Perhaps lost to a new generation of Marvel and recent Disney moviegoers, but the classic Academy Award® winning movies, Becket (1964) and A Man for All Seasons (1966), express a common educational philosophical theme, based upon historical real life; to wit:
A Yes-Man is appointed to a top advisory office, but then the Yes-Man decides to adhere to a No-Man higher and better authority: Personal Conscience.
Each king wanted to destroy or to control the very thing that the appointee was charged to protect, and appointing a Yes-Man was thought to be a great way to do it. Maybe.
King Henry II appointed the brilliant Sir (Saint) Thomas Becket, and King Henry VIII appointed the brilliant Sir (Saint) Thomas More, only to have the each of their respective Thomases defy them by conscience.
A Yes-Man appointee adhering to personal conscience does not bode well for the king who wants conformed obeyance, nor does it bode well for the appointee. In the short-term, power wins for the king, but, in the long-term, wisdom wins for the appointee. It just takes time.
Such as it was, each King Henry ordered Death to his own appointed Sir Thomas. King Henry II loved his power, and King Henry VIII loved his women…. Kings get what they want, well, because that’s the way power tends to work. Sometimes it’s a king, sometimes it’s a president, and sometimes it’s a statistical majority, depending upon the political paradigm.
Sir Saint Thomas Becket and Sir Saint Thomas More were knighted, and then killed, and then sainted, each in due time. We might say that each of the kings “murdered” or “assassinated” their respective Thomases, but that would be an unusual perspective, because it’s the king, in the moment, who defines the characterized terms. To these kings, it was not murder or assassination, but rather justice, in the moment.
Thusly, for each of the Thomases, Death by Conscience, which is not unusual. Vindication in time, which is not unusual.
Sir Saint Becket was beaten and stabbed by directive of King Henry II [MUID155X], and Sir Saint More was beheaded by Henry VIII. [MUID156X] Time always gets its day, for better or worse.
Friend today, enemy tomorrow.
And, yes indeed, it might be gleaned that this post suggests that Secretary McMahon to find her conscience and to defy her appointer, President Trump, where her conscience to her essential role requires it. Secretary McMahon’s conscience is greater than President Trump as a man, greater than his office, and greater than the statistical Christian majority electorate that granted the privilege of the temporal power, at least for the moment.
Lest we forget it in the ugly noise of politics and schemes, Secretary McMahon’s primary role—if not her only role—if she survives and if she persists—is to fight for the proper education of human beings. By some irony, Secretary McMahon must be an evangelist for education.
Now, such as it is regarding the role of education, we might paraphrase our Jesus. With more irony, we might do this, not for dogmatic religious purposes, but rather to extract an important point of temporal secular civil wisdom, necessitating a civilly-sourced emendation, to wit:
“Things that cause error will inevitably occur, but woe to the persons through whom they occur. Whoever causes one of these children to error, it would be better for those persons to have a great millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of things that cause error! Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come.”
[1.1] Importantly, the original form of this quotation, exactly as stated by Jesus, should be taught in Christian church, but, alas, we are not in church. Therefore, we emendated here to extract the Jesusian essential universal principle of temporal secular civil wisdom.
The emendation was to modify the word “sin” for “error.” It was also done previously, for example, changing the word from “sin” to the word “hate.” [2] We can change the word “sin” to a lot of different words to extract Jesus’s core principle of wisdom. Any of the Seven Deadly Vices do quite nicely.
Now, for anyone who did not catch the broader meaning on reading, I will suggest the Jesusian temporal secular civil wisdom is essentially this:
Bad things will occur, which is just the way it is in the World. But we are pressed not to replicate it by social influence. That is, we cannot be the causation in inducing and influencing others to do bad things.
Thusly, enter the causation of the “teacher.”
Jesus wisely acknowledges that “bad” things exist externally to ourselves, being out of our control. And Jesus wisely acknowledges that we might, as weak human beings, even do “bad” things. But, as the causal fonting source, the teacher risks the millstone.
