian extremists, the fundamentals of accepted education typically aligns with secular, pluralistic, and science-backed academic standards. These standards prioritize critical thinking and inclusivity rather than religious doctrine or rigid ideological frameworks. In fact, of the approximate 32% of Americans counted as Christian Nationalists, the actual adherents are only 11% while another 21% are considered sympathizers.[2]

The question of funding public schools boils down to what we expect our educational tax dollars to accomplish. Programs which teach narrow and exclusive religious doctrine are by definition not meant to support a cooperative relationship among persons of various cultural and religious backgrounds, but rather to hold up one belief system as the only truth. This becomes an impetus for authoritarian overreach and ultimately war, as history has long shown us.

While historically this conflict in the U.S. has been decided in favor of the constitutional standard not to mix church and state, the most compelling factor in the present day argument is that we all pay taxes and the majority of Americans do not agree that taxes should support the extreme Christian agenda. Tax support violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause by compelling taxpayers to fund the teaching of religious doctrines, essentially creating a government-sanctioned religion.

The slow but determined creep of Christian Nationalism shows every intention of overturning this Constitutional mandate. The camel’s nose is well under the edge of the tent. A 2024 investigation by The Washington Post found billions in tax dollars now pay tuition at private, mostly religious schools. For example, Florida’s voucher program is expected to exceed $3 billion, with over 80% of funds going to religious schools. Ohio is projected to spend nearly $1 billion, with 91% of voucher users attending religious institutions. Hundreds of thousands of students use these programs. The rise in funding is attributed to the expansion of voucher programs in Republican-led states, which now allow more or all families to qualify, shifting from programs once aimed only at low-income students.

Reduced funding for public education leads to layoffs, larger class sizes, and reduced individualized attention for students. Schools that serve the vast majority of students are forced to cut essential services, including arts, music, athletic programs, and after-school programming. There is less money for modern technology, up-to-date textbooks, and lab equipment. Meanwhile, private schools receiving public funds can exclude students based on religion, academic performance, disability, or sexual orientation, narrowing the educational options for those students. Vouchers can deepen racial and socioeconomic segregation by subsidizing tuition at private schools that often lack the diversity of public schools. Continued siphoning of funds can result in the closure of neighborhood public schools, particularly in rural areas where the school is a central community institution.

Long term erosion of financial support for public education puts the entire nation at risk, not only from prejudicial curricula in religious classrooms, but also from the inevitable schism between people educated in stringently oppositional systems. In a nation that has long pursued unity despite our different origins and beliefs, such divisive practices are a form of violence against the existing government.

The Supreme Court has said the Establishment Clause forbids, among other things, financial support of religious activity. Subsequent cases challenging the longstanding interpretation of the First Amendment have brought us to the Espinoza vs. Montana case, allowing tax dollars to flow to the parents/students of religious schools. This is by far not established law. While Espinoza reaffirmed that governments may not discriminate against beneficiaries solely on the basis of their religious character, it left open the possibility that governments might still be able to bar beneficiaries that would put public funds to religious uses.

The U.S. majority has become increasingly aware of the conflict between a religious agenda and our multicultural society. The percentage of Americans who say religion is “very important” has dropped from over 88%-95% in the 1960s to 47% in 2025. The latest Religious Landscape Study, fielded over seven months in 2023-24, finds that only 62% of U.S. adults identify as Christians. That is a decline of nine percentage points since 2014 and a 16-point drop since 2007. Within Christianity, 19% are Catholic, 3% are Mormon, Orthodox, Jehovah’s Witness, and other, and 42% are Protestant divided into Evangelical (23%), Mainline (14%),[3] and Historically Black Protestant (5%).

Projections indicate that by 2070, Christians could shrink from 64% (2020) to between 35% and 54% of Americans, while “Nones” (no religion) rise from 30% to over 50% in some scenarios. This shift drives religious zealots to push a movement which seeks to assert “dominion” over societal institutions, including government, education, and media, believing that Christian moral values should dictate law.

Growing concern within the U.S. public is slowly building into a response to Christian Nationalism, Dominionism, Christian Reconstructionism, and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) including tracking by civil rights organizations, legal challenges, and theological counter-movements from within Christianity. These initiatives aim to counter the rising influence of these new Puritan groups. Organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are actively documenting the spread of Dominionism,[4] profiling key leaders in the New Apostolic Reformation, and tracking associated hate groups. (This is directly connected to the Trump Administration’s May 2026 lawsuit against the SPLC in an effort to intimidate all civil rights organizations from speaking out and doing their work.)[5]

Scholars and progressive faith leaders are working to produce public-facing biblical interpretations that contradict Dominionist, coercive, and authoritarian interpretations of Scripture. Efforts are underway to inform the public and Christians about the anti-democratic nature of white Christian Nationalism and Dominionism to “inoculate” them against its appeal. The ACLU of North Dakota and other organizations actively fight against initiatives promoted by Dominionists, such as forcing religious prayer into public schools, banning books, and promoting anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Organizations like American Atheists oppose lobbying efforts to pass laws that violate the separation of church and state, such as those permitting discrimination under the guise of religious freedom. Researchers such as Dr. Matthew D. Taylor are working to expose the ties between modern charismatic prophets and the political, antidemocratic, and “spiritual warfare” approaches used to influence elections.

Defenders of the United States Constitution emphasize the importance of religious pluralism and the separation of church and state, arguing that Christian supremacy rejects these principles. Organized efforts underway to combat Christian supremacy include

  • A grassroots movement launched by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC). It unites Christians across the theological spectrum to speak out against the merging of Christian and American identities.
  • Interfaith Alliance: A national, pro-democracy organization that mobilizes diverse faith communities to challenge Christian nationalism, protect civil rights, and uphold religious pluralism.
  • State Ecumenical Groups: Various regional faith networks, such as the Wisconsin Council of Churches, that host educational campaigns, study groups, and sermons to counter nationalist theology.
  • Americans United for Separation of Church and State: A leading organization dedicated to preserving the constitutional wall separating church and state. They actively litigate cases and advocate against policies that advance white Christian nationalism.
  • Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF): A prominent secular organization working to defend the constitutional principle of separation of church and state, frequently challenging religious favoritism in the public and political spheres.
  • Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC): Monitors far-right and extremist movements. The SPLC identifies and exposes the ideologies and groups—including Christian supremacist and Dominionist networks—that threaten democratic institutions.
  • Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI): While not an activist group, PRRI conducts rigorous data-driven research and polling on Christian nationalism. Their work tracks the demographics and organizations that resist these movements.

These efforts fight against the adoption of “biblical authoritarianism” and the idea that Christians are mandated to take over societal institutions.

