Monthly Archives: August 2010

This week I want to talk about religious liberty. The proposed mosque at Ground Zero in New York City is capturing a lot of attention these days. The discussion is testing the meaning of religious liberty. A related, but even tougher, debate regards the wearing of hijab, the religious coverings worn by orthodox Muslim women.

All throughout Europe, parliaments are banning the wearing of hijab, whether simple head scarves or more traditional burqas that leave only a woman’s eyes exposed to the public. Even in the United States, these religious coverings are being addressed in our courts of law. Just what are the bounds of religious liberty compared to workplace safety or culture? read more

Why would anybody want to read the Utah State Constitution? We all know that only the United States Constitution is important! In fact, doesn’t the recent Prop 8 decision in California prove that state constitutions are meaningless these days? Well, no. Our state constitution is every bit as meaningful as our national one.

So…who’s read our state constitution? Have any of you school teachers read it? If not, my guess is that our kids haven’t read it either.

Well, our Sutherland Institute has a good deal for you: send us your contact info and we’ll send you a nice, clean copy of the Utah State Constitution. But before I give you our contact info, let me share some tidbits with you. read more

American culture has been structured around the ideal of an educated citizenry. This ideal holds that a free society requires educated people and that educated people create free societies. No less than Thomas Jefferson has written that, “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

There are lots of ways we could go with this thought. We could challenge it – we could ask if Jefferson’s opinion is true: do well-educated people create free societies? In our day and age, well-educated people seem to be the ones more inclined to create Big Government and it’s the more humble people, the God-fearing people, the less educated people who seem to appreciate less government and real freedom. read more