Free Men in Black by Mark R. Levin

of constitutional history, expressly freighted with Jefferson’s misleading metaphor for nearly forty years. Thomas Jefferson was of course in France at the time the constitutional Amendments known as the Bill of Rights were pressed by Congress and ratified by the States. His letter to the Danbury Baptist Association was a short note of courtesy, written fourteen years after the Amendments were passed by Congress. He would seem to any detached observer as a less than ideal source of contemporary history to the meaning of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment. 34
     
    Yet liberals constantly rely on Jefferson’s words to justify their opposition to virtually any government intersection with religion.
    For example, Robert Chanin, general counsel for the National Education Association (NEA), explained that the NEA opposed school voucher programs that include religious institutions because “if a state can take millions of dollars, hand it over to sectarian schools, which is then used to provide a religious education, it seems to me you’ve punched a gaping hole in the wall of separation between church and state.” 35 Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, criticized the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a school voucher program, saying, “The Supreme Court has taken a wrecking ball to the wall of separation between church and state.” 36 Ralph Neas, president of a group calling itself People for the American Way, complained about politicians “campaigning from the pulpit,” which “clearly violates the spirit of the founders’ wall of separation between church and state.” 37 These left-wing groups and their leadership are clearly out of the mainstream of American thought and tradition, but their views often resonate in judicial chambers.
    As Rehnquist has written:
     
    The Establishment Clause did not require government neutrality between religion and irreligion nor did it prohibit the Federal Government from providing nondiscriminatory aid to religion. There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the “wall of separation” that was constitutionalized in Everson ….
…The “wall of separation between church and State” is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned. 38
     
    Despite this, the “wall” is part of the lexicon of many Supreme Court cases that involve religion and it has led to an inconsistent and illogical series of decisions.
    Once again, Justice Rehnquist explained, in his 1985 opinion in Wallace v. Jeffree :
     
    [I]n the thirty-eight years since Everson our Establishment Clause cases have been neither principled nor unified. Our recent opinions, many of them hopelessly divided pluralities, have with embarrassing candor conceded that the “wall of separation” is merely a “blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier,” which “is not wholly accurate” and can only be “dimly perceived.” 39
…[A] State may lend to parochial school children geography textbooks that contain maps of the United States, but the State may not lend maps of the United States for use in geography class. A State may lend textbooks on American colonial history, but it may not lend a film on George Washington, or a film projector to show it in history class. A State may lend classroom workbooks, but may not lend workbooks in which the parochial school children write, thus rendering them nonreusable. A State may pay for bus transportation to religious schools but may not pay for bus transportation from the parochial school to the public zoo or natural history museum for a field trip. A State may pay for diagnostic services conducted in the parochial school but therapeutic services must be given in a different building; speech and hearing “services” conducted by the State inside the sectarian school are