[1] Little, Becky. “Who Invented Public School in America,” History, Sept 10, 2025. https://www.history.com/articles/public-school-america-horace-mann

[2] More than half of U.S. Republicans are either adherents (20%) or sympathizers (33%).

[3] a group of historically established, traditional Protestant denominations in North America, often associated with a theologically liberal, progressive, or moderate approach to Christianity

[4] Dominionism (or Dominion Theology) is the religious belief that Christians are divinely mandated to take control of secular political and cultural institutions to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth. It is smaller and more fringe than broad Christian nationalism, but it holds disproportionate sway in certain fundamentalist, charismatic, and Pentecostal factions. While closely related, Dominionism and Christian Nationalism differ in their ultimate goals, theological roots, and how they view the relationship between religion, government, and the end of the world. Apparently neither group is familiar with the writings attributed to John in 18:36 where Jesus clarifies the nature of his realm: “My kingdom is not of this world.”

[5] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/21/trump-administration-sues-southern-poverty-law-center-on-fraud-charges

This is the 4th chapter in the booklet New Puritans and the U. S. Peerage: The Willful Destruction of Public Education

Education Is A National Priority

Throughout our national history, conflict over education has erupted with tiring regularity. Soon after the Revolution, common schools were designed by Protestant elites to foster “Americanization,” but they used the King James Bible and Protestant curriculum. Irish Catholic immigrants in New York and Philadelphia resisted what they saw as forced indoctrination and demanded public funds for their own schools. These tensions led to riots in Philadelphia in 1844, where Catholic homes and churches were burned. This conflict cemented the shift towards non-sectarian public schools, although they often retained a general Protestant character.

Many citizens, particularly wealthier ones, were reluctant to pay taxes for other people’s children to be educated. Some workers resisted the invasiveness of compulsory education, as it kept children out of the workforce, forcing some towns to temporarily abandon or reduce public school efforts, such as in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1860.[1] Child labor was highly widespread in the U.S. during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with over 1.75 million children aged 15 and under (roughly 18% of the workforce) reported as working in 1910. Children as young as 3 or 4 were sometimes used for small, specialized tasks, while 5 to 8-year-olds were frequently employed in hazardous textile mills, mines, and factories. Child labor was finally curbed by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.[2]

Before the Civil War, most Southern states passed laws making it illegal to teach enslaved people to read or write out of fear that they would read abolitionist literature, such as David Walker’s Appeal, and communicate, fueling organized uprisings like Nat Turner’s Rebellion of 1831. Also, literate enslaved people could read maps, forge travel passes, or write passes for themselves to escape to free states, a method used by many to escape bondage. Slaveholders believed an illiterate, ignorant enslaved person was easier to manage and obey, whereas literacy made them “disconsolate and unhappy” in their captivity. And literacy challenged the white supremacist justification that Black people were inherently inferior, unintelligent, or “less than human.”

Even in northern states, black children were largely denied access to public schools, often being forced into segregated, inferior schools, leading to early school desegregation battles, such as Roberts v. City of Boston in the 1840s. The “Slave Bible”—formally titled Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the use of the Negro Slaves—was used in the 19th-century United States, particularly in the South, though it was primarily produced in London in 1807 for British Caribbean colonies. It was a heavily redacted version of the Bible created to promote obedience and prevent slave revolts, with 90% of the Old Testament and 50% of the New Testament removed.

Following the Civil War, southern schoolhouses became battlegrounds to teach the “Lost Cause” narrative—a false interpretation of history that portrayed slavery in a positive light and argued the war was over states’ rights, not slavery. School officials strictly monitored textbooks to ensure they did not challenge Confederate interpretations of history. This led through coming decades to culminate in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) in which the Supreme Court ruled that separate schools were “inherently unequal.” Decades of “massive resistance” from Southern states ensued. In the 1970s, court-ordered busing forced integration in schools resulting in violent protests, most notably in Boston in 1974, and contributed to “white flight” to suburban schools. In response to integration orders, numerous private, segregated religious schools were established, particularly in the South, to circumvent desegregation.

Concurrently, the Scopes “Monkey” Trial in 1925 was a landmark confrontation between traditionalists (conservatives) and modernists (progressives), focusing on a Tennessee law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools, effectively curbing the teaching of science for several decades.

School prayer remains a hot topic for both religionists as well as those defending the Constitution, with two lawsuits serving to define the subject. Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) declared that state-sponsored Bible reading and prayer in public schools were unconstitutional, fueling long-term debates over the secularization of public education. The fact is that public school children have always been able to pray when and wherever they pleased. What upsets religionists is that children in public schools cannot be led in prayer by adults—not teachers, not parents, not the principal. The desire to inculcate all children through prayer voicing religious doctrine drives this falsehood.

The later part of the century was marked by “curriculum wars” over the inclusion of diverse, non-European perspectives in history and literature curricula, which opponents claimed was a political attack on traditional national identity. Like the prayer argument, the textbook/curriculum battles continue unabated today, with most book content decided by heavily-conservative boards. [3]

“Given the high concentration of students in Texas and California, textbook makers know…they need to create books that are going to be approved by those large states.” said Dr. Max Altman, director of research and policy at the Southern Education Foundation. Altman said that requests for changes and outright rejections based on the inclusion of certain concepts are what make California, Florida and Texas so influential.

“This small group of people who approve textbooks within a couple of states have a very, very large effect on what students across the bottom of the United States and really across the country as a whole are able to learn,” he said.

[This 2022 article reports that] …[i]n April, the Florida Department of Education initially rejected 41% of all K-12 mathematics textbooks submitted for state adoption approval — the most in Florida’s history. The dismissal of the 54 textbooks — including 71% of K-5 math materials — stems from several claims: references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core and “unsolicited” inclusions of Social Emotional Learning.

The public push to provide evidential examples of the above reasons for rejection made national headlines, as the state’s Department of Education did not initially release any specifics. Later, it published four visual examples from the rejected textbooks.

Experts suggest that overseeing public school curricula in a small number of highly populated states has an outsized influence on what children are learning throughout the country. Because publishers often create uniform national editions, major state adoption boards, particularly in Texas (conservative-leaning) and California (liberal-leaning), exert outsized influence on nationwide content. Texas, one of the largest purchasers of textbooks, often pushes to emphasize “positive aspects” of American history, de-emphasize the role of slavery, increase the influence of Christianity, and promote gun rights. Conservative, evangelical, or religious viewpoints have often driven content to prioritize patriotism and limit topics like climate science or critical race theory.

California often pushes for inclusive, multicultural narratives, ensuring that textbooks feature stories of LGBTQ+ individuals, marginalized groups, and a more critical view of historical events. Due to this, publishers often create different regional versions or compromise by including, for instance, both more critical and more patriotic interpretations of events, creating a “whitewashed” or highly contentious final product.