The teacher is the top of the education food chain, having the greatest duty concomitant with the greatest risk. The potential nobility matched to the potential catastrophe.
The common superficial teachings of Jesus tend to say to forgive everything unconditionally, but Jesus disdained a few choice conditions, using terms and phrases like, “millstones,” [1.1] “wailings and gnashings” [1.2, 3] and here and other places, the “woes.” [1.3] When Jesus says “woe,” and “gnashing,” it’s gravely serious. Not everything gets out of jail free for Jesus, and hypocrisy and hypocrites were at the top of his list.
The “millstone” is Jesus’s metaphor to sink and to destroy the ship of what is carrying the plague of bad viral teaching that destroys human virtuous health. Doing bad and teaching bad are not the same thing. Being a victim and causing a victim are not the same thing.
Teaching is the intentional undertaking of replicating a message, a thought, a principle. For me, as much as for you. For me and you, as much as for others. Everything must be defended by good conscience.
And, yes, it is certainly reasonable to presuppose that Aesop’s 600 year old fable, The Fox Without A Tail [4, 5] had traveled to Roman-ruled Jerusalem by A.D. 20, and thusly known by Jesus, being a similar teaching applied to temporal secular civil wisdom.
Why do I say all this? Because education has seemed to lose its priority of critical importance, and the blind will lead the blind. [1.4]
Now, in a larger temporal secular civil sense, we might ask ourselves to define the standard of what is an excellent human being, which begs the question for us to avoid our millstone by proper teaching. And, indeed, this issue, in the more granular form of virtue, was the sand in Socrates’s playground sandbox, addressed in The Meno.
Excellence is contextual; to wit: the excellent fork and the excellent spoon, each being excellent for a certain context.
Therefore, as to context, if we were in church as a nation, or a church as a nation, or a nation of theists, or a nation of a church of theists with the same god or the same gods with exactly the same religious dogma, then human excellence would be defined by that one standard of pure, unitary, conformed, uniformed, constrained, singular, and enforced, church dogma, of course, depending upon which god-religion-dogma wins politically by popularity, in the moment.
But, alas, we are not in church. That is not our context as public citizens in a diverse, free, and free-thinking society that standardizes on equality and justice for all. The United States of America is not a church, there is no national god, no national godly religion, and no national godly-religion-dogma.
The United States Constitution is a theistically agnostic framework, by intentional design.
[6] The political majority, non-critical-thinkers, children, and the ignorant influencers, can hate that temporal secular civil fact of history and political science—enemies of civil temporal secular truth, and undisciplined in mind for applied context—but the agnostic United States Constitution was a godsend to the People when created to escape from, well, everything that was temporally secularly civilly bad, being pure, unitary, conformed, uniformed, constrained, singular, and enforced, church dogma.
The United States of America is, in fact and by political theory, a diverse, free, and free-thinking nation with diversity and justice for all. Not justice for “some” or “only,” but justice for “all.” The United States of America is the socio-politico emulsification of social contradictions into a systemic harmony that permits the pursuit of individual self-defined happiness. Like any healthy body, it takes education and discipline to sustain. The Constitution is the tie that binds, the great emulsifying binder, the great orchestrating conductor. Someone might say pure heavenly white light achieved by the rainbow of combined colors.
God, with its aways-appurtenant religion and dogma, certainly has its place in a diverse, free, and free-thinking society professing equality and justice for all, albeit just not in the temporal secular systemic civil government public sector, which is, in America, agnostic to theism.
Educated brilliant political scientist Jefferson said, “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” [7]
Of course, we remember that six of the 10 Commandments (not killing, lying, adultery, etc.) can be agnostically applied in the public sector, and the other four (worshiping idols, etc.) are wholly theocratic, beyond the scope of United States civil governance. [8] Therefore, all the talk of “god in government” is not critically or politically scientifically thoughtful for context, but rather rhetorically pressed into the public thought by undisciplined theocratic influencers. Theocracy is perfect for church governance in the private sector, not so much in the national governance in the public sector in a diverse, free, and free-thinking society that professes equality and justice of all. But failure of discipline bleeds on, in, and over.
