Would Iowans call for a national religion?

Being overwhelmed by unrelenting television news focused on the 2024 election, I explored the PBS series, “American Experience,” specifically the episode titled, “Nazi Town, USA,” focused on fascist movements in the U.S. Both the election coverage and the documentary made me think about our Bill of Rights.

Given the chance, would a majority of today's Iowans choose to suspend, alter, or eliminate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause that prohibits the government from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion,” or would they prefer the formalization of Christianity as the national religion? Would the U.S. becoming a Christian theocracy be a bad thing?

Is freedom of speech still a good idea given the diverse nature of our population? Wouldn’t life be simpler with the three television networks of old, or, better still, with the establishment of a single media source to inform and educate the citizenry? Wouldn’t a single, devout voice speaking for all of us be preferable to the confusing Babel we have now?

Wouldn’t a return to prayer in public schools be an antidote to the woke indoctrination children are exposed to? Wouldn’t England vs Vitale, the Supreme Court case eliminating organized prayer in public schools in 1962, have a different, more Bible-based outcome if argued in front of today’s justices?

These are some of the questions this senior citizen thought of after watching too much TV. One unsettling quote from “Nazi Town” continues to haunt me: “There’s no such thing as foreign fascism. Fascism is always homegrown.”

Marc McCoy

Cedar Rapids