Textbook selection and other elements of public schools are the task of school boards, both local and state level. While curricula are determined by state boards of education, there are no educational standards required of state board members. Eligibility for state boards of education typically requires candidates to be residents of the state, registered voters, and often residents of the specific district they aim to represent.

Not requiring a college degree for state boards of education is part of a broader, bipartisan shift towards skills-based governance and a move away from formal credential requirements, which are increasingly seen as unnecessary barriers to entry. While education policymakers need expertise, proponents of this shift argue that a degree is not a guarantee of competence, effective leadership, or relevant experience.

On the other hand, without a deep background in subject matter and education policy, board members may rely on ideological rather than research-based solutions to solve problems like low student achievement, leading to increased political polarization in schools. Members may struggle to evaluate curriculum standards, assessment tools, and learning theories, potentially leading to decisions that do not align with evidence-based practices. More concerning is that without the experience of the wide array of college coursework, members may focus on short-term political issues or “quick fixes” rather than the long-term, systemic changes needed to improve student outcomes.

State boards typically adopt standards (e.g., in reading, math) that outline skills students must master, hopefully informed by state law, national benchmarks, and expert input. State-level entities create frameworks, which may act as official requirements or recommended guidelines for local curriculum. State laws often mandate specific topics (e.g., specific subjects, or in some cases, restricting approaches) that schools must adopt. The degree of control varies by state; some states have highly centralized, mandatory curriculum lists, while others allow local districts greater flexibility. Boards often adopt standards at public meetings, occasionally with guidance from curriculum committees and teacher panels.

Local level textbook adoption policy leaves decisions to a local education agency (i.e. school district). State level textbook adoption policy leaves decisions to a state agency (i.e. state board of education) California has a statewide adoption policy at the elementary level. Secondary textbooks are chosen by local governing boards. The state of Hawaii comprises a single school district.
Map: Emily Schmidt, APM Research Lab Source: Education Commission of the States

Curricula

There are no federally mandated national education standards in the United States, as education is primarily managed by states and local districts. However, the nation utilizes voluntary, state-led standards like the Common Core State Standards, adopted in June 2010 by most states to ensure consistent math and English learning goals. Not adopting the standards are Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma. The reasons for common standards for curricula include the obvious, that children of a family moving from one state to another meet the same basic education as at their previous location. Also obvious is the need for all Americans to share the same understanding of national history, the operations of government, and fundamentals of reading, writing, and mathematics, as well as science.

School boards and districts have been empowered to make curriculum decisions in order to prepare future citizens. State constitutions require the operation of systems of education, and we elect school boards to make important decisions for community schools, including those related to materials and instruction. In some cases, parents object to these decisions, arguing that their constitutional rights have been violated. For example, in the [2008] federal appeals case of Parker v. Hurley, parents objected to their children being presented with books depicting diverse families, including families with parents of the same gender. The district refused to grant the children an exemption from the instruction. The parents argued that the refusal of an exemption amounted to an infringement on their constitutional rights as parents and their free exercise of religion rights under the First Amendment. The court disagreed, citing a long line of cases establishing that while parents have a constitutional right to raise their children, there is no right to direct how a public school teaches those children. [4]   

The New Puritans at Work

The overarching religious education agenda is not a single project but rather a continuous political tug-of-war for the control of educational narratives. The division between these two fundamentals of education has led, in part, to today’s division in American society.

We can identify the ways that the Puritan ethic drives Christian Nationalism. The Puritans sought to build a “city on a hill” defined by severe piety, communal surveillance, and strict adherence to moral codes, rather than by religious freedom. Christian Nationalists interpret the “city on a hill” phrase, derived from John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon,[5] as a divine mandate that the United States is a uniquely ordained, Christian nation meant to act as a moral, religious beacon to the world. This vision, often championed by President Ronald Reagan, blends national identity with biblical prophecy, suggesting America holds a special, providential covenant to embody Christian principles enforced by the government.

Puritan men held public office, imposing religious law to govern social and legal life. Only adult male church members (“the elect”) could vote in elections and participate in town government. Laws were based on Old Testament teachings. Today, many within the Christian Nationalist movement believe that men are specifically ordained by God to lead in government, politics, and the public sphere. This ideology is rooted in a belief in “biblical patriarchy” or complementarianism, which argues that God established distinct roles for men and women, where men are designed to lead and protect while women are called to support and submit.

Puritan leaders were intolerant of dissenting religious views, which were seen as dangerous to the community’s mission. Christian Nationalists generally believe that America was founded as a Christian nation and that its laws and public life should reflect Christian, specifically Protestant, values. Other religions are viewed as subordinate, threats to national identity, or demonic, with many proponents supporting the restriction of non-Christian practices.

Puritan households were strictly hierarchical, with the father as the head. Women were viewed as “helpmeets” for their husbands with fewer rights, though they held significant responsibility in managing the home, raising children, and tending the gardens. Likewise, many proponents of Christian Nationalism believe that women should prioritize staying at home, focusing on raising children and submitting to their husbands’ leadership.

During the early Puritan period, the “Old Deluder Law” required every town of fifty or more families to pay for a teacher, and they founded Harvard College in 1636 for training ministers. They believed in the active presence of the devil and witches, leading to the Salem witch trials in 1692, which occurred when religious political control was waning. Christian Nationalists view public education as a vital, yet currently hostile, battlefield for the nation’s cultural and spiritual direction. They generally aim to dismantle the traditional secular public school system by promoting school choice vouchers to fund private religious education, instilling conservative Christian values, banning certain books, and reversing LGBTQ+ inclusion.

The Trump administration (2017-2021 and 2025-2028) has adopted key elements of the Christian Nationalist agenda by prioritizing policies that blur the line between church and state, fostering religious exemptions for conservative Christians, and appointing individuals aligned with this ideology to high-ranking positions. Trump has appointed conservative Christian judges, including three Supreme Court justices (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett), who have delivered rulings expanding religious exemptions. They joined John Roberts and Samuel Alito, both appointed by evangelical adherent George W. Bush; Clarence Thomas, the sixth conservative on the nine-member court, was appointed by Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush.

At the prompting of his Christian Nationalist backers, Trump initiatives aim to review federal actions for “anti-Christian” sentiment and protect “religious freedom,” defined by Christian nationalists not as the separation of church and state, but as the right to embed a specific, conservative Christian worldview into government, law, and public life including the use of taxpayer dollars in support of religious education and eliminating government support for advancing educational effectiveness.

