RONALD D. RAY
COUNSELLORS AT LAW
3317 HALL'S HILL ROAD
CRESTWOOD, KENTUCKY 40014-9523

(502) 241-5552.......... Fax (502) 241-1552
Cable/Victory.............. Email ffp@iglou.com

VIA FACSIMILE & U.S. POST
PERSONAL

December 30, 2000

Mr. David Hawpe
Vice President & Editorial Director
The Courier-Journal
525 West Broadway
P. O. Box 740031
Louisville, Kentucky 40201-7431

Dear David:

I appreciated your letter of December 4, 2000. A number of people misunderstood; several called me and asked me what your article was getting at? I understood what you were "getting at." I also detest censorship. There were people who did misunderstand beginning with my widowed mother, who called early Sunday morning very unhappy about my being juxtaposed to Mr. Harris in any public way. However, I was gratified that my reply was published in the Op-Ed page and thank you for any part you played.

However, I agree that youngsters, whose teaching has been entrusted to others by their parents, deserve protection and even must be monitored as they access the world of information. I do understand that facts and truth can be very difficult for even some adults to handle. Yet, Free access to all legal information in a free society should be available to all. We the Peoples' right to know is the foundation of our free society where "informed consent" has been essential to rightly gaining the "consent of the governed" upon which any legitimate government authority must ultimately rest.

Holding the strong anti-censorship position that you advocate may help you appreciate a growing concern I have on another related matter having to do with disturbing revelations made during Governor Jones' PERK Committee. I learned from the unchallenged testimony of a school librarian that America's founding and civil history has fallen into disuse or been "censored," because so much of canon containing the early official civil documentsi of America's permanent history have numerous references to "Almighty God, .... Our Creator," "The Lord," etc. (Many judges and lawyers have also mistaken our historic official documents of civil

government for "church" or "religious" documents.) The NEA trumpets the fact that American history, civics and geography, once the foundation of American learning, have been largely diminished in the new education of the American youth. In November 1967, the NEA Journal's "The New Social Studies" commented on the now obvious shift in federal-funded educational emphasis;

Probably the most obvious change occurring in the social studies curriculum is a breaking away from the traditional dominance of history, geography and civics. Materials from the behavioral sciences...sociology, social psychology...are being incorporated into both elementary and secondary school programs.

Now there are well funded national groups emerging who want to suppress or even "censor" the country's early official history because of its strong emphasis on America being "One Nation Under God," or more specifically its distinctly Christian character. Those prominent in their opposition to S JR 57, supported the "comparative religions" (the "compromise" Ten Commmldments) legislation in the last session. They are for teaching about religions in the public schools. I am for the separation of Church and State and do not believe that the compulsory tax-supported public schools should teach "about religions" much less compare or quantify them.

I appreciated your article on Senator Robinson. It helped shed some light on this problem when S JR 57 was debated and eventually passed during the last session. As a part of that legislation, the Department of Education was required to see that all Kentucky teachers were to be made aware of that statute after the Governor signed it notifying them they are able to freely teach American history including the use of early official civil documents of America's permanent history. That legally mandated awareness has not been achieved.

The ignorance or widespread misunderstanding on the part of school officials, teachers, attorneys and most Kentuckians that Thomas Jefferson and our founders were not Churchmen holding the position of a preacher, when they, "with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence," declared American Independence and proclaimed that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," but they were acting as public representatives, men of government or statesmen.

Intoning the name of "Almighty God" in the public arena (such as Kentucky elected officials did in our 1891 Preamble to the Kentucky Constitution) or recognizing "Divine Providence" in official speeches and documents does not make a statesmen a preacher or a churchman, although an American such as John Witherspoon or Peter Muhlenberg could and did hold both offices. Being "One Nation Under God" does not compel any citizen to believe in or worship Almighty God, but rather govermnentally even Alan Dershowitz concedes that America's precedent legal code is based on the Bible and the Ten Commandments.