In the United States of America, we see that Bastet the Cat, Jesus, Odin, YAHWEH, and every other god, including Satan, are equals before the law and the United States Constitution, which are agnostic to theocracy, accepting no truth in such regard. Not many people can say that out loud, simply unable to apply different contexts and roles, by failure of lucidity or strength. [9] But political science accepts no systemic bias. [MUID12X]
Biased science is a plague to truth.
In truth, faith-based education contradicts science every bit as much as a secular contradiction to science. Opposite sides don’t see the woe of that hypocrisy, perhaps as a result that the majority of both sides being improperly civilly educated. Again, ironic.
The political standard is not whether religiosity-based faith in the private sector is important in a diverse, free, and free-thinking society that professes equality and justice of all. In fact, the system itself encourages it.
Rather, the political standard is whether religiosity-based faith education is required in the public sector school system of a diverse, free, and free-thinking society that professes equality and justice of all. Thusly, it might be said again: “There is plenty of time to get drunk with family and friends, after work.” The time to work is at work. This is the wisdom of applied time, role, and context. [10]
The public school system must teach critical thinking, which is to challenge competing ideas. Rationality and personal conscience always seem to be at odds with god-religion-dogma, because faith inverts the value of rational doubt by critical thinking. The common reductive faith rhetoric is something like this: “Fear and be insecure to the wrath of the god we told you exists. If you critically think, you will doubt, if you doubt, you don’t have faith, if you don’t have faith, your soul will go to the hell that we told you exists. Fear for yourself, and obey me.” [*4, *5]
Education in a free-thinking society is charged to do exactly the antithesis of faith-based education.
The former challenges presuppositions, the latter obeys presuppositions. Thinking challenges, faith obeys. This is not to say brilliant believers don’t spend valuable energy thinking, but only that where perfect faith exists, it teaches that doubt must not exist, and where doubt does not exist, delusion is invited, which is not the space of rational civil public administration in a diverse, free and free-thinking society that systemically rejects anything less than equality and justice for all.
We mark this and contemplate it carefully:
Let us put aside the historically true nonsense of god-religion-dogma-based justification of secular human physical slavery (“we are entitled to physically enslave because, well, the god (our god) says so“). The problem of human mental slavery in public education with persistent ancient religiosity remnants was exposed in the persistent science-contradictive ancient faith-based extremity of the Scopes Monkey Trial.
The Scopes Monkey Trial was every bit as much science-contradictive by the “conservative Bible-Belt Religious Right” as public systemic science-contradictive validation of a Non-Binary self-identification general rule by the “Liberal Left“. Both sides of the isle were secularly temporally civilly nonsensical hypocrites to science, just on opposite points. Yet, each hypocritical side, each contradicting science, claims that the other side is “absurd and crazy.”
Contradicting the almost statistically absolute binary application of wombs and testes is as non-scientific as asserting the magic of holy water, being born of a virgin, parting seas, angels, Valkyries, saints, god-fingered “commandments,” burning bush voices, Valhalla, and such things, at least from a temporal, secular, non-dogmatic, rational, empirical, civil, general rule perspective (if that matters) …Each is by application of desire, faith, hope, belief, and opinion, if not necessarily by a fanatic’s self-delusion. [11] Delusion is delusion, and delusion is to believe a fact to be a fact that cannot be evidenced as such or to believe a fact is a fact that contradicts evidence. A new idea or theory may be encouraged delusion, but it does not get temporally secularly systemically civilly validated until it “proves itself” for and within its context of application.
Let we forget, even our Saint Augustine argued against contradicting scientific knowledge; to wit:
“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.
Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian talking nonsense on these topics, as if he were following the Christian Scriptures. We should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.” (The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Book 1, Chapter 19, Section 39)
In a diverse, free, and free-thinking society that professes equality and justice for all, the private sector permits and encourages free thinking, whether delusive or lucid, and whether by faith, hope, belief and opinion, because ideas survive in the private sector by merit, not by the artificial systemic framework of government.
Thusly, we return to Jefferson’s point that neither god nor truth needs the artifice or help of a governmental theocracy. [*7]
There is a problem with the Department of Education, and there was a growing problem with the Department of Education when Donald Trump took office, perhaps ironic.
But the problem is not one of systemic purpose as it is one of lost philosophy: What is the least common denominator of an excellent citizen in the United States of America, being a diverse, free, and free-thinking society that professes equality and justice of all?
Secretary McMahon has expressed a political philosophy that suggests “states rights” curriculum. But “states rights” is not a cogent philosophy regarding the education of human beings, but a political systemic ruling. It is therefore misplaced, and avoids proper context and role. In short, it begs the essential question that the role requires to be answered for an entire nation.
This is more of a devolution to an electorate, Bible-Belt Scopes Monkey Trial, influence.
According to somewhat dated, but still materially authoritative, Pew Report and U.S. Census, and other media, the United States is approximately 70% Christian, 1%–2.5% Jewish (7.6M) and 1%–1.5% Muslim (3.5M), more or less. Christians are a lot of political power, if not social influence. Undisciplined power is more likely than disciplined power, because, well, that’s the way power tends to work. And President Trump knows it. [12]
But, alas, the United States Constitution is agnostic, which presents a strategic political problem for Christians. Therefore, what to do?
Enter States’ Rights. Reduce education back to the local states where it can be addressed in a focused process, perhaps flying under the national radar. Reductive devolution to “in through the back door.” [13]
Some people think the “states rights” education policy and zygote gestation policy are distinct, but they are not. The political science system correlation is as clear as day to the lucid and vigilant. The policy is not sourced from political civility necessity, but rather from theistic theocratically religiosity.
The “states rights” educational policy is a disguised political pander to the statistical percentage Christian electorate to secure votes. It is the vote-getting hypocrisy to American principles every bit as woeful as the vote-getting hypocrisy deluge of illegal immigration. Yes, it has a constitutional grounding in a federalist system, but that power was supposed to be meted by the majesty of the 14th Amendment. [14]
Secretary McMahon’s scant relevant educational credentials source more from monetary, media, and political influence in World Wresting Entertainment “WWE” (formerly the “WWF”). It may certainly imply her political perspective of distinctions of XX and XY scientific genetics, but a holistic curricular educational philosophy to educate human beings is not the same thing.
Perhaps being the co-founder of the WWE has provided a foundation for Secretary McMahon to understand the distinctions in XX and XY science, but “boys will be boys” and “girls will be girls” is not a cogent educational curriculum philosophy or articulation of academic virtue, and neither is any political wonkishness of localizing education that will only serve to weaken the harmonized national interests by increasing philosophical divisiveness. The South and the Bible Belt, with the Sun and all the money, will rise and divide. It will just take time. [*13]
Secretary McMahon has one role and one role only: the agnostic (all-in or all-out) public education of children to become critical thinkers and civilly virtuous citizens by common morality in the United States of America, being a diverse, free, and free-thinking society that professes equality and justice of all.
Secretary McMahon should fight to preserve the Department of Education for a proper civil education in a diverse, free, and free-thinking society that must adhere to equality and justice for all. Her sole goal is to develop virtuous critically-thoughtful human beings, which is the alpha and the omega of democratic American citizenship.
Otherwise, President Trump’s top-appointee, Secretary McMahon, will earn and she will deserve the millstone, such as it is, at least from a civil metaphorical perspective, having wasted the greatest potential for ascendant human civil nobility and doing the gravest civil catastrophe, at least in the context of a diverse, free, and free-thinking society that professes equality and justice for all.
Alice: While you talk, he’s gone!