Based on 2026 budget proposals and actions, we see that the Trump administration has sought to cut or eliminate over $8.5 billion in K-12 education programs and $2.7 billion in higher education, while targeting programs like TRIO (outreach and student services initiatives funded by the U.S. Department of Education to help low-income, first-generation college students, and individuals with disabilities succeed in education, ranging from middle school through adult education), GEAR UP (a federal discretionary grant program designed to increase the number of low-income, underserved, or first-generation students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education), and Federal Work-Study for elimination or massive reductions. (Initiated in 1964, the program provides part-time jobs for undergraduate and graduate students with financial need, allowing them to earn money for education expenses.)

The Trump administration’s cuts to K-12 education focus on slashing, consolidating, or eliminating programs like after-school, summer, and mental health grants. More than 760 in-progress grants, worth over $2 billion, were discontinued in 2025, including cuts to college prep ($300m+), civics ($35m), and racial integration ($26m). Other cuts target teacher training ($2.2 billion) and English learner services ($890 million). The administration also proposed the “Make Education Great Again” block grant, which would overhaul K-12 education by consolidating federal funding, cut federal oversight, and shift control to states. It prioritizes school choice, patriotic education, and literacy/math, while reducing the Department of Education’s role. This would cut existing program funding by 70%.

Trump’s cuts aren’t the first to take the U.S. educational efforts backwards despite extensive research showing the benefits of programs now being eliminated. This has been an ongoing effort by Christian Nationalists over the last fifty years. During the 1980s, Ronald Reagan campaigned on abolishing the Department of Education, with his 1981 budget reducing spending and consolidating grants.

This despite findings on the effectiveness of public education funding showing that increased spending per pupil yields significant social returns, especially in high-poverty districts. State cutbacks to K–12 spending, the rise of voucher programs, and Trump’s attacks on the federal Department of Education threaten to rob the majority of U.S. children of an adequate education.[6] The vast majority of our youth (90%) are in our public school system. Approximately 49-50 million K-12 students attend public schools in the U.S., while roughly 4.7 to 5.5 million (9%-11%) students are enrolled in private schools, based on 2021-2022 data.

Despite Trump’s claim that such cuts are necessary to reduce the outrageous federal deficit, the numbers prove him wrong. The U.S. national debt increased by approximately $1.78 trillion to $2.25 trillion since January 2025, pushing the total gross national debt past $38 trillion. The debt stood at roughly $36.22 trillion around Jan. 20, 2025, and reached $38 trillion by late October 2025. By March/April 2026, total debt crossed $39 trillion.

As for national security and a sound economy, inadequate education is a root cause of significant social issues, primarily driving cycles of poverty, high unemployment rates, and increased crime. It limits economic mobility, reduces workforce productivity, and fosters gender inequality, while also contributing to poor health outcomes, political instability, and social unrest.

Finally, in studies comparing the racial and ethnic composition of charter schools to public schools, researchers generally find that charter schools preserve or intensify racial and economic segregation, and/or facilitate white flight from public schools. Furthermore, studies that compare individual students’ demographic characteristics to the schools they are leaving (public schools) and the schools they are switching to (charter schools) generally demonstrate that students “leave more diverse public schools and enroll in less diverse charter schools.”[7]

Hardly the path toward a unified nation.

[1] Vinovskis, Maris A. “The Politics of Educational Reform in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts: The Controversy Over the Beverly High School in 1860. Final Report,” Institute of Education Sciences, Aug 15, 1980. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED200495

[2] Indiana, Iowa, West Virginia, Idaho, and Arkansas have passed legislation loosening these protections, with Arkansas eliminating work permits and age verification requirements for children under sixteen.

[3] Schmidt, Emily. “Required Readings: How Textbook Adoption in 3 States Influences The Nation’s K-12  Population,” APM Research Lab,  June 2, 2022. https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-textbook-adoption

[4] Paige, Mark. “Constitution vs. Curriculum,” Resource Hub, National Association of Elementary School Principals, Mar 14, 2022.  https://www.naesp.org/resource/constitution-vs-curriculum/

[5] See https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/colliding-cultures/john-winthrop-dreams-of-a-city-on-a-hill-1630/

[6] Wething, Hilary, Bivens, Josh. U.S. Investment in Public Education Is At Risk,” Economic Policy Institute, Aug 21, 2025.  https://www.epi.org/publication/u-s-investment-in-public-education-is-at-risk-vouchers-state-budget-austerity-and-federal-attacks-on-the-department-of-education-threaten-childrens-futures

[7] “School segregation in the United States,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_segregation_in_the_United_States

This material is Chapter 2 of New Puritans and the U.S. Peerage: The Willful Destruction of Public Education

History of Church as State

Why devote tax dollars to teach children to read? Why do they need to understand how numbers work? What do we benefit from learning about our history, the past 250 years of this nation, the past millennia of human existence? Why not let churches provide education?

Why? Because a review of the past warns us of where religious government can lead. Colonists sailing to these shores in the early 1600s taught reading to support religion, a purpose that continued through the mid-19th century. Warring among themselves over which doctrine would be in control, Protestant-Catholic conflicts were driven by intense religious prejudice, political fears of loyalty to the Pope, and imperial wars against France and Spain. While Maryland was founded as a Catholic refuge, Protestants often took control, passing anti-Catholic laws. Maryland’s 1649 Toleration Act, providing freedom, was twice overturned by Puritans. In 1654, Puritan forces overthrew the proprietary government, outlawing Catholicism. Later, in 1689, “Protestant Associators” led by John Coode defeated Maryland’s Catholic proprietarial government, leading to the prohibition of public Catholic worship and the loss of their political rights.

Needless to say, religious violence didn’t start with American colonists. As far back as you care to examine European history, you find religious wars. The Crusades (11th–13th centuries) were launched by Western European Christians, sanctioned by the Pope, primarily to reclaim the Holy Land (Jerusalem) from Muslim rule, assist the Byzantine Empire against the Seljuk Turks, and reunite Christendom. Total deaths are estimated between two to six million. While exact breakdowns are impossible due to limited records, contemporary estimates suggest hundreds of thousands of Muslims died, while Christian losses included roughly one to two million Europeans.

Perhaps most horrific of these bloody religious wars were the years of the so-called Spanish Inquisition (1478–1834) which used systematic, often bureaucratic, methods to enforce Catholic orthodoxy including secret interrogations, psychological coercion, property confiscation, and calculated torture to extract confessions. Common torture methods included waterboarding, the rack, and pulley-based limb dislocating to force confessions which led to public auto-da-fé ceremonies and executions. Roughly 150,000 people, with an estimated 3,000–5,000 burned alive, were caught up in this religious insanity. As a global power, Spain engaged in religious wars against Protestantism, including conflicts with England, culminating in the 1588 Spanish Armada.

These actions were driven by Spain’s determination to create a uniformly Catholic society.  Sound familiar?

