Two days after Steve Bannon went to prison for defying a congressional subpoena, a guest on his podcast War Room posited an interesting theory for the alt-right conspiracy theorist’s incarceration.
Last week, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters mandated that all state public schools would be required to keep a Bible in the classroom and use it for daily instruction, all on the basis that “the founders cited the Bible.” And, according to Walters, a little more Bible-thumping could have spared Bannon from the clink too.
“You know, when you look at an issue like this, what you’ve seen in our schools is the radical left, the teachers union have come in, and they pushed indoctrinating of our kids,” Walters told War Room guest host Ben Harnwell. “And one of the things that they’ve done is they’ve taken the Bible out of schools. They say, ‘Listen, you can’t talk about our rights coming from God.’
“I mean, you see what’s happening to President Trump right now, where they’re arresting him,” he continued. “They’re giving this banana republic nonsense in a courtroom. Look what they’re doing to Steve Bannon right now.”
Walters has spent several interviews across different news outlets defending his decision to institute the Bible’s teachings in Oklahoma classrooms. On CNN, Walters skirted questions about his decision and instead claimed that “Thomas Jefferson advocated for freedom of religion, actually, not the establishment of a religion.”
He further insisted on Bannon’s podcast that he was “very proud” that Oklahoma would be the first state in the nation to “put the Bible back in.”
“The Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” Walters said, during the state school board meeting when he unveiled the new rule. “It is one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution.
The Sooner State directive was basically inspired by a similar school policy in Louisiana, requiring public schools to display a copy of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. But that mandate has already faced its own legal troubles.
Days after it was signed into law by Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry—who told GOP donors that he couldn’t “wait to be sued” over it—the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, along with the parents of children enrolled in Louisiana public schools, filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming that such an obvious violation of religious freedoms was unconstitutional.
