RIGHT OF CENTER: PRAYER IN SCHOOL: CLINTON SEEMS UNABLE TO MAKE A DECISION ON IT

In Indonesia this week President Clinton said he might support a constitutional amendment to put prayer back in public schools. Given his track record for veracity, I probably wasn't alone in my reaction: "So what?"

After all, this is the president who said during his campaign that he wanted to make abortions "safe, legal and rare," then set out to make them free, legal and convenient. He expanded access to taxpayer-funded abortions and resisted efforts to require parental consent before minors could procure abortions. Clinton also has been silent on recent medical findings that link abortions with higher incidents of breast cancer.

After two years in the White House, Clinton can proudly point to his stance on abortion and say, "See, they're still legal." But only baseball fans cheer a .333 average.

Clinton also campaigned as a "New Democrat," willing to scale back wasteful government and slash middle-class taxes. In office, the only thing he has slashed is defense spending, while he raised taxes on virtually everyone and unsuccessfully attempted the biggest government power grab in history with his -- and wife Hillary's -- socialist health care plan.

So when Clinton voices support for school prayer, you will pardon me if I don't celebrate his conversion to social conservatism.

That said, I have to admire the president for the vehemence he has aroused in editorial writers on the left. For the first time since his election, Clinton's devotees in the media are questioning the president's integrity. They complain he has shunned principle for political expediency. I know, it's hilarious.

The same people who brushed past the draft dodging, dope smoking, womanizing, Whitewatergate and cattlegate swindling, and White House influence peddling now are questioning Clinton's character, because he has fallen on the wrong side of the specious church/state wall of separation. I wonder if we'll ever realize the height and depth of liberal hypocrisy.

But now that the president mentions it -- regardless of his motivation or honesty -- what about a prayer in school amendment?

It isn't so much that we need prayer in schools as much as we need to ensure that it isn't forbidden and discouraged. Parents understand that forcing their children to pray or read the Bible can backfire, encouraging rebellion. But we ought not discourage or forbid it.

The separation of church and state has been inverted to keep the church out of public life, when the First Amendment keeps government out of the church, which, in the context of 18th century colonial America, meant the Christian church.

But the Supreme Court, particularly in the past 40 to 50 years, has through judicial activism expanded the state's role in religion. By creating a wall of separation, the High Court has enabled the government to regulate Christianity out of public life.

An amendment that corrects that shouldn't threaten anyone. Kids ought to be able to hold prayer meetings before classes start each day, and they ought to be able to study the Holy Bible during study hall. I'll let you in on a secret: There are students who do it already. But they practice their faith at the risk of punishment for rebellion.

Consider the social calamity many of our public schools are encountering. When officials try in vain to keep violence and drugs out of school, it is a wonder they aren't fighting to get prayer, the Bible and its inherent morality in school.

And yet prayer in schools is no panacea. In the same way, a government that adopts laws and regulations that promote economic growth, individual freedom and traditional values won't guarantee a moral nation.

The great Russian dissident and writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, "If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development: a tree with a rotten core cannot stand."

A nation's character is defined by the millions of individuals who live, work and play within its boundaries. It isn't something we adopt as a national policy after reasoned debate.

"It is, above all, a set of habits," said Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana when he spoke about character at a seminar in 1991. Character "cannot be summoned at a moment of crisis if it has been gradually squandered by years of compromise and rationalization. The only testing ground for the heroic is the mundane. The only preparation for that one profound decision which can change a life, or even a nation, is those hundreds and thousands of half-conscious, self-defining, seemingly insignificant decisions made in private. Edmund Burke wrote, `A man's habits become his virtue.' Habit is the daily battleground of character."

Isn't that what education strives to do: develop habits? We could do a lot worse than including prayer and the Bible in the daily battleground of our children's character.

~Jay Eastlick is the news editor of the Southeast Missourian.