Other similar conflicts included:

  • The Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1653): A series of armed conflicts, including the Bishops’ Wars, the English Civil War (1642–1651), and the Irish Confederate Wars. This involved Anglicans (Royalists/Cavaliers) fighting Puritans (Parliamentarians/Roundheads), who were often allied with Scottish Presbyterians, against a backdrop of Catholic uprising in Ireland.
  • The English Civil War: A fundamental conflict between Anglicans (supporters of King Charles I) and Puritans (supporters of Parliament), leading to over 100,000 battle deaths and thousands more non-combat deaths.
  • Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland (1649–1653): Part of the wider civil war, aimed primarily at Catholic forces.
  • The Glorious Revolution (1688–1689) and Williamite War: A shift in power from Catholic King James II to Protestant forces (Anglicans and others), featuring battles between Anglicans and Catholics, particularly in Ireland.
  • Persecution of Quakers: Quakers were not an army but faced severe persecution from Puritans in New England (1656–1661) and both Anglicans and Puritans in England.

Other European religious wars included the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) resulting in 4.5 to 8 million deaths, while the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598) caused 2 to 4 million deaths.

The period after “discovery” of the New World featured the slaughter of millions of indigenous people. Upon arriving on these lands, still thriving with wildlife and virgin forests despite 40,000+ years of indigenous settlement, Europeans viewed these peoples as inferior and un-Christian, a view which justified brutal violence. Estimates suggest that roughly 55 to 56 million native people died in the Americas due to European colonization between 1492 and the early 1600s. This mass mortality, known as the “Great Dying,” represented about 90% of the indigenous population and was primarily caused by introduced diseases, alongside warfare, forced labor (slavery), and societal collapse.

Based on a 1493 papal decree, Christian explorers believed they had the right to claim land belonging to non-Christians, often viewing themselves as bringing civilization and God to “pagan populations.”

One wonders, what would Jesus do?

Religious conflicts in colonial America were widespread, characterized by Puritan persecution of Quakers and Baptists in New England, anti-Catholic laws in Maryland, and violence against dissenting evangelicals by Anglican authorities in the South. Conflicts also occurred between “Old Light” traditionalists and “New Light” revivalists during the Great Awakening. Puritans in Massachusetts Bay exiled dissenters like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, and hanged four Quakers between 1659 and 1661.

Intermingled among these loving brothers and sisters in Christ were the witch hunts driven by Puritan beliefs and fear of the devil, culminating in the 1692–1693 Salem witch trials, which saw 19 people hanged, one pressed to death,[1] and over 200 accused. While Salem is most famous, over 100 cases occurred across New England and Virginia between 1626 and 1730, including a significant 1662 panic in Hartford, Connecticut.

You’ll notice that in all that violent turmoil, it was the Puritans who were the most intolerant, the most determined to force everyone to their chosen faith. The Puritans believed they had a divine mandate to establish a “Holy Commonwealth” that would influence all areas of life, including public morality, law, and social behavior. This strongly parallels the Catholic crown’s effort to create a uniformly Catholic society across Europe.

Nothing could be closer to this four-hundred year old depraved mindset than the present-day reality of the Christian Nationalists’ ongoing determination to force their beliefs on everyone else, that “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.” They seek secure political power, social dominance, and the implementation of policies based on their religious worldview.

Small wonder that by 1776, the Founding Fathers emphasized the importance of separating the powers of the church and the function of government in writing the new nation’s fundamental governing document and its First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

In the same line of thinking, founders like Thomas Jefferson and later reformers argued that a republic could not survive on ignorance. They viewed tax-supported public education as an insurance premium paid for by the wealthy to ensure political stability, create good citizens, and prevent social unrest. Nativism, driven by fears that newcomers would steal jobs, lower wages, threaten national identity, bring crime, and fail to assimilate particularly targeted Catholicism in the 19th century and non-northern European immigrants later. As immigration increased, particularly in the mid-19th century, public schools were viewed as a mechanism for assimilating children from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds into a shared “American” culture.

Education’s role today is all that and more, critical to our role as citizens of a nation meant to be governed by the people. We are tasked with self-governance as well as developing our moral character, intellectual growth, science-based literacy, and academic proficiency. Few would argue that most modern employment would be possible without these skills.

The chaos permeating United States society today is a primary outcome of our compromised educational system. It’s only going to get worse as budget cuts further undermine school operations and digital media becomes more permeated by artificial intelligence. But the greatest threat is the insidious creep of religious indoctrination, a largely unrecognized form of subversion which demands tax dollars in support of religious teachings in specific opposition to the Founding Fathers’ intent.

These efforts have simmered through our nation’s history, but only in the last fifty years have they made strides in overthrowing our constitutional foundations. We truly face a crisis.

[1] “Pressing” was a method where victims were laid down with heavy weights placed on their bodies, causing breathing to become impossible as ribs fractured, lungs collapsed, and internal organs failed over several hours or days. This happened to Giles Corey, an 81-year-old farmer.

New Puritans and the U.S. Peerage: The Willful Destruction of Public Education

Like the slow spread of a fatal disease, certain interest groups within the United States have been working to undermine the nation’s education system. Their goal, as so clearly outlined in the 900 pages of Project 2025, is to change our democratic republic into plutocratic theocracy. Ruling from the top, the wealthiest citizens (U.S. Peerage) will enjoy virtually no restrictions on their profits or the damage caused by their industries, while ruling from the bottom, the Christian Nationalists and other religious extremists (New Puritans) will ensure the population lives by Christian rules.

This is not a theory. This is the fact of the current situation as recent Supreme Court decisions have opened the door for unregulated homeschooling and religious private schools to receive our tax dollars in support of their operations. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution’s First Amendment, which specifically prohibits any government support for any religion.

This workaround has been steadily advancing since colonial days but has increased significantly since the 1940s when the “Red Scare” brought a fresh level of religious fanaticism to the public arena. The result? Today, billions of our tax dollars flow into religious school coffers while public schools suffer for inadequate funding even though 90% of K-12 students attend public schools. Perhaps more damaging than the financial costs are the lessons learned under religious instruction: that the Earth is only 6,000 years old; that vaccinations are harmful; that men are superior to women. These are the seeds of a modern nation’s destruction.

Grab your copy, only $6. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H3NW358F

New Puritans

Like the slow spread of a fatal disease, certain interest groups within the United States have been working to undermine the nation’s education system. Their goal, as so clearly outlined in the 900 pages of Project 2025, is to change our democratic republic into plutocratic theocracy. Ruling from the top, the wealthiest citizens (U.S. Peerage) will enjoy virtually no restrictions on their profits or the damage caused by their industries, while ruling from the bottom, the Christian Nationalists and other religious extremists (New Puritans) will ensure the population lives by Christian rules.

