Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
Over at the Punning Pundit, I take a look at public displays of the 10 commandments. In the process of doing so, I try and make the case that there is no "Judeo-Christian" worldview. Intrigued? Take a look and come back here to discuss it. Yes, I am trying to drive up my traffic...
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Our Western high culture consists of a number of threads, women together into a beautiful pattern. The high culture of the West is a cathedral with many buttresses. The Jewish and the Christian (today divided into the Catholic and the Protestant) religions constitute one such element, strain, or stratum of the West, these religions united around a basic reverence for the Bible, at least the Old Testament, including the Ten Commandments.
Other strains include the Greek and the Roman, or Classical, culture, even back to the Egyptian (as Camille Paglia argues), and that Northern European Celtic-Nordic-Gothic strain which Oswald Spengler called the "Faustian", characterized by our distinctive striving for the infinite. This last element has infused and transformed the others.
I defend the freedom to display the Ten Commandments, the Cross, Nativity scenes, the Star of David, and all other religious symbols. It is an affirmation of our heritage as a culture and of the faith of individuals.
Because for the lack everything assured or implied by that, dominant culture of this country would have been some amalgam of those of the relatively laid back (read "lazier") societies of southern Europe, rather than of the lutheran and calvanistic societies of northern Europe, with their greater focus on man's free will either to live a life or grace, worthlessness, or outright evil.
I'll have to wait for a real theologian such as Paul Burgess to do a better job for me in defining these differences that make the churches of the jesus folks stand out from the church of the mary folks. But for now, what I have written will do.
Notwithstanding my comments above, I have no problem with the mary folks deciding for themselves their relations to their own ancient churchly organization, or how that organization and its priesthood should be organized.
Nor do I have any problem with the moses folks, the muhamad folks, the aynrand folks or the nogodsatall folks determine what or how they shall worship or ignore all this stuff altogether.
Therefore, I see no problem with public buildings being duked out with engraved plaques celebrating the ten commandments of Moses at Mount Sinai. Nor am I concerned with US currency containing the language "IN GOD WE TRUST", just so my pockets are perpetually stuffed with rolls of these in the suitably denomination.
Come to think of it, we've all gotten along tolerably well in the good old USA under just this order of things, for some 218 years now since the Constitution was signed. Why screw up the arrangement now, for no particularly good reason?
One would think the American Civil Liberties Union might have better things to do with their time, than continually generating law suits against the religious sensibilities of the majority population of this country. For example, the gun owners among us could surely use some ACLU time, money and attention to protect OUR civil liberties. Private property owners likewise.
So even for those of us who don't even believe in souls, or any of the rest of it, it's no doubt a useful idea to have the ten commandments posted large and clear in every court-house of the land. A lot of those commandments deal with our day to day relationships with one another, and therefore form the basis of the fundamental social contract of western civilization.
And a lot of what they want to pull down is good art. Like SMA, that's something I make war to protect.
Some of you want to argue with me over any of this? Let 'er rip.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
lyinglawyers in no kind of courthouse.On the other hand in Texas, that six foot two-stone statue of the Ten Commandments installed in 1961 is okay because it is religious art. Justice Breyer was kind enough to switch loyalties in this case to allow the Texas statue to remain in place at the Capitol in Austin. He undoubtedly knew that that particular statue of the Ten Commandments was donated by Cecil B. deMille the creator of the Ten Commandments, the movie.
In addition, Cecil B. DeMille,was once the father-in-law of Anthony Quinn, the movie star who apparently knew a lot about several of the Ten Commandments which he occasionally it is rumored to have referred to as the ten suggestions.
Justice Breyer also most likely knew it took the plaintiffs 40 years to bring the lawsuit against Cecil’s Texas statue. Continuing our saga, Cecil B deMille did not win the Academy Award for the movie in 1956 but strangely enough Anthony Quinn did win for best supporting role in the movie, Lust for Life in the same year.
To make a long story short, I should like to say when Punning Pundit makes the statement: “When the State allows statues of the 10 Commandments, it takes sides on these disputes”, I would like to agree with that statement.
If allowing this type of statue takes sides for religion (which isn't allowed), doesn't banning them take sides against religion (which also isn't allowed)?
BK
To me it seems like the Federal government usurping more state authority. But, if I'm wrong in this view, please someone correct me and tell me why.
"Here's something to think about.
If allowing this type of statue takes sides for religion (which isn't allowed), doesn't banning them take sides against religion (which also isn't allowed)?"
Yes, it does. It does indeed. You might even say that the ban is itself a religion of sorts, the religion of the anti-religious.
Are you talking about this part? How does placing the 10 Commandments in a public building deprive or abridge anyone's rights? Besides, isn't the arguement doing so is a violation of the Establishment Clause?
Additionally, it was declared, in a certificate of the Secretary of State dated July 28, 1868 to have been ratified by the legislatures of 28 of the 37 States. What's the non-ratification issue?
It's only taking sides if you don't eliminate from government buildings everything that has ever had to do with some religion or another. Which seems to be the case.
""No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Are you talking about this part? How does placing the 10 Commandments in a public building deprive or abridge anyone's rights?"
It doesn't abridge my rights in any way. In Thomas Jefferson's words, it neither breaks my bones nor picks my pocket -- nor steals my home. Let it stand, I say.
But neither is allowing such displays a compelling to conversion.
Secondly, in both cases we are only talking about gov't property. So eliminating them from gov't building isn't a ban on the whole population is is a ban in gov't. Essentially it says that the gov't is atheist. Which takes a side in the debate.
To me the deciding in factor is in enforcement. Allowing a Christian or Buddhist or Hindu symbol or prayer does not enforce a religion. It can easily be ignored. However, when the police come to remove the symbol or arrest the mayor who prayed before a football game, we then have the enforcement of atheism into the gov't.
BK
"Our Western high culture consists of a number of threads, women together into a beautiful pattern."
"Women"? That was a Freudian slip if ever there was one! I'm sure the father of psychoanalysis would have a field day analyzing me. Also, I ought to have said "tapestry", to differentiate us from, say, a Persian carpet.
I agree with Masked Menace that the difference is in enforcement. If a government tried to enforce the first three or four of the Ten Commandments (i.e., those pertaining to man's relation to God), it would certainly be an infringement on religious freedom. But the mere public display of them does nothing at all to inhibit anybody's freedom.
Arnold Harris wrote:
"Because for the lack everything assured or implied by that, dominant culture of this country would have been some amalgam of those of the relatively laid back (read "lazier") societies of southern Europe, rather than of the lutheran and calvanistic societies of northern Europe, with their greater focus on man's free will either to live a life or grace, worthlessness, or outright evil."
G. K. Chesterton could give you an argument there. The very first premise of Calvinism is an explicit denial of man's free will. In Calvin's theology, man is merely a plaything in the hands of a sadistic God who predestined him to be damned from before the Creation. The Lutherans produced the authoritarianism of Prussia. As for the "easy-going, lazy" Mary folk of Italy, Spain, and France, I refer you to the Italian Renaissance, the Spanish conquistadors, the Apanish Civil War, the French monarchy, Revolution, and Reaction. Not to mention the Mary folk of Ireland and Poland, who no one could call lazy. "....the passionate violence of the....Catholic personality...."