Ready for a mugging?

So now, with the election behind us, we're back to the business of making this broken and battered society work. Tough assignment. Where to start?

If you hold to the adage that you should start every work day by doing the hardest thing--the job you dread the most--I suggest we concentrate on the task of education. For if we can get that one right, most of the rest will ultimately fall together.

Welfare? Economics? Morality in public life? True justice? Health care? On all these and more, consider what leverage belongs to the party that effectively educates first its own young people, and then is successful as well in educating the young people of others.

But it is a battleground. Ask Lanny Moore and Ray Thompson.

Both Mr. Moore and Mr. Thompson serve on the board of directors of WORLD magazine's parent company, God's World Publications Inc.--motivated by their zeal to see a Christian worldview permeate the increasingly secular society we all live in. Both Mr. Moore and Mr. Thompson have been deeply involved in Christian education in their own regions, serving on the boards of Christian schools and giving generously to help those schools beef up their own effectiveness.

But for both men, even that investment has not been challenge enough. Both operate multi-million dollar businesses in their communities--Mr. Moore as the founder of Suncoast Contractors, a major supplier of building materials in Fort Myers, Fla., and Mr. Thompson as founder of Semitool, a manufacturer of very high-tech computer tools in Kalispell, Mont. They understand how important good education is for the future of their own businesses and the stability of their communities.

So Lanny Moore and Ray Thompson have extended themselves in recent months. After giving hundreds of hours of their own time and hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money for Christian schools, both have also made themselves available to their communities to help out with public education. The response? Both got smacked across the face with 2 x 4s bearing the stenciled insignias of the local teachers' unions.

In Fort Myers, Mr. Moore put up $50,000 of his own money first to win his party's nomination (which came only after a grueling and expensive runoff in the primary) and then to try to win a majority among Lee County's 233,000 registered voters. His critics challenged even his right to run, noting that the Moore children had not attended public schools. Mr. Moore answered: "The public schools left us; we didn't leave them. In my years on Christian school boards, I've learned how to hire administrators, how to hire teachers, how to determine what the best curriculum materials are, how to balance budgets, how to administer discipline. Isn't that what the public schools want and need so desperately? I'm not part of the problem; I'm part of the solution."

But the local branch of the NEA still saw Lanny Moore as a problem and devoted tens of thousands of union dollars to defeat him. Remarkably, it didn't work. Buoyed up by the prayers, hard work, and gifts of hundreds of Christians, the Moore message got out, and he won last Tuesday's election 78,600-75,181. Now the really hard work begins; Mr. Moore's post-election vacation will be short.

Ray Thompson, meanwhile, wasn't even on last week's ballot in Kalispell, Mont. He had served a term on the public school board there from 1993 through 1995, faithfully attending meetings and arguing for policies that he thought would enhance the overall quality of education available in the public schools there. I attended one such meeting a couple of years ago, watching and applauding from the sideline as Mr. Thompson pled eloquently with the rest of the board to resist radically liberal policies that had the effect of driving dozens of families from the public schools to Christian and private schools. Other board members condescendingly ignored his counsel. Then a few months later, like Lanny Moore, Ray Thompson was mugged by the professional teachers' union when he stood for reelection.

We're not talking here about presidential races, a battle for Congress, or the right to name the next couple of justices on the Supreme Court. We're talking about the nuts and bolts of serving the American public at the local grassroots level. We're talking about efforts to shape just a couple of fairly typical American communities with positive, non-threatening, considerably-less-than-radical political leadership. The response is not encouraging.

Any group of American voters, of course, has a right to reject a Lanny Moore or a Ray Thompson in a free election. The tragedy is that in the face of such enormous freedoms, American voters would rather stick with the terrible problems that face them than to turn to honorable solutions. Such a reality will make it harder and harder in the years ahead to persuade the Lanny Moores and the Ray Thompsons of America to make themselves available. Today, pray for those faithful Christians willing to risk the muggings.