This is not a theory. This is the fact of the current situation as recent Supreme Court decisions have opened the door for unregulated homeschooling and students at religious private schools to receive our tax dollars in support of their operations. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution’s First Amendment, which specifically prohibits any government support for any religion.

This workaround has been steadily advancing since colonial days but has increased significantly since the 1940s when the “Red Scare” brought a fresh level of religious fanaticism to the public arena. The result? Today, billions of our tax dollars flow into religious school instruction while public schools suffer from inadequate funding even though 90% of K-12 students attend public schools. Perhaps more damaging than the financial costs are the lessons learned under religious instruction: that the Earth is only 6,000 years old; that vaccinations are harmful; that men are superior to women. These are the seeds of a modern nation’s destruction.

91 page booklet $6 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H3NW358F

Table of Contents

Preface

History of Church as State

Education Is A National Priority

The Education Problem: Bigger than the New Puritans

Why the Puritan Agenda Must Not Prevail

Unregulated Private and Home Schooling

The Arkansas Situation

Christian Nationalism’s Goal: Overturn the Constitutional Separation of Church and State 

In Conclusion

Afterword

MAGA

“Confederate dead Miller Farm, Antietam Battlefield, September 19, 1862,” House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/32956.

What will happen to them, these lovers of Trump, the men and women who act as if he is the next risen Christ, or at least the best man possible to lead the United States of America? Who even now cling to their fantasy in the face of his utter perfidy—starting a war, abandoning the American economy, exposed as a defiler of children. What will happen when the inexorable turn of the wheels of justice—or perhaps death—finally finally grind him into the ground? Will they weep? Yes. Will their anger grow exponentially to the point of ignition? Yes.

When the inevitable happens—and yes, I believe in the Constitution and our system of laws which have steered this nation through war and despair for over 200 years—when Trump is finally held accountable for all his lies and frauds and empty promises that continue to spill from his deteriorating mind, mouthed in nonsensical phrases and welcomed with open arms into the aisles of churches and homes of the True Believers, I believe that the witnesses and the attorneys and the juries and judges will do their duty, that he will be convicted of his crimes against the people and the nation, that he will at some point have to face the truth about himself.

Nothing could be more terrifying for a man like Trump than to face the truth, that his life was wasted in harming his fellow man, that he was a liar, thief, an adulterer and a rapist, that he could produce nothing of value in this world. That he had every advantage and he squandered that gift in his ignorance, in his greed and desperation for his life to have some meaning but never did.

What will these people do who hold him up before themselves and now will find him cast down into the depths of human failure, deceit, corruption? When the proof of his amoral guilt opens their eyes with blinding light, will they refuse to believe the truth? Will they take up arms and storm the courthouses and prison, or stand in line to honor his corpse, cry out demanding a new day still grasping for that promise, that fable of his greatness?

They believed. They tied their lifeboats to his ship, that great phantasm of belief that he was the strong man, the savior of our times, that their lives could be made meaningful and fruitful under his leadership, that their hatreds and prejudices would be vindicated. As the seas toss and roll, tossing his ship into wreckage, will their lives also capsize, splinter into driftwood to drift back to the littered beaches over the coming months and years?

Somewhere deep inside, most of the True Believers sense the truth, that Trump is a fool, an emperor without clothes. They know in that secret room of themselves that they have followed a lie. But for many of them, the truth is too painful, too terrifying, and their solution is to justify war, believe they will emerge triumphant in a new white Christian America led by God Almighty with Trump seated on His right hand.

These are the fantasies of those who have never understood their purpose in life. They mouth the words of the Bible without comprehending their personal duty to act on those words. They labor under the belief that their primary duty is to follow a person like Trump because he says what they want to hear, that they are the chosen ones. In their glorious imaginings of redeeming the nation, the radical right imagines the fight as taking down the figureheads of ‘liberal’ democracy without realizing the liberal agenda aligns with the teachings of Christ.

Will justice for Trump open the door to insight, even epiphany, for his True Believers? Will they be able to accept the truth of his malfeasance or the rectitude of the courts’ judgements? Some will. Some already have. But many will not, reliant on media that supports their viewpoint, reinforcing their perception of Trump. Many of them align with his fight against “the system” over specific policy successes or moral scrutinies and focus on the broader, long-term impact they expect from his policies. We probably should feel compassion for their loss of a dream, of a self-made parody of a god who misled them, made promises he couldn’t keep, presented himself in a fictional persona simply to aggrandize himself no matter the price to be paid.

The private, personal cost will be great for those True Believers unable to let go of the fantasy, that they alone stood by a true hero. They will not be treated kindly by history.

The greater cost to the rest of us, and to our nation, is incalculable.

O’Sullivan, Timothy H., and approximately 1823-1896 Mathew B. Brady. “Union dead at Gettysburg.” Photograph. [1863]. Digital Commonwealth, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/q524n605q (accessed April 05, 2026).

I am an American

The United States is supposed to be an effort toward a more evolved culture. No kings. No one above the law. That’s the ideal—freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, a country for all of us to be equal. Thousands have fought and died for this.

How did this vision get perverted into a front for rapacious capitalism? Or was it that way all along?

Time and again we have confronted waves of greed and division, but we have pulled ourselves up from those depths.

It is painful to see the bad guys win, to slide in with their buddies and cover stories to start raping and plundering through every government department and every principle, abandon all integrity and honor and holding no one responsible.

Will this disgrace on our nation’s promise bring about a renewal of all we stand for? Will common sense and the common good rise up in November to put the Trump regime to an end?

That is the hill I will die on. 

Trump’s Drug War

The absurdity is overwhelming. Here we are as Americans, all party to the White House’s illegal murder of over eighty (so far) men in boats on the premise they are bringing drugs to the United States. As well remarked elsewhere, there is no evidence these boats are carrying drugs and no credibility in the idea these small vessels with a fuel range of 100-200 miles are embarking on a thousand mile journey to the U.S.

But even more insane is the idea that a nation under any government can stamp out drug use/abuse by ‘interdicting’ drugs enroute to this country. We can’t even stamp out drugs manufactured in within the borders of this country. Anyone who believes such nonsense needs to have these words tattooed onto their forehead: Supply-Demand. If people want a product, no matter how potentially dangerous, there will ALWAYS be a supplier. Basic economic fact. Reducing supply only results in higher prices for said product, i.e. better profits, more incentive to supply.

