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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (55692)	7/10/1999 11:52:00 AM
From: Achilles	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Thanks for you post, Neocon. On the first four questions, we'll have to agree to disagree, I guess, though I would note that if the Ten Commandments are in fact, as you suggest, 'iconic', then to post them runs the risk of breaking commandment II: a delicious, if frivolous, irony. (BTW, will this bill in fact release local systems from litigation? Some school will post them and will be sued; the school's lawyer will refer to the federal law which allows the posting and judge will have to rule on the federal government's constitutional competence to pass a law allowing them to be posted. It seems to me that the burden of the litigation still falls to the school boards.) >> ...Your last two paragraphs put forth the strongest formulation I have yet seen against the posting of the Ten Commandments. However, we are not obliged to excise all references to particular ways of viewing God and religion merely for the right to post or circulate culturally resonant material. For example, the Declaration of Independence refers to the Laws of Nature and Nature's God. Camus refers (in "L'Etranger") to the "benign indifference of the universe". The "Battle Hymn of the Republic" invokes the glory of the Lord. It depends, it seems to me, on the perceived function of the posting. If it has much admonitory power on those not adhering to the monotheistic religions, then I suppose that you are right. If it merely reinforces pre- existing beliefs, as I have argued, I think that the objection fails.<< There is a difference, I would suggest, between an innocuous passing reference to the Almighty (or some reasonable facsimile thereof) that we find in the Declaration of Independence and the direct admonishment we find in the commandments. In my view, however, you have hit the nail on the head here. Would the state posting the commandments indeed be admonishment, or might it (as you suggest) be merely invoking some cultural resonance? I will not mention that there is a reason that the decalogue is commonly referred to as the Ten Commandments and not (say) the Ten Culturally Significant Iconic Artifacts. Nor will I ask whether the state can post a series of admonishments without admonishing. Rather, I suggest that we need to look at this from the ground level. If some earnest Christian high school student pointed to the text to gain some moral leverage on a recent Indian immigrant ('polytheism is unAmerican: see'), would that not the cultural resonance in fact be just another kind of admonishment? >>At worst, to establish a constitutionally permissible display, one would have to include it in a wider array of texts, from several sources, such as the Bhagavad- Gita and the Analects.... << Are you not here admitting that the bill, as debated and passed, is unconstitutional and deservedly so, since it does not allow a wider array of texts? If what you suggest is someday proposed, a new and slightly different discussion would be welcome. Frankly, I would probably oppose such a measure, if only because I can only see trouble arising from it: well-meaning fundamentalists will pull their kids out of schools because there were pagan (and therefore Satanic) messages from the Bhagavadgita on the walls; TV evangelists would complain of the impropriety of posting the 'Truth' of the Bible beside the 'Lies' of the Koran; pulpits would resound with denunciations of the state imposed ecumenism implicit in the whole exercise. I see nothing but grief if this line is taken. If we must have a religious war, do the schools have to be the battleground?