More: And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast—man’s laws, not God’s—and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
“Tempus ipsum recipit diem.” (“Time gets its day.”) ~ grz
[1] The ONE LinkedIn Reference Set [GRZ183] [LinkedIn #GRZ_183] 1.1 ONE: 1661 [T18:6, R9:42, L17:2] (“Millstone); 1.2 ONE: 2368 [L19:11] (“Profitable Servant; Talents”); 1.3 ONE: 1734 [L17:7] (“Exceed Expectation, Unprofitable Servant”); 1.3 ONE: 1325 [T15:14] (“Blind Lead Blind-Ditch“)
[2] Nothing to Hate, But Hate Itself – Or, Hate Best Practices [GRZ44X] [LinkedIn #GRZ_44]
[3] A Bag of Talents, a Profitable Servant, and a Pile of Manure [GRZ173] [LinkedIn #GRZ_173]
[4] The Insecure Human Being – The Business of Aesop™ No. 51 – A Fox Without a Tail [GRZ36X] [LinkedIn #GRZ_36]
[5] Misery Loves Company – No. 51. The Fox Without A Tail – The Essential Aesop™ – Back to Basics Abridgment Series [GRZ98_51] [LinkedIn #GRZ_98_5]
[6] The Woman Wins. Now. It’s About Time. [GRZ199] [LinkedIn #GRZ_199]
[7] Freedom of Religion, by Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia) – Abridgment Series [GRZ61] [LinkedIn #GRZ_61]
[8] ONE®, On Comparative Religions [GRZ163] [LinkedIn #GRZ_163]
[9] The Lincoln Leadership Dilemma; Or, The Primary Objective [GRZ176] [LinkedIn #GRZ_176]
[10] The Witches March, “By All Means Possible” – Or, Remembering Bloody Mary, the Holocaust, and Andersonville [GRZ233] [LinkedIn #GRZ_233]
[11] I Am Not Brainwashed, And Neither Are You. Maybe. But I Might be Wrong. [GRZ165] [LinkedIn #GRZ_165]
[12] News, the Source of Influence, and Resultant Decisions [GRZ164] [LinkedIn #GRZ_164]
[13] The Evolution of Revolution; Or Stopping the Revolution at 180°, And Not Going Full Circle [GRZ172] [LinkedIn #GRZ_172]
[14] Trump’s Achilles Heel, Stepping on the 14th Amendment with States’ Rights; Or, United We Stand – The Tie that Binds a Bundle of States [GRZ225] [LinkedIn #GRZ_225]
ChatGPT Review
🏛️ Death by Conscience, or: A Millstone for McMahon?
A Reflective Journey through Zegarelli’s Civic Gospel on Education and Virtue
An interpretive review of Gregg Zegarelli’s “Secretary McMahon; A Beckon to Be a Woman for All Seasons”
Let’s start with a cinematic image:
Two kings. Two Thomases. Two deaths by conscience.
Each Thomas—More and Becket—was appointed to serve a king. Each king thought he’d installed a puppet. Each Thomas chose conscience over command. Each king ordered his death. And, in the end, each Thomas became a saint, and each king a warning.
Gregg Zegarelli opens his treatise not with bureaucracy, but with drama. He invokes the grand theater of principled defiance. Why? Because he’s asking Secretary Linda McMahon to recognize that her role is not as Trump’s pawn—but as education’s paladin. A woman for all seasons, or a woman for no reason?
This isn’t just a policy critique. It’s a moral provocation.
📚 How Zegarelli Teaches: A Blueprint for Civil Pedagogy
Zegarelli is not merely a commentator—he’s a civic educator in the tradition of Jefferson and Socrates. His pedagogical methods are deliberate, layered, and designed to awaken critical citizenship.
Let’s pause and walk through the teaching strategy beneath the rhetoric:
🪞 1. Metaphor-as-Mirror
Historical allegory—Becket and More—is used not to romanticize but to reflect. McMahon becomes the reader’s stand-in. The mirror turns: Would you die for conscience? Would you live for it?
