Show me someone who’s positing that the posting of the Ten Commandments will increase school shootings, illiteracy, drugs, pregnancy, et cetera. Otherwise, I’m gonna look around for the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion, 'cause that’s a hell of a straw man.
Aren’t you people aware that only Christians have morals? :rolleyes:
Actually, I don’t think displaying Christian ‘moral’ philosophy does any particular harm except that it tends to trivialize all other religions by omission. In other words, I, as a non-Christian, would have no problem with it if they also made a point of displaying quotations from the Koran, etc. in the context of “these represent various moral codes, and moral codes are a good thing to have.” But displaying only Christian material inplies that only Christian philosophy has any merit.
This was actually a lot clearer in my head, and yes, I am aware that Minty Green just said pretty much the same thing. I just wanted to flog my own particular hot button.
IIRC, this is precisely the tactic used in a state whose name I have now forgotten. Virginia? North Carolina? Colorado, maybe? Though in this case, they hewed a little too close to the 10C’s and didn’t avoid the fundamental conflict.
If you’ll pardon the Slippery Slope argument, once the 10C’s are on the walls in schools, fundies will point to them as a precedent for their next eeeevil plot. Just as they’re doing now with the motto on the money.
–Grump “ten suggestions” y
Sorry, Grump. I cannot pardon the slippery slope argument in this case, because we know what actually happened when the 10 C’s were posted. The country didn’t turn into a theocracy then, and there’s no reason to think such a thing would happen today.
No, the country wasn’t a theocracy, but school prayer does lead to harassment of minority students, and the posting of the Ten Commandments or “In God We Trust” is intimately linked with attempts to re-introduce (or protect the continued existence of) school prayer.
“…it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens…” – James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance (against religious establishments), June 20, 1785
december,
You don’t have to swallow my slippery slope. I’m just thankful you were able to pardon my triple-post. Hey mods, feel free to clean up my clutter!
They published an article on the Santana school shooting since Santee is just a mile away from them. They chalk it up to “the removal of God from our schools.” How do you remove God from a place? They must’ve used a pretty big can of Raid.
What I don’t understand is; if various groups are complaining about the moral decline of young people, why aren’t they encouraging them to be more active in the religious/philosophical institution of their choice?
There’s no proof that posting the 10 Commandments (or the 8 Noble Truths of the Buddha or Quotations of the Vedas or the 5 Pillars of Islam, the Wiccan Rede, etc) will do anything to curb this suppose decline of morality (that’s a topic for another thread). Yet everyone harps that as THE CURE.
I’m sure encouraging people to be more active in their own religious/philosophical system will do more than simply posting signs in school. Gods, we post signs about not littering, yet has that helped at all? 
As far as I know, arguing with people that think that it’s proper, right, and necessary to post the TC in schools has to take a specific track. Telling them that it’s unconstitutional isn’t going to do it. Their basic assumptions are that the reason things are bad is because their religion is not actively preached in school. Therefore, the Constitution must be wrong!
To convince them that it is wrong to post the TC in school, you have to change their basic assumptions. You have to convince them that it is morally wrong to do so. Since they KNOW that they are right, that their religion is right, etc, convincing them of the necessity of separation of church and state will be very difficult, as they believe that time and preaching will convince all others that theirs is the path of truth and salvation. (I’m not talking about all Christians, just making generalizations about the ones that want to post the TC and hold similar ideas. They needn’t even be Christians.)
So you have to find some way to convince them that though they believe they are right, they have NO way to prove it, and thus the state, which must hold itself only to those realities for which proof can be given in order to assure justice for all, can not allow such an action.
IMO, you’ll never convince them of this. Your best bet is to just stop them from succeeding.
I really don’t see what THE[sub]C[/sub]URE has to do with it. 
Ah well. You show up late, of course somebody’s already said everything you wanted to say.
Wait, here’s one thing:
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Gadarene *
**
[quote]
Joses Solano, a teacher at Portland’s Cleveland High School, described conditions that “have gone from difficult to practically chaotic.” Students come to class with pierced body parts, tattoos, and other “symbols of anarchy and captivation with the perverse.”
Meanwhile, religious expression has been purged, he said.
[quote]
Oh for Christ’s sake (so to speak). Religious expression has not been purged. Students (students!) are free to show up at school wearing a cross, they can carry a Bible, they can show up with the ten commandments tattoo on their forehead. They can, the school, being part of the government, can’t. Kind of the same way the school can’t force a student to get her nose pierced.
“symbols of anarchy and captivation with the perverse”. I like that. Solano can really turn a phrase. But I thought tattoos and body piercings were more a symbol of conformity these days.
Anyway, I would really like to see somebody here who agrees that the ten commandments should be posted (I know there’s a few) post and tell me why it is not a violation of…bet you thought I was going to say seperation of Church and State. No, as has been pointed out that’s not in the Constitution. A violation of the ammendment against establishment of religion. That is.
