{"id":2272904,"date":"2024-06-20T18:25:02","date_gmt":"2024-06-20T22:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bring-back-the-ten-commandments\/"},"modified":"2024-06-20T18:32:02","modified_gmt":"2024-06-20T22:32:02","slug":"bring-back-the-ten-commandments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bring-back-the-ten-commandments\/","title":{"rendered":"Reinstate the Ten Commandments"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">8<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fbring-back-the-ten-commandments%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2272904&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The article \u2062discusses a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/illinois-gop-legislators-react-to-judge-ordering-trumps-removal-from-ballot\/\" title=\"Illinois GOP lawmakers respond to judge's order removing Trump from ballot\">recent law signed<\/a> \u2062by \u200dthe Louisiana governor mandating that a\u2063 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/louisiana-becomes-first-state-to-require-ten-commandments-be-displayed-in-classrooms\/\" title=\"Louisiana mandates Ten Commandments displays in classrooms, a first for any state\">poster-sized display<\/a> of the Ten Commandments be \u200bplaced in \u200dall public classrooms, which\u200d has sparked significant controversy and backlash,\u2063 particularly from the left\u200d and organizations like the ACLU, who argue that this move is unconstitutional.\u2063 Critics, including CNN\u2019s Elie Honig, contend\u200b that the display violates the \u2063First Amendment\u2019s prohibition against government establishment of \u200dreligion, as \u200cthe Ten Commandments are inherently religious. <\/p>\n<p>The counterargument presented in the \u200carticle references historical and constitutional interpretations suggesting that the\u2064 United States was never intended to be\u200c a strictly secular nation and that the First Amendment&#8217;s provisions were originally not\u200c meant to apply at\u200b the state level. It also challenges the interpretation of the First Amendment as creating a strict separation\u2062 between church and state, arguing instead that religion was meant \u200cto play a\u2064 role in public\u200c life\u200c and governance.<\/p>\n<p>The article critiques precedent-setting Supreme Court decisions, such \u2062as Lemon v.\u200b Kurtzman and Stone v. \u2063Graham, which established criteria to avoid excessive government entanglement \u200cwith religion but are presented here as\u200d flawed and inconsistent. These decisions are\u2063 contrasted with the views \u200cof \u200cjustices like Antonin\u200d Scalia, who criticized these standards for lacking consistent principle and improperly balancing government interaction \u2