Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D. Ohio) warned here that the religious right and its allies in Congress and the Administration are waging relentless war against individual liberties and freedom of thought and urged activism to thwart their agenda for the country.
Metzenbaum, speaking at Brandeis University’s first Founder’s Day convocation Sunday, quoted the university’s namesake, the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who always cautioned against public inertia in preserving liberty.
Today, the Senator said, religious extremists are threatening freedom in America. Libraries and schools across the country are under attack. “All over the country, would-be censors are trying to purge libraries and public school curricula of every fact and every idea they see to be in conflict with their religious views,” Metzenbaum said.
“In the name of combatting secular humanism, these crusaders for conformity have tried to use the paper shredder on the works of Shakespeare and Steinbeck, Homer and Mark Twain.”
In Congress, Metzenbaum said, “we’ve faced sustained campaigns to ban abortion and to permit state-sponsored prayer in public schools. We’ve seen the spectacle of rightwing Senators circulating to prospective nominees for the federal bench a questionnaire designed to measure ideological purity. And from the very highest quarters, we’ve heard voiced the pernicious, dangerous theory that the Bill of Rights does not apply to the states.” Metzenbaum was referring to recent remarks by U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese.
Activism “in defense of the separation of church and state, of the rights of women…(and) racial and religious minorities,” is urgently needed, he said, adding, in a quotation from Justice Brandeis, “the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.”
Metzenbaum also reminded his audience that to be a Jew in America is never to accept the status quo. “I’m not convinced that we dare as Jews in America or as Americans to glory in the status quo,” he said.
Brandeis University, the first American institution of higher learning under secular Jewish auspices, announced its first nationally organized capital campaign to raise $200 million.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