Those who want to post the Ten Commandments, as the precedent legal code of American government, have made much of the high level of crime and violence and discord in public schools as a reason for posting America's "precedent legal

code." Official federal reports demonstrate that crime and violence is at toxic levels in the public schools according to a DoE/DoJ study from 1996 to 1997. Children between ages 12 and 18 (children under age 12 are excluded from these data) were reported as "victims ot' more than 2.7 million total crimes at school .... 28 percent of students ages 12 through 19 reported that they had street gangs at their school compared to 15 percent in 1989 .... 57 percent of public schools reported" serious violent crime and non violent crime at their schools,ii The trend is not decreasing, but increasing as the report states, "students ages 12 through 18 were victims of more than 2.7 million totaI crimes at school [roughly the same number as in 1997, and] about 253,000 serious violent crimes at school," roughly an 8% increase over in-school violent crimes in 1997.iii

These statistics are alarming. Prior to 1965, David you and I would never have expected to encounter this sort of violence when we were in school. What has changed from then until now? Obviously a number of changes in our society and institutions have come about, but the changes in curriculum must be factored into any honest answer tbr those seeking solutions. A return to the teaching of American history (not religion); civics and geography, with their inherent limits and borders, would provide inherent external standards enabling students to move from too much subjectivity, making choices and all their own decisions, to confronting objective authority, truths and limits.

How does either of the religion clauses of the First Amendment apply to limit display or reading from the Declaration of lndependence or any of the other official documents from the permanent history of American civil government? That defies common sense, I would observe that the above censorship could be used to make a persuasive case for the new and increasing lack of civility and self government among rudderless youth as one of the causes of higher rates of juvenile violence.

Our founding documents and history emphasize love of country, self reliance, independence and self government. I enclose some other materials for you as I have sought to make this matter clear and simple. Our founders are historically great, but imperfect men, whose dcdication and self-sacrifices gave the world a new liberty through limited government which was never known before. It is sad that the truth about their official, and public work and the truth of our nation's founding has been suppressed and that this censorship has created so much confusion and misunderstanding. Even seniors at America's most prestigious colleges, none of which require American history to graduate, are according to the New York Times historically illiterate. I enclose several recent articles which reveal the terrible depth of the problem.

Whether a citizen is critical of America's founding or embraces it, the official documents of that history are still at the center of America's history and their removal is dishonest. The early debates, the controversies, the tension between religious settlements and non-religious settlements, etc., all begin with the same fundanlental documents which must be the starting point of any contest in each generation by thinking people who love liberty. I think you would agree, given your remarks in your article re: censorship, that our children should be allowed to hear, read and see the great fullness of the original documents created out of the eternal conflicts between opposing worldviews lest their intellectual growth be stunted because of censorship.

Anything that the media, the most vigorous anti-censorship crusaders, can do to make this clearer would be a most worthwhile endeavor. Perhaps consider beginning by publishing SJR 57, in full, in a Sunday Forum to show citizens what the fuss is all about.


In closing, I will tell you that the one great area of agreement between the very diverse PERK Committee members (even between Everett Hoffman, ACLU, and myself) was that the very best way to teach American history and civics was from the original and official documents. I trust that those in the fourth estate also agree, and will attend themselves to their vital work of helping to ensure our liberties by publishing the truth about the thirty-five year censorship of four official history. Spread the good word to Kentucky teachers that in 1992, KRS: 158. I95 restored their liberty, hard earned by many, to teach the nation's history From America's original documents.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer laments "public indifference, cynicism, and a sharp decline in trust of U.S. Government" saying that this "endangers the democratic process envisioned by framers of the Constitution." He cites, as very disturbing that, "public trust in government declined from 80 percent in 1964 to only 35 percent totlay." Justice Breyer says, "Our democratic system can not work without the understanding, active support and participation of millions of ordinary Americans, and here there is cause for concern." I would point out that 1964 is of course the year prior to the beginning of the suppression of American history in 1965, in public schools, to which PERK's Kentucky teacher testified.

I hope we can meet again soon.

Semper fidelis,

Colonel Ronald D. Ray

' The Declaration of Independence is the first ordinance in the first volume of The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America, printed in 1854 by the authority of the United States Congress. 1 Stat. 1-3 (1845). See also DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE FORMATION OF TIlE UNION OF THE AMERICAN STATES. 69th
Congress, 1" Session. House Document No. 398, Government Printing Office, Washington (1927).
Ibid. Indicators of School Crime and Safety, p v, vii.
"' Ibid, Indicators of School Crime and Safety. pp. 5/12 download from lntemet file,