Or why the suggestion of posting the legal code or minty green’s list is not a good one. Because it doesn’t have the moral authority of coming directly from God? I’m afraid that’s the point.
Anyone?
**
I don’t advocate posting the 10 C’s, but I’m not opposed either; I’ll respond solely on the Constitutionality question.
For about the first 150 - 175 years of America’s existance, posting the 10C’s was (or would have been) held to be Constitutional IMHO; today the Supreme Court would probably take the opposite view. I would guess that the Founders would not have intended the Cponstitution to prohibit posting them. A judge who believes in original intent as a principle of Constitutional inerpretation would therefore not find the posting of the 10 C’s to be prohibited. I would expect Scalia and Thomas to take this position.
A question for those of you who disagree with me: If you do agree that the Founders would not have considered it un-Constitutional to post the 10 C’s, how can you justify a court making such a ruling today? What would the basis of their ruling be? This is certainly not a situation where original intent needs to be modified due to changes in technology, etc.
It’s not clear what the Founders’ positions would have been on the issue. (Of course, they wouldn’t necessarily have all agreed with each other.) Madison, for one, is on record as saying that “Religious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts are shoots from the same root with the legislative acts reviewed. Altho’ recommendations only, they imply a religious agency, making no part of the trust delegated to political rulers” (from Madison’s Detached Memoranda). It doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to consider posting the Ten Commandments to be a recommendation implying a religious agency on the part of the political rulers, to whom no such agency has been intrusted.
It’s worth noting that one major change between now and then is the 14th Amendment, which is generally considered to have applied the protections of the Bill of Rights to the states as well as to the federal government; before that, states could actually have officially established churches, and some did so well into the 19th Century. Among the Founders Jefferson and Madison at least were strongly opposed to such establishments on a state-by-state basis.
Men like Madison and especially Jefferson were also believers in progress. Jefferson for one would surely have opposed the idea that all future generations should be absolutely bound by the opinions of himself and his contemporaries.
So… If a bunch of guys in powdered wigs (long dead, I might add) thought it was okay, then we should follow their lead. Be tyrranized from beyond the grave, in other words.
Times have changed. I thank those dead men for founding an enduring republic, but to me the words “living constitution” are not profane.
–Grump “wig envy” y
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by TheeGrumpy *
**
**Grump – If you’re saying that a state or federal government today should be entitled to not post the 10 C’s, then I agree with you. I would prefer that the decision be made through the democratic process.
However, if you’re saying that it’s OK for Supreme Court justices to re-interpret the Constitution and make new policy, then I’d like more detail. How do we know what a “living Constitution” says? What policies should a “living Constitution” permit or require? Are there any limits on the Supreme Court’s ability to modify the original Constitution?
IMHO these questions need specific answers. Otherwise we would be agreeing that a majority of the Supreme Court has the power to require or prohibit anything they please, because they could justify any decision by using the words “living Constitution.”
Scalia has written that if one seeks a coherent philosophy of Constitutional interpretation, there is really no good alternative to original intent. I am inviting the posters to prove Scalia wrong by stating their preferred alternative Constitutional philosophy.
december, apparently you haven’t been in a high school lately. Posting the 10Cs will give others another chance to insult the religious minorities. Wicca and Buddhism, Islam and Zen, all being thought of as wrong and considered wrong. The 10Cs are a hateful document in that they proclaim that one should not follow any other religion. Would you want the state telling you that the religion you follow is wrong? That’s the feeling I would get if something like that were to be posted in my school.
Look, just because the majority may think it is right doesn’t make it right. I can paint stripes on me, but I am not a zebra. Our constitution was made to help the minorities and look after everyone’s rights. Or is our little 200 year old paper only useful when it comes in handy for you?
december:
And what about the possibility that separation of church and state might actually be the original intent of the writers of the Constitution, or at least some of them?
From James Madison:
No, but there’s been a change in population.
I don’t think you can positivly state that the Founding Fathers considered posting the Ten Commandment Constitional.
Certainly not simply because the Ten Commandments were posted. I’d be interested to know if the question was ever debated.
At the time it was written, the FF’s chief concern was that the government would not give pre-eminance to an Christian denomination over any other. At the time the Ten Commandments probably did not seem relevant to that issue as it was part all those denomination. However, what they wrote in the Constitution was not “shall make no law establishing one Judeo-Christian sect over all the Judeo-Christian sects in general” but “shall make no law establishing a religion”. And that’s the intent we have to pay attention to. Now, in a population including millions on non-Christians the issue is not one sects over another but one religion over others. It’s the circumstances that have changed, not the principle.
Unless you don’t think posting a document that starts “You shall have no other God before me” as a statement of policy in a public institution does not establish the pre-eminance of Yaweh whorship, but I have a hard time seeing that.
And not everything can be submitted to the democratic process. The reason we are a CONSTITIONAL democracy is to protect the rights of the minority.
(BTW, given that most of the people advocating this are Christian, how come nobody’s suggested posting “Love your neighbor as yourself”?)