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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (21511)	8/11/2001 3:41:40 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 82486

Tucson, Arizona Saturday, 11 August 2001 Dueling symbols heat up Alabama By Paul Greenberg At least since the time of another Fighting Judge - George C. Wallace - the state of Alabama has provided a perfect backdrop for the duel of symbols that regularly takes the place of political dialogue in American life. Now it's the chief justice of Alabama's Supreme Court, Roy Moore, who has set the stage for a constitutional confrontation, and Alabama is welcome to it. Here in Arkansas, we're just getting over the one Orval Faubus staged in 1957. Chief Justice Moore first made national headlines and case law when he was plain Judge Moore, and posted a plaque of the Ten Commandments in his Northern Alabama courtroom. Now elected to the state's highest court, probably on the strength of that display, he's gone Cecil B. DeMille on us. Talk about an epic production: The chief justice recently directed the installation of a 5,280-pound granite monument to the Ten Commandments right in the middle of the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court. That'll show them. Just who "Them" are is a shifting but well-understood category in these latitudes. Atheists. Communists. Civil Libertarians. Pointy-headed Intellectuals. Or just any favorite infidel you'd like to throw into the mix on cultural, racial, political or ethnic grounds. This rock with the Ten Commandments engraved on it also includes quotations from various Great Americans pointing out the religious basis of the Constitution and the American system in general. The additional quotes may be necessary to keep the rock-in-the-rotunda constitutionally kosher. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that stand-alone religious displays on public property may infringe on the First Amendment, but may pass legal muster as part of an historical or cultural exhibit. Now along comes a judge and plants a rock. Men live by symbols, a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court famously said. He did not need to point out that men also die for symbols. For one man's object of veneration is another's act of provocation. Which is why the species keeps engaging in that paradox, religious wars. Alabama Rep. Alvin Holmes, from Montgomery, is striking back. He says he's hired an artist to prepare his own, separate-but-equal display of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech for the rotunda. Nothing like adding racial to religious tensions. Can the culture wars have come back? Did they ever go away? And how long before the rotunda is full of competing icons and their worshippers? One of the most illuminating little books about the American system is Daniel Boorstin's "The Genius of American Politics." And one of the most illuminating chapters in it is titled, "The Mingling of Religious and Political Thought." Which is not to be confused with the mingling of church and state. Some of our most religious thinkers, like Roger Williams, have also been our most ardent separationists. Perhaps the most illuminating sentence in that chapter is this one: "Intellectually speaking, 'religions' are unimportant in American life; but Religion is of enormous importance." A tolerant, civil, nondenominational kind of Religion in General unites us, creating an atmosphere of mutual respect. But once those ideas become explicit dogma, a mandatory creed, they no longer unite but divide. An empty public square, or rotunda, is a useful thing. It allows us to stay apart together. Start filling it up with granite monuments and counter-monuments, and our attentions are diverted, our loyalties split. What ought to elevate and unite us divides us and reduces faith to a rhetorical contest. * Paul Greenberg is the editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

To: Lane3 who wrote (21511)	8/11/2001 3:53:39 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Parties to it would have rights and responsibilities along the lines of the parties to a marriage. That needs some thinking about. Would all members of a family get health insurance coverage, for instance? If you had a three-person "home team" and one wanted to exit the relationship, would that break up the home team completely, or would it be like a baseball team where you just slip the person out, and the team goes on as its legal unit? Can you add more people at will, or is it something you form once and that's it? I would assume, if you're going to have a flexible structure, that you would keep it fully flexible, so people could contract in and out virtually at will. Which makes ownership of property a real challenge. Would it be like a marriage, where when it breaks up all the property gets divided into his and hers? Or more like corporate stock where you can buy and sell shares of it, but the unit goes on uninterrupted? And it would have major societal impacts on lots of things we might not think about. The size of houses. The size of cars. Things like that. It's an interesting theory, but don't hold your breath waiting for some government to implement it!