Displaying the Ten Commandments on courthouses

I lifted this information from Dan Barker's book Godless. I hope he won't mind.

The judges who insist on trying to display the Ten Commandments in their courthouses usually get sued by the ACLU on the basis of the First Amendment of the Constitution. The judges try to defend themselves by claiming that American law has its basis in the Ten Commandments. Does it? Let's take the Commandments one by one.

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Well, that one is a clear violation of the First Amendment, and no laws exist (or can exist) insisting that Yahweh is top dog.

2. Thou shalt have no graven images or likenesses of me.

That one's not encoded in American law either. Images of God, Jesus, and Mary abound in the United States with no legal consequences.

3. Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain.

No laws about that in America either. Such a prohibition would violate everyone's freedom of speech.

4. Thou shalt remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.

Again, nobody is forced by law to do or not do anything in particular on Saturday.

5. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother.

That one's pretty vague, but any coerced honoring is normally done at home and is not a law enforcement matter.

6. Thou shalt not kill.

So, we get to the Sixth Commandment before we find one that is encoded in American law. And, in truth, almost every set of laws has included this one, even before Moses came down with the tablets.

7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

No law against that either, as far as I know. It's grounds for divorce in civil law, but you can't go to jail for cheating.

8. Thou shalt not steal.

The second of the ten that is codified in American law.

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness.

The third one out of ten.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's various possessions.

No law against wishing you had something your neighbor has. Now, if you take action on that desire, you're in violation of #7 or #8.

So, judges and elected officials, we're on to you. If you want to claim that American law is based on the Ten Commandments, save your breath. It isn't. And some of them are directly in opposition to the Constitution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Religion and the search for truth

A friend of mine recently noted that there are roughly 43,000 Christian denominations, and that therefore it's perhaps unwise to make government policy based on religious belief. The founding fathers did a brilliant thing with the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Indeed, think about why there are so many Christian denominations (and so many varieties of Judaism and Islam, by the way). Religious believers of all stripes believe that theirs is the true way. The creation of denominations happens when members of a given congregation disagree strongly enough on matters of faith that they split off and form their own new congregation. Keep in mind that this matter of faith is so nonnegotiable that a group of believers must separate themselves from their fellows.

In Christianity alone, there are thousands of these nonnegotiable disagreements. As a finder of absolute truth, religion must surely be judged a dismal failure.

Recognizing a tyrant

We know that during the Second World War, the Nazi government, among other things, forced the resettlement of 1.7 million Poles from their homes to make room for Germans.

We also know that the Soviet Union, under Stalin, forced a mass movement of farmers in the service of collectivization.

My point is that tyrants, when trying to achieve their grand visions, move masses of people without a care for the suffering that results.

Donald Trump, during his campaign, promised to forcefully remove all illegal aliens from the United States, en masse. That is one way everyone should have recognized a tyrant when they saw one.

Trump, so far, has not made good on mass deportation, but he has, using his ICE Storm Troopers, aggressively and cruelly stepped up deportations, separating families and removing people who have lived here a long, long time, and who are great contributors to the American economy and culture.

He must go.

"We must understand the Trump voter," they say.

We mustn't be arrogant.

Those liberal elitists, those scientists, those intellectuals are arrogant, you know. They look down on the working class.

The working class, and the conservative politicians who bamboozle them, when they use the word "elite," do not mean rich people; they mean smart people. They've got a chip on their shoulder about smart people.

I have known many people with these chips on their shoulders.

I had a boss (an abusive one, by the way) who loved to go on about scientists he had worked around. They had this in common: they might be geniuses, but they had no common sense. They couldn't cope outside the lab. He had anecdotes about them. He had contempt for them.

I had a co-worker who laughed contemptuously when I mentioned that so-and-so had bought a Prius. "A Prius! Hunh!" A person who buys a Prius believes in climate change, and that people can do something about it. Fair enough on "controversial" climate change, but why the scorn for a person who is saving money on gasoline? Who is easy on the world's oil supply? Who makes the air a little cleaner? No, such a person is too earnest. Effete. Real Americans drive Hummers. Real Americans can't get the oil out of the ground fast enough.

I had another co-worker (a college graduate, in fact) who was a neoconservative who prattled on about ideas. The neoconservative movement had recently invented ideas. No liberal elitist had ever had one, apparently. I happened to mention once that I had read about a book in the Washington Post Book World. Snicker. Snort. "Book World! Hunh!" in a voice dripping with contempt.

My first wife was the first person in her family to go to college, and they hated her for it, frankly. She mustn't get too big for her britches. She just parroted those ideas she got from her professors; she didn't know what was really going on.

I went to public school with many people who just couldn't understand why they should have to learn anything that they "would never use again." Why learn history? Why learn math? I'm not going to college. I just want to work. What do I need English literature for?

More and more of these incurious people have made their way into government. Sarah Palin is one of these. "You've heard about some of these pet projects, they really don't make a lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not." Now, if you don't know what's wrong with that statement (and the irony of it coming out of the mouth of a woman whose son has a birth defect, and whose nephew has autism), I suggest you Google it.

This lack of intellectual curiosity, accompanied by contempt for the work of people who are curious, leads to bad life choices, gullibility, and ill-informed voting.

These intellectually lazy people seem to have no idea that the Democratic Party does more to help them than the Republican Party does. The Republican Party cultivates their ignorance, does nothing for them, and gets their votes anyway.

I think I understand them well enough.