Posted by Baron Greenback [12.255.181.7 - 12-255-181-7.client.attbi.com] on 21 July 2002 at 16.05.17 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: Perhaps in part posted by Andy on 21 July 2002 at 09.49.47 ZuluTime:

     Grem summed up basically everything else for me; his response is below. I just wanted to go in-depth in an area you are not being accurate or correct on at all.

First and foremost, I never said anything about straying off topic. There is nothing in the constitution that says anything about being off topic. It's okay. Really. In fact, there is nothing in the constitution that says you can't teach about religions. That's okay too. What is in the constitution is the prevention of the elitism you were trying to apply. A public school is a government run institution. As such, it is part of our federal system of government at the state level, and because of the 14th ammendment to the constitution, part of our national government as well. Without going too into detail, our federal system works as follows: Federal agencies, with few exceptions, work in the Executive (underneath the president) branch. There are things like the US Marshal's service, which works for the Judicial Branch (underneath the Supreme Court), but there aren't that many. These agencies all have a head in the Executive (again, Under President George W Bush currently) branch, in his "cabinet". This is not where he stores food, rather this cabinet is made up of people. One cabinet member runs our armies and is called the Secretary of Defense. Another runs the Department of the Interior, which up untill recently has been charged with, among other things, keeping nasty terrorists from blowing up our buildings. Anyway, these agencies enforce federal laws, or laws that apply everywhere. State laws are more specific to a state's needs, and work in addition to federal laws. The Constitution is the "supreme law of the land", which means it goes over both Federal and State laws. In short:
     

     
• Constitution: Governs Everything in America, even the Government!
       
• Federal Laws: Govern Interstate (In-between state) laws
       
• State Laws: Govern Laws inside a state
       

Now, Schools operate at the State, or lowest, level. The constitution operates at the Supreme, or highest, level. This means that the Constitution applies to Schools. This also means that saying something is "illegal" at this point doesn't cut it. This means that a more powerful term must be used. That term, funny though it may seem, is "unconstitutional". It means "very, very bad".

Now, why would I be so rattled about the Constitution? It's simple. The constitution says that there cannot be an official state religion. This means that while teachers can teach about religions, they cannot endorse (support) religions. Since prayer is an endorsement of a religion, if one religion is to be allowed, all religions have to be allowed.

This brings me back to the drug issue. First, though, let me use a simple analogy to illustrate a point. I'm sure you've been at an intersection in a residential neighborhood, and thought "Why don't I just cross here, instead of a crosswalk? No one will be hurt." And you would be correct. You probably don't say the same thing at a busy intersection. The funny thing is, J-walking is illegal in both cases. You may be wondering, "why is that?" Well, you see, if it were legal to J-walk in the first example, since there are still cars there, it would only be a matter of time before people could use that law to justify J-walking in the busy intersection. They could reason, and they would be correct, that there are times when the busy intersection doesn't have any cars going through it at all, and avoid tickets. Soon, there would be no point to J-walking laws at all!

Now, what does this have to do with the point I made earlier? It's simple. If prayer is allowed in schools to christians, then other religions have to be allowed to perform religous ceremonies at schools as well. Currently, it is unconstitutional to pray in schools, which is worse than illegal. So, the question of whether drugs are legal on schools doesn't matter. Basically, if a Rastafarian wanted to smoke marijuana in a school, it would be just as constitutional as a christian praying, and therefore would definately be legal.

Now, I realise you may not like the system we have in place. However, it is there for a reason. To prove this, let's take the one standard you retaliated with, and turn it into a law.

This law is as follows:

You are not allowed to do bad things that hurt people.

Now, let's look at the problem with this law.

First of all, there has to be a fair method of determining whether or not this law is broken. In order to be really fair, if the same bad thing is done twice, it should be judged the same way. This is called legal precedence. If this is not done, the law won't be fair, so we'll go ahead and create a court for it.

Now, let's say that you run over a dog on a bicycle on purpose. This is a bad thing, and it hurt the poor dog. The dog died because of you, and the judge is going to punish you for it.

Let's say two days later, an ice-cream truck runs over a dog, but didn't see it. In our current system, he might be forgiven. However, this special legal system only has one law. He did a bad thing, and it hurt a poor dog.

This standard would then have to apply further on up with worse and worse bad things, and eventually, you would be able to convict someone of murder for forgetting to medicate them at a regular interval, for instance. Not homocide, no lesser crime, murder.