From Noah Webster (yes, of Webster's Dictionary fame), who lived in the late 18th-early 19th centuries:
"Education is useless without the Bible."
"God's Word, contained in the Bible, has furnished all necessary rules to direct our conduct."
Government is to "discipline our youth in early life in sound maxims of moral, political, and religious duties."
"Select passages of [Scripture]...may be read in schools, to great advantage. In some countries the common people are not permitted to read the Bible at all. In ours, it is as common as a newspaper...My wish is not to see the Bible excluded from schools but to see it used as a system of religion and morality."
Obviously, Mr. Webster's enlightened wish has been dispensed with in America.
On the face of it, one wonders why America would eliminate Bible reading and teaching from school curriculum. To teach people not to kill, steal, commit adultery, lie, covet, be greedy, selfish, or self-centered; to teach them to "love thy neighbor," be responsible, patient, kind, longsuffering, gentle, virtuous, trustworthy, peaceful, disciplined, etc. etc. would seem to be something that all people would recognize as a great benefit to societal order. The Bible provides the highest moral standard in the world. It uplifts and elevates man whenever it is faithfully followed. Certainly, teaching our youth these magnificent moral precepts would help them, not just in body and mind, but in spirit and morality, and would be an exceedingly wise thing to do.
Wouldn't it?
There are two reasons why the Bible has been booted out of our public school system, and neither of them have anything to do with the First Amendment to the Constitution or because Scripture has been proven to be of human origin. The first reason, as Jesus so perceptively noted, "Men love darkness rather than light...everyone practicing evil hates the light" (John 3:19-20). People who want to sin don't want the Bible being applied to their lives, of course. As America has becoming increasingly corrupt morally, with fornication, adultery, homosexuality, abortion, sloth, covetousness, greed, lying, etc. rampant and rising, the last thing such miscreants want is their wickedness exposed. Jesus Himself, of course, was killed because He wouldn't shut up about exposing men's sins. When faced with their own wickedness, humans have two options: they can either repent, or they can try to silence the preacher. Most people, down through history, have chosen the latter option, and that is exactly what is happening in America today.
The second reason relates to modern leftism. The last thing liberals want is for the masses to obey the Bible. Virtuous people take care of themselves and have only minimal need for government. Indeed, as James Madison said, if all men were angels, we wouldn't need government at all. Government is only necessary when evil people infringe on the rights of others; government exists to control that abuse. So, the less evil, the less need for government. Or, to put it another way, the more people who obey the Bible, the less government needed to control the wicked.
That, of course, is exactly opposite what modern liberalism wants. Their power comes from government. They are, in their own minds, the elite who know better than the rest of us how to run our own lives--they certainly want no challenge on that score from God--and if we refuse, voluntarily, to heed them, then they will use the force of government to try to control our behavior. And they, of course, get to define what "proper" behavior is (more on that in a moment). Any institution, like the church or family, or any book (especially the Bible) which teaches self-dependence and taking care of ones' own, is the greatest enemy of modern liberalism. It is essential to understand modern liberalism that it requires as much deviant, base, immoral behavior as possible, because that is what makes government necessary. If we don't need government, we don't need busy-body liberals, do we.
So they have kicked the Bible out of America's schools and replaced it, morally, with their own liberal philosophy. That is also a pivotal, crucial point--the modern liberal defines morality for the rest of us! They tell us what is "right" and "wrong," a morality, much of which, obviously, is vile, squalid, and Biblically condemned--thus, the necessity for more government! And anybody who doesn't measure up to that "morality," who doesn't conform to it, or who opposes it, is subject to frequent, often severe, intimidation, attack, slander, abuse, or other manner of personal destruction. That's in America. When these people were in power in Revolutionary France, the Soviet Union, Mao's China, etc., they simply killed massive numbers of people who refused to go along with their ideology. They make the rules, there is no god but themselves, they determine who lives and who dies. Now, in the United States, except for unborn babies, they haven't been able to kill people (yet); maybe we should thank the National Rifle Association for that. But ideologically, philosophically, the historical tradition that produced Joseph Stalin is the same historical tradition that produced Barack Obama; they have emerged from the identical leftist philosophic convention. And while the American left has not (again, YET) gone to the extremes of Stalin's USSR or Mao's China (except in their murder of the unborn), the sympathy that America's left has for the former Soviet Union, Mao, Castro, Ho Chin Minh, and the other left-wing butchers is well documented. Oh, our "noble" leftists might bemoan the "extreme measures" taken by "Uncle Joe" Stalin, et al. But Ronald Reagan was the enemy, not Mikhail Gorbachev. And Reagan was the enemy because he stood for traditional America, an America where people believed, along with Noah Webster and other great early men, "education is useless without the Bible."
But the left controls the education system in America today, and has for over a generation now. The results of that control are obvious. Detroit. Hollywood rot. "Gay" marriage. Abortion. 75% black children born out of wedlock. Growing welfare state. "Obamacare." Feminism. Bill Clinton. Barney Frank. Barack Obama....the cancer is deep and too widespread now. There are very few healthy places left in the American body politic any more. And it is because of one thing, and one thing only. We didn't pay attention to Noah Webster when he said...."education is useless without the Bible."
Folks, that is the battle going on in America today. It's much deeper than "how much money the government is going to spend and on what." It's a battle between two very different, divergent, yea, totally opposite visions of the world. One view exalts God and His wisdom as He so graciously gave us in His holy book. The other exalts humanity, and it's "wisdom," above that which has been divinely revealed. To compromise--from both perspectives--is to compromise with evil. There can only be compromise if there exists a basic agreement of philosophy. Tolerance is ok, and necessary--to a point. But a point is reached where tolerance becomes indistinguishable from connivance. To compromise truth is to surrender to evil. And good men will simply not do that.
And, as is increasingly clear in America today, evil men won't do it, either. Hence, the battle lines are drawn, and, if history is our guide here, those lines will probably, eventually, be drawn to the point of blood.