And a New Jersey student, known for his activism in promoting 1st Amendment rights, says that a caption in the book, accompanying a photo of students praying outside a public school, falsely suggests that no student may ever pray inside a school building. And he complains that we unfairly called scientists who believe in global warming "activists."
These complaints, frankly, are ridiculous. The Committee for Inquiry ignored the book and cherry-picked sentences. We do not think the nation was founded on an idea of original sin; we used that phrase to highlight the fact that the founders took human nature pretty much as they found it and created a constitutional arrangement designed, in James Madison's words, to make "ambition counteract ambition."
As for school prayer, we made it perfectly clear in our book that what has been banned by the Supreme Court is state-sponsored prayer. It's true that a sloppily written photo caption was taken out of the 11th edition -- as our critics would have seen if they had looked at the most recent version of the book (which was in print long before they complained). But the entire section of the book discussing school prayer makes it clear that the public schools may not support, encourage or finance prayer in the schools. What we say, if one reads the chapter in which we discuss the 1st Amendment, is that the Supreme Court has decided that "the government cannot aid one religion, some religions, or all religions" and cannot spend tax money in support of religious activities. If students want to pray on their own, that is their business.
The space scientists think that we were too critical of the global warming argument. In the 10th edition of the book, which they read, we wrote that there was disagreement among scientists about this matter. In the 11th edition, which they did not read, we said that the disagreement was much less, though it still exists. What happened between the 10th and 11th editions? Among other things, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a new report in which the evidence for greenhouse gases affecting Earth's temperature was stronger. If they doubt the claim that this is controversial, they should consult professors Richard Linzen at MIT, William Gray at the University of Colorado and John Christy at the University of Alabama, among others.
DiIulio is a Democrat, and I am a Republican. If we had written a book about public policy, there might well have been issues on which we disagreed. But in writing a book that describes how politics work in this country, there was no disagreement at all.
If anyone who reads this article believes the text is biased, they should write to me. If they think it is not biased, they should write the Center for Inquiry.
