The Right Wing Turkey

by Tom Westerman

First, I would like to welcome everyone back to another semester at Adelphi. Second I want to introduce this new column "The Right Wing Turkey." The Delphian is a campus newspaper, devoted to bring news and information pertinent to Adelphi's students, faculty and staff. It is also the "voice of the students" and therefore charged with presenting facts that the student body is concerned with and allowing discussion to ensue. This column attempts to accomplish both tasks.

The first goal of this column is to let me do what I wanted to do when I first joined the newspaper, which is write about current events. The second goal, which flows directly from that, is to encourage debate about current issues that in one way or another affect students and the university as a whole. Being who I am, I will concentrate on current affairs mainly in the realm of politics and international events - issues that I feel are important.

But as any good student of anything knows, there is often a certain bias in writing, especially in an op-ed piece such as this. I will be up front and say that I am a registered Republican - thus making me a minority in academia, but that is okay. I am not a "pure" conservative, I hold moderate views on many issues and am very much a product of the great state of New York, but for most things I will look at them from the right of center - for better or worse.

This first issue I would like to tackle is President George W. Bush's proposal to grant money to "faith based programs" to help them provide social services to the poor and needed. I think the spirit of this is a great idea. These organizations ranging from Catholic Charities to other specific non-profit religious services are better equipped to provide the services needed than a large, bureaucratic central government. But President Bush must be very careful and tip toe around that thin line of separation of church and state. For two reasons:

First, the government must not appear to favor one religion (or series of religions) over another. That is expressly prohibited in the Constitution. Second, the government must not infringe on the rights of individual religions to practice what they believe. In essence, the government can not sanction or censure any religious sect regardless to achieve these honorable ends.

What must President Bush do then? He must work very hard to create legislation and to express to religious organizations themselves that any money that goes to them must be used only for the purpose of helping others - by providing food, clothes, counseling, etc. not to buy a new stained glass window or a torah.

The federal government is charged, through the preamble of the Constitution - although not legally bound, to promote the general welfare. This is a good way to do it, but President Bush must be very carefully not to step on the separation line, for if he does a good idea will turn into a constitutional mess.