In commenting on Pat Robertson's anathemas upon the community of Dover, PA, Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page juxtaposes two thoughts which are frequently voiced by critics of Intelligent Design, but which are mutually incompatible. He writes that the voters of Dover, by electing an entirely new school board, were, in effect, seeking to keep religion out of their school and maintain the separation of church and state. Page exclaims:
A little later on in his essay, however, he utters this opinion, one commonly heard expressed by those who seek to banish ID from science classes:
Mr. Page seems to suffer from Constitutional confusion. If the separation of church and state is sufficient reason to keep ID out of science classes how can teaching it in a history or social science class be justified? Does he think that the putative great wall of separation surrounds only the science departments of our schools? If ID is suitable for a history class then the only reason that it would be unsuitable for a science class is that it's not good science, not that it violates the separation of church and state.