So let’s get real about illegal drugs. First, “drug users” include people who depend on caffeine in their morning coffee, iced tea at lunch or other caffeinated beverages, persons who ‘must have’ their cigarettes or other tobacco products, and persons prescribed any of a multitude of pharmaceuticals which address any of a multitude of human conditions from depression to headache to cancer. Secondly, there is an enormous difference between the use of and the abuse of any drug. Prohibitionists prefer to consider all illegal drug use as ‘abuse’ in order to justify draconian laws punishing users. We must keep in mind the blurred line dividing legal and illegal drugs is primarily based on their regulatory status and whether their production, sale, and use are permitted by law. Theoretically, this status is determined by government authorities based on factors like medical utility, potential for abuse, and perceived harm to the individual and society. In other words, there is no truly ‘illegal’ drug.

This theory supporting the prohibition of certain drugs has been shown to be a fabrication serving other less savory objectives. The drug war is a tool used by government to carry out activities which are illegal. For example, one might wonder about the president’s single-minded assault on alleged drug smugglers from Venezuela when coca leaf is grown in three other Latin American countries: Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. Surely the fact that Venezuela possesses the world’s largest oil reserves has nothing to do with it. Surely.

Never mind the fact that cocaine is hardly relevant in drug abuse circles since fentanyl hit the streets. In 2023, there were approximately 72,776 overdose deaths involving fentanyl (synthetic opioids other than methadone) compared to about 29,449 deaths involving cocaine.

Postcard showing an underground opium den in San Francisco, pre-1906 earthquake. By 1896, there were around 300 opium dens in San Francisco, mostly in Chinatown. In the 19th century and the early 20th century, opium smoking was common worldwide, especially in Asia, which was one of the sources of the opium poppy.

In order to better understand this absurdity, let’s go back more than a century to the country’s first ‘drug war’. The San Francisco Opium Den Ordinance of 1875 made it a misdemeanor to maintain or visit places where people smoked opium. These places were mainly in Chinese immigrant neighborhoods. Similar racially inflammatory state laws emerged. Soon after came the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred Chinese laborers from entering the U.S., a ban expanded to all Chinese people in 1902 and not fully repealed until 1943. The first federal drug law, the 1909 Smoking Opium Exclusion Act, prohibited importing and using opium. It wasn’t that the government suddenly became concerned about opium use. In a nutshell, it was that the railroads powering the economic growth of that period were now built, and thousands of Chinese who had been welcomed to this country to do the backbreaking work of carving tunnels out of rock and laying steel track were no longer of use. Even worse, these immigrants, the primary users of opium, were inviting relatives to immigrate and their jobs were seen as threats to white workers.[1]

Then there was alcohol. After nearly a century of growing religious fervor stemming from massive evangelical movements, especially the “Second Great Awakening,” characterized by fiery camp meetings, frontier revivalism, and emotionally charged preaching, a rising cry against alcohol resulted in ‘prohibition,’ enacted on a federal basis in 1920 but in individual states as early as the 1880s.

Carrie Nation became famous for her attacks on alcohol-serving establishments, using rocks, bricks, and her signature hatchet to destroy liquor bottles, mirrors, and bar fixtures. Before resorting to violence, she would kneel outside saloons, sing hymns, and deliver strong sermons to patrons and owners, sometimes calling herself the “Destroyer of Men’s Souls”.

“A wide coalition of mostly Protestants, prohibitionists first attempted to end the trade in alcoholic drinks during the 19th century. They aimed to heal what they saw as an ill society beset by alcohol-related problems such as alcoholism, domestic violence, and saloon-based political corruption.”[2]

Alcohol prohibition led to massive increases in organized crime (bootlegging, speakeasies), rampant corruption of officials, dangerous unregulated alcohol leading to sickness/death, huge losses in government tax revenue, and a general disrespect for the law, with little measurable public health benefit, ultimately proving a costly failure. Ultimately, prohibition led to the development of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), significantly expanding the role and authority of the FBI’s predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), making it central to federal law enforcement by creating massive new criminal enterprises (bootlegging) that required federal intervention, strained resources, spurred corruption, and ultimately led to bigger federal crime-fighting roles and the rise of modern organized crime, impacting federal investigations for decades.

This powerful new agency could have drifted into irrelevance when alcohol was once again legal in 1932, but instead there is evidence that the federal official who spearheaded cannabis prohibition saw it as a way to maintain his department’s relevance and budget. Harry Anslinger, the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), needed a new focus for his agency after alcohol prohibition was repealed. He launched a public campaign against cannabis (often using the “marihuana” spelling to associate it with Mexican immigrants), portraying it as a dangerous substance to justify his department’s continued existence. Anslinger’s rhetoric carried strong undercurrents of racial prejudice and xenophobia, targeting Mexican immigrants and Black jazz musicians.

Then as the ‘60s ended with massive marches in support of equal rights for minorities and women, against the Vietnam war, and in support of gay rights, President Richard Nixon officially launched the “War on Drugs” in the early 1970s, declaring drug abuse a public enemy and enacting significant federal legislation like the Controlled Substances Act to combat drug production, distribution, and use, though policies intensified under subsequent administrations. 

One of Richard Nixon’s top advisers and a key figure in the Watergate scandal said the war on drugs was created as a political tool to fight blacks and hippies, according to a 22-year-old interview recently published in Harper’s Magazine.

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”[3]

A 2017 study showed that police forces which received military equipment were more likely to have violent encounters with the public, regardless of local crime rates. A 2018 study found that militarized police units in the United States were more frequently deployed to communities with large shares of African-Americans, even after controlling for local crime rates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarization_of_police#cite_ref-17

In the next administration, First Lady Nancy Reagan famously addressed the drug “problem” with her “Just Say No.” advice, unwittingly illustrating the parental role now assumed by government over the private, consensual behavior of drug users. Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, took it a step further. He promoted the 1033 Program (Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Disposition Services) in the early 1990s to transfer surplus military gear to local law enforcement for the “War on Drugs.” Nowhere in this rush to judgement did anyone point out that M16/AR-15 rifles, grenade launchers, armored vehicles (APCs, MRAPs), night vision, tactical robots, and “less-lethal” gear (beanbag/pepperball guns, flashbangs) have absolutely no effect on drugs. These weapons and the “war” in which they are being used are against PEOPLE—American citizens, most of whom simply preferered to toke a joint after work rather than drink an alcoholic beverage.

This despite the fact that in the 1970s and ‘80s, marijuana was by far the most widely used of illegal drugs, was found in multiple studies not to be addictive and also found not to be a ‘gateway’ to harder drugs, as so often alleged in government reports. Even today, with drugs like cocaine and even fentanyl in the headlines, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) World Drug Report 2024, the estimated number of people who used various drugs at least once in the prior twelve months was: Cannabis (Marijuana): 228 million users; Opioids: 60 million users; Amphetamines: 30 million users; Cocaine: 23 million users; Ecstasy: 20 million users.

