My Stone Tablets
Since there seems to be a great deal of confusion regarding this issue, it will get its own space.
I have never stated that anyone was against the posting of the Ten Commandments on the basis of its being unprotected speech under the First Amendment. Never. Not one time in my life. That said, I oppose the posting of the Ten Commandments on public land, and most notably on those lands used for the administration of justice.
I ask you this: If I were to get the money together to have a 10.5-ton monument built and given to the state of Alabama, would they put it in front of the courthouse? They did with the Ten Commandments, but what about the Code of Hammurabi or law excerpts from the Koran or the Zend Avesta?
You see, the problem with posting the Ten Commandments is not free speech. The problem is exclusion of expression. Remember, if you wish to debate this on freedom of speech grounds, that the Supreme Court has ruled, in effect, that the listener has as much freedom from speech as the speaker has to deliver it.
This means that anyone who does not wish to experience the Ten Commandments simply has to avoid places of religious expression, but jurors, criminals, lawyers, and judges who must go to such a place cannot avoid it. That is unfair. It is not enough to say that these are Ten rules by which people can lead better lives, but that they can be divorced of their religious value. Take out the first four if that's what you want, but "I am the lord thy God" is not a terribly secular start.
We can debate until we are blue in the face which of the founding fathers are Christian and which are deists or agnostics or atheists, but the fact remains that this is a secular nation by definition. We have no national religion, just as we have no national language. Saying that we support freedom of expression with regard to all religions does not make sense if we only support, with our deeds, freedom of expression of one religion (two, since this is from the boook of Exodus).
posted by Andrew Purvis @ 1:07 PM
3 Comments:
The Supreme Court fudged, leaving the 10 commandments in one place and outlawing them in another, based on Bryers swing vote and shoddy reasoning that if the Texas' display didn't offend people in 40 years then it's can't be proselytizing.
What's there to debate about the funding fathers on this issue?
When they said God they meant, the lord thy God, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who issued the 10 commandments, and by all indications they overwhelmingly believed in him.
They also plainly stated "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That makes us secular by definition, but there is a huge grey area, between state sponsored proselytizing and freedom of expression, and they left us in the dark as to where to draw the line.
I agree with you (and with my neighbor Hank, who is an unabashed liberal) that the court "split the baby" in this decision. I am curious why you choose Bryers as the swing voter, or indeed why anyone picks a single person as a swing voter. True, his wording is the most unusual, but in my discussion of this with Hank, he selected O'Connor as the swing voter. It seems, then, that the choice of which justice one sees as as swing voter depends heavily upon where one's political opinion rests.
I am amazed that you, or anyone for that matter, can say with any certainty that the "God" mentioned in the Declaration of Independence (I repeat, this is a document with no force of law whatsoever) is the same God mentioned in the Bible. The principal author of that document cannot be historically defined as a Jew or a Christian. The best we can get is that he was a deist, though influenced by a Christian heritage.
In citing the First Amendment, you are on more solid ground, as it is part of the Constitution. You will also note that Congress has made no such law. Still, what we must consider is that we are dealing with the freedoms of those who do not believe in a Judeo-Christian faith, combined with the necessity, at times, that those people use the courthouses.
This seems to go back to the so-called Confederate Flag issue (I recently learned that the "stars and bars" confederate flag was originally the battle flag for Lee's army, and was later adopted as one of the official flags of the Confederacy). Should such a flag be flown on public land? It is a legitimate part of the nation's history, yet it has taken on deeply objectionable symbolism, mostly in the 20th century. It has repeatedly been ruled against, however, because of the offense others find in what it symbolizes in public spaces. No analogy is perfect, but this does point out the idea of protection from speech.
The declaration of independence doesn't have the force of law, but it is great persuasive authority.
The declaration of independence sets forth the axioms on which this country is built, on which the Constitution is built.
It is social policy at it's very best. The declaration of independence itself isn't law, but it's principles are built into the law.
Why do you repeat yourself? I have 2 hypotheses.
There are two law making bodies in the federal government, Congress and the Courts. The Constitution expressly says that "Congress shall make no law ...." So congress can't directly touch religion, except by constitutional amendment I suppose. That leaves the courts. Theoretically, the courts must decide anything that is in dispute before them.
They resolved these particular disputes satisfactorily, but they failed to create a clear rule, instead we must go on with hazy balancing.
I chose Breyer because the news said that he was the swing vote.
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