The closing days of 1999, while full of talk of millennial possibilities, were curiously lacking in real optimism (blame Y2K if you like). Curious because the stock market (which may now have descended the depths) was at that time and the time of this writing sailing well beyond the 11,000 mark-an all-time high, buoyed up by a broad base of speculators. So why the lack of vision? Absent vision, the Good Book says, the people perish.

Well, back into the past century there was a real spate of Utopian proclamations. That "brave new world" of Aldous Huxley and others was at least a goal of sorts, if ultimately troubling. It was as if the Mars probe of our aspirations plummeted through a red mist into silent oblivion.

A few months ago an ambitious Hollywood producer came up with an animated rework of a classic by author George Orwell. No, not his real masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, but the more approachable Animal Farm. Nineteen Eighty-Four, written a little later and when the tendencies that both books identified were more developed, suffers a little from having expired its lease. When the apocryphal year 1984 rolled around I, like many other editors and journalists, felt compelled to examine how completely or incompletely our reality of that time matched the author's forebodings. Unfortunately George Orwell got it wrong, and 1984 proved a bit of a bust for us. And now that we are crossing into the new millennium the very title seems anachronistic, even though the major premises of the book have become eerily contemporary.

But all that said, Animal Farm is perhaps the tale for our time. The Hollywood version of recent days has refocused attention on Orwell's satire, even if the director felt constrained to alter the plot for a more favorable, more socially acceptable outcome.

Animal Farm in the anthropomorphic genre of Babe and other tales (the Mickey Mouse/Disney construct) describes how the animals of Manor Farm rise up and claim the farm from the incompetent farmer. They then rename it "Animal Farm" and reconfigure it as a model community, with social order and the truly democratic principles of equality.

Oh, sure, they had their challenges. It took considerable negotiation before rats were accepted by the majority as comrades. But a formal bill of rights was drawn up, and it included the wonderful proclamation that "all animals are equal."

To avoid filling an entire editorial with a summary of the book, it's enough to say that by the end of the tale (pun noted) the egalitarian principles had been hopelessly compromised. The pigs were now consorting with the humans and running the farm as a dictatorship. While they still repeated the mantra that "all animals are equal," it was qualified by the additional cry that "some animals are more equal than others."

How they came to this sorry pass is complex, but enough to say that economic necessity led to a number of compromises, and the increasingly bitter infighting among the animals broke down their sense of the common good.

Enough of Animal Farm. Let's look at our democratic aspirations and the continued need to guarantee equal rights and freedoms for all.

It seems that every day or so we hear of another school shooting, mass murder, brutal killing, or violent outbreak. People are afraid. Responding to those fears, the president of the United States offered that to guarantee some sort of general security we might have to give away certain freedoms. This was an unchallenged assumption.

Well, we humans are nothing if not logical! When it suits us. And the argument has broadened somewhat to include the moral state of society. Effectively turning reality on its head, there is now a clamor for the state to underwrite moral education to solve all of our ills. This in direct contradiction of the fact that it is individual morality that enables a moral state, not the other way around.

The framers of the Constitution recognized as much in the First Amendment. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is a continuation of the language of the Declaration of Independence, which premised all rights on the self-evident fact of a higher power.

The leaders in those formative days of the American republic were acutely aware of the lessons of history. They were acutely aware of the sorry tale of intolerance, persecution, and zealotry that had decimated freedoms and personal security throughout the centuries in the Old World. They wanted none of those troubles to appear here. The language of the Constitution is strong and forthright in erecting a "firewall" against state-sponsored religion/morality.

religious instruction. In 1785 he wrote the highly influential "Memorial and Remonstrance" against a proposal in the house of delegates in Virginia to pay the salaries of church teachers. He wrote, "It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties." His alarm sounds eerily contemporary. "The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. . . . Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of only one establishment may force him to conform to any one establishment in all cases whatsoever?"

Alarm! Alarm! Alarm! Circle the wagons. Erect the stockade. Man the wall. This is no time to break down that barrier between church and state, erected for reasons of security-to both state and individual.

We are in a time when various religious groups are demanding special privilege. They are demanding special access to the law and the public coffers. They are demanding special access to our children. This cannot be!

The battlefront is broad and varied, but at base the question is one of merging state and church interests. Will we see churches administering federal welfare programs? That is the suggestion. Will we see churches mandating both doctrinal and scientific studies in public schools? There are those who would demand as much. Will we see taxpayer money supporting church schools, either through indirect vouchers or direct subsidy? That is the tendency. Will we see on the one hand the diminution of the rights of certain religious minorities and on the other the formalized force of law backing up the practices and beliefs of a favored few religious institutions? That is both the tendency and the aim in some quarters.

Those of us who believe in God and in honoring our Creator know that He expects us to live a certain way and to worship a certain way. And those of us who truly honor our citizenship in a state founded on egalitarian principles, which aims to respect all viewpoints and belief systems, know how important it is to remain true to such a goal.

Analogies extended too far invariably break down. But it is not far off the mark to say that the freedoms of this happy farm have been extended precisely because it has been spared the feudal nature inherent in state religion.

No, we are not animals. Neither our religious faith nor the definitive proclamations of this republic lead us to say that. We are creatures of a creator. We cannot afford to be the mewing, barking, and crowing crowd of the farmyard that was so easily led astray by the sophistries of a few pigs.

A last word from James Madison: "What influences, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."