All the while, the drug war of those decades provided cover for illegal U.S. government operations in Central and South America as those nations began to resist colonization by American corporations seeking to exploit natural resources like oil, minerals, and agricultural opportunities. Fertile land and cheap labor could produce crops such as coffee, bananas, and other foods requiring year-round growing seasons.

According to Tim Weiner, the Central Intelligence Agency “has been accused of forming alliances of convenience with drug traffickers around the world in the name of anti-Communism” since its creation in 1947.[4] The CIA has a long, controversial history in South America, primarily during the Cold War, involving covert operations like coups, political destabilization, and support for right-wing regimes (e.g., Operation Condor) to counter perceived communist influence, leading to significant human rights abuses and democratic declines, with operations continuing into recent times, such as those in Venezuela. Key actions included overthrowing governments (Chile, Ecuador, Brazil), supporting anti-communist forces (Contras in Nicaragua, a major scandal where in U.S. operatives sold guns to Iran between 1981 and 1986, facilitated by senior officials of the Ronald Reagan administration. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, an anti-Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua.), and involvement in conflicts like the Salvadoran Civil War, with consequences like suppressed democracy and economic impacts.

This kind of interference in the affairs of other nations more or less permeates American history. In the early 20th century, during the “Banana Republic” era of Latin American history, the U.S. launched several interventions and invasions in the region (known as the Banana Wars) in order to promote American business interests. During the Cold War (1950s-1980s), the CIA carried out coordinated campaigns to install South American dictatorships (Argentina, Chile, Brazil, etc.) to track, kidnap, torture, and kill left-wing dissidents, with CIA support and intelligence sharing. In Guatemala (1954), the CIA overthrew the democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz, linking to U.S. corporate interests, using exile forces and propaganda. In Chile (1970s), CIA efforts undermined President Salvador Allende, paving the way for a military coup. Same idea for Brazil (1964): Supported a coup against President João Goulart, leading to a military dictatorship. Nicaragua (1980s): Funded and trained the right-wing Contra rebels fighting the socialist Sandinista government, with alleged links to cocaine trafficking. El Salvador (1980s): Trained and equipped military units involved in massacres during the civil war.

CIA interventions often resulted in the collapse of democratic institutions, reduced civil liberties, and economic hardship, despite justifications of promoting democracy or fighting communism, according to research. The support ‘troops’ for these political objectives has become de facto occupation of these nations with armed agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, with 87 foreign offices in 67 countries. For example, in the so-called “Southern Cone,” (Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay), are considered to be transit zones for the movement of cocaine base, cocaine HCL, and heroin being shipped from Colombia and Peru to markets in the U.S. and Europe, or producers of coca leaves. The end result of these often violent interventions in the affairs of our neighbors is the current and ongoing flood of desperate people arriving at our borders.

Not only are drug laws used outside our nation’s borders as cover for extra-judicial interference in international relations, they also serve domestically to selectively target specific individuals and politically inconvenient groups or based on racism or other prejudices, most recently undocumented immigrants. This is a useful tool for xenophobes determined to turn the United States into a white patriarchal “Christian” nation. The current administration manipulates this demographic by playing up the drug war.

Public support for prohibition policies relies on judgments of morality, that becoming intoxicated is immoral, an echo of the early 1800s temperance movement which reached its zenith with alcohol prohibition, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This same moral judgment about private consensual activity remains a strong current in the United States where prostitution, gambling, and drug use (other than legal drugs) fall under strong government control. While government cannot (yet) spy on the living rooms and bedrooms of its citizens, government agents find such laws useful in targeting specific types of people, as previously illustrated.

“Today, police make more than 1.5 million drug arrests each year, and about 550,000 of those are for cannabis offenses alone. Almost 500,000 people are incarcerated for nothing more than a drug law violation, and Black and brown people are disproportionately impacted by drug enforcement and sentencing practices. Rates of drug use and sales are similar across racial and ethnic lines, but Black and Latinx people are far more likely than white people to be stopped, searched, arrested, convicted, harshly sentenced, and saddled with a lifelong criminal record.

“The wide-ranging consequences of a drug law violation aren’t limited to senseless incarceration: people with low incomes are denied food stamps and public assistance for past drug convictions; states including Texas and Florida suspend driver’s licenses for drug offenses totally unrelated to driving; and numerous other policies deny child custody, voting rights, employment, loans, and financial aid to people with criminal records.”[5]

Despite apparent national political resolve to deal with the drug problem, inherent contradictions regularly appear between U.S. anti-drug policy and other national policy goals and concerns. Pursuit of drug control policies can sometimes affect foreign policy interests and bring political instability and economic dislocation to countries where narcotics production has become entrenched economically and socially. Drug supply interdiction programs and U.S. systems to facilitate the international movement of goods, people, and wealth are often at odds.[6]

  • “We are still in the midst of the most devastating drug epidemic in U.S. history,” according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow at the Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at Brookings Institution. In 2020, overdose deaths in the United States exceeded 90,000, compared with 70,630 in 2019, according to research from the Commonwealth Fund. Yet, the federal government is spending more money than ever to enforce drug policies. In 1981, the federal budget for drug abuse prevention and control was just over a billion dollars. By 2020, that number had grown to $34.6 billion. When adjusted for inflation, CNBC found that it translates to a 1,090% increase in just 39 years.[7]

What if that money had instead been applied to individuals and programs that support individual ambitions and needs—tiny homes for the homeless, for example? What if the costs of our interference in foreign nations had instead been directed toward helping the people of those nations deal with loss of farmland to multinational corporations, climate-change induced drought and hurricane damage, and support for social programs, education, and entrepreneurship, thereby reducing the urgency of people in those countries to flood to U.S. borders in hope of better lives?

Without hot button issues like women’s reproductory rights and drugs, politicians would have to gain votes based on performance rather than propaganda. Stepping away from “government as nannies” and the idea of controlling private behavior would allow taxpayer dollars to support programs that help deter substance abuse in the same way that public education has helped reduce the use of cigarettes. No one knows better than addicts that they, individually, are the only ones who can control their addiction. Ultimately, as free people, we must claim the fundamental right to kill ourselves if we wish it. Most importantly, awareness of draconian drug policies as a cover for illegal objectives both in and outside our nation’s borders would forever eliminate travesties such as the murdering of likely-innocent people in boats leaving Venezuela.

And, in the case of the current administration, understanding the real agenda of the drug war could rightfully turn the public attention fully to the president’s dirty Epstein laundry.

[1] https://muse.jhu.edu/article/240064

[2] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States

[3] https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking_allegations

[5] https://www.vera.org/news/fifty-years-ago-today-president-nixon-declared-the-war-on-drugs

[6] https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33582.html

[7] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/the-us-has-spent-over-a-trillion-dollars-fighting-war-on-drugs.html