The following are excerpts from an article by Professor W. B. Munro '99, Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and Government, which appeared in the October number of the "Atlantic Monthly" magazine entitled "The Worst Fundamentalism".

The Scopes trial in Tennessee provided the biggest and best newspaper story since the war. It kept the headlines for weeks and provoked an immense amount of discussion all over the country. Especially among scholars and scientists this episode aroused a fine display of indignation. It was looked upon as a throwback to mediaevalism, an attempt to stultify the convictions of men by due process of law. One would think, from the reaction in academic ciroles, that religious belief is the only field in which great bodies of our fellow citizens decline to be guided by science or by history.

Of course religion is not the only field in which fundamentalism challenges science. It is not the most important field. There is more fundamentalism in the political than in the religious thought of the American people today, and it works greater injury both to the cause of national progress and to the interests of the social order.

More Belief Outside Religion

Even the most casual observer of our political psychology must have noticed that there are literally millions of Americans who decline to accept things on faith in the realm of religion, but who do not have the slightest compunction about swallowing the catchwords, phrases, formulas, and slogans that go to make up a creed in politics. They scoff at the miracles of Holy Writ, but are continually looking for the miraculous in government, or what would be miraculous if it ever happened--the conduct of a government according to business principles, for example. Most intelligent people regard as preposterous the idea that man was created from the dust of the earth; but they appear to see that all men are created free and equal. They call that proposition a self-evident truth, when by all the teachings of science and history it is neither true nor self-evident....

We merely look upon the American democracy as something that rests upon inalienable rights and universal principles, a paragon of excellence which the rest of the world ought to copy but does not. Hence our laws insist that the Constitution be studied in our schools and colleges with due regard for the sanctity of the text and with no taint of higher criticism, but rather in all its textual literalness--that is to say, in the same uncritical spirit that characterizes the fundamentalist approach to the first chapter of Genesis....

Political Creed of Citizen

Let me try to put together, in skeleton form, the political creed of the average American citizen, the dogmas which he accepts as fundamental truths notwithstanding their repuguance to the dictates of reason and to the teachings of experience. "Government must rest on the consert of the governed." "Democracy is government by the whole people." "The cure for the ills of a democracy is more democracy." (What a strange, article of faith that slogan embodies' Were I to say that the remedy for the evils of misgovernment is more misgovernment I should be saying something just as rational, but I should be giving you a poor opinion of my intelligence.) "Ours must be a government of laws, net of men." "The executive and legislative branches of the government should be kept separate"; or, as it is sometimes expressed, "Checks and balances are essential safeguards of popular liberty." "No taxation without representation." "Self-determination and municipal home rule." "Avoid entangling alliances." "State rights." "The office should seek the man, not the man the office." (The office does seek the man sometimes, but not often-about as often as a burglar goes seeking a policeman.) "The rule of public opinion." "Political parties are groups of voters who think alike and have a common programme." And last, but by, no means east. "The equality of all citizens before the law."

Slogans Taken on Faith

These phrases and slogans, I believe, are accepted as gospel by the great majority of our people. They are taken on faith by men and women who insist on nationality in religion. Yet it can readily be demonstrated that no one of these principles is true without large qualifications, while some of them embody only a half truth or no truth at all. They have come down to us from earlier days, enshrined in the literature of patriotism, and so often reiterated from generation to generation that they have become a sort of biological inheritance. They are firmly stamped on the national imagination, and it is to one or another of these creedal tenets that the average citizen relates his reactions on most questions of public policy....

Doctrine of Equality Harmful

In the practice of American government this doctrine of human equality has done a lot of harm. By its implications it has afforded good soil for the growth of the spoils system and the practice of rotation in office, two of the most noxious weeds in the garden of American politics. If all citizens are equaly competent to govern their fellow men, why should we endeavor to choose among them on the basis of their special qualifications? If all citizens are endowed with the same political capacity, why let any one stay in office very long? Our reluctance to make use of experts in any branch of public administration is in large measure a by-product of this national obsession. The most formidable obstacle in the path of civil service reform is not the avarice of the politician. It is the deep-seated popular conviction that any able-bodied citizen, whatever his competence or lack of it, has an equal and indefeasible right to a place on the public pay-roll....

No Equality of Taxation

Of course we have been careful not to carry the doctrine of equality too far. We do not project it into the field of taxation, for example. Oh, no, not at all! Men may be equal in their capacity to govern, but not for one moment do we hold them equal in their ability to earn and in their ability to pay. In other words, we exalt the common man so far is his shared in the control of government is concerned, but when it comes to liquidating the cast of this control well, at that point the common man seems to have all interest in the philosophy of Jeterson and Rensseau.

I am not srguing, of course, that all money earned be equally taxed. I am merely pointing out that this postulate of human equality goes quickly into the discard when it conflicts with the practical necessities of government. A principle always gives way when its application conflicts with the plain interests of the governing class.