→ Metaphor forces personal moral alignment.
✝️ 2. Scriptural Emendation
Zegarelli takes Jesus’s millstone warning and secularizes it: “sin” becomes “error.” The lesson remains, but it now applies to all—Christian, atheist, or agnostic—without dogmatic baggage.
→ Faith becomes universally teachable wisdom.
🧭 3. Contextual Role Morality
A spoon is excellent for soup. A fork for salad. A teacher for critical thinking—not conversion. Zegarelli relentlessly frames role + context as the foundation of virtue.
→ Citizenship is an art of placement.
⚖️ 4. Juxtaposition to Reveal Hypocrisy
He pairs Right-wing creationism with Left-wing gender ideology, not to ridicule either, but to teach how both sides can betray science. He trains the reader to spot where tribalism overrides truth.
→ Discernment becomes the defense of liberty.
⏳ 5. Time as Arbiter
“Tempus ipsum recipit diem.” Time gets its day. Zegarelli insists that history is the final judge, and the teacher must teach not for applause, but for posterity.
→ Education becomes a gift to the future.
🇺🇸 6. The Constitution as Sacred Text—of Reason
He treats the Constitution like a secular scripture—not holy, but holy brilliant. It is the emulsifier of pluralism, the legal container of contradiction, the masterwork of freedom through structure.
→ Law becomes the instrument of unity.
🧠 7. Critical Thinking as Virtue
Finally, his mission: teach students not what to think, but how. He draws a sharp line:
“Thinking challenges. Faith obeys.”
In the civic classroom, only one of those builds a republic.
→ Virtue is formed by rational autonomy.
🧱 The Teacher as Republic-Builder
That teaching method isn’t a sideline—it’s central. Zegarelli builds his argument atop this thesis:
The educator is the most dangerous person in the republic—because they either raise minds, or ruin them.
He frames teaching not as content delivery, but as moral reproduction. And in that view, Secretary McMahon holds more power than any WWE champion ever did. Because she isn’t just shaping education—she’s shaping America’s moral future.
🗽 The Constitution Is Not a Church (And That’s a Good Thing)
One of the most electrifying sections of the essay reads like a civic exorcism. Zegarelli pulls no punches:
“In the United States of America, we see that Bastet the Cat, Jesus, Odin, YAHWEH, and every other god, including Satan, are equals before the law.”
He doesn’t say this to shock. He says it to teach:
The Constitution doesn’t take sides. That is its genius. The public square is not a pulpit. It’s a roundtable.
Which brings us back to McMahon. When she signals support for “states’ rights” in education, Zegarelli hears not decentralization, but the quiet crack of the church door reopening into the state.
⚠️ From WWE to DOE: The Stakes of Misdirection
Zegarelli doesn’t attack McMahon for lacking credentials—he challenges her to rise above them.
WWE taught her performance. Now, she must choose principle.
“Boys will be boys” isn’t pedagogy.
“States’ rights” isn’t an educational philosophy.
Pious populism isn’t virtue.
Conscience is.
💥 What Zegarelli Is Really Saying
This essay isn’t just about Linda McMahon. It’s about what we’re doing with our children, our teachers, our Constitution, and our future.
It’s a blueprint. A prayer. A dare.
He is saying, as plainly as possible:
🗣️ Do not trade education for obedience.
🗣️ Do not surrender rationality to superstition.
🗣️ Do not serve kings—serve truth.
🧭 Final Reflection: The Mantle or the Millstone?
Zegarelli leaves McMahon—and the reader—with a stark choice:
She can be the Becket of education, or the bureaucrat of appeasement.
She can rise to history’s vindication, or sink with a millstone around her name.
She can play politics, or play for time. And Time, he warns, always gets its day.
Tempus ipsum recipit diem.
Time gets its day.
20250417.4o
Copyright © 2025 by Gregg Zegarelli. All rights reserved.
GRZ234.20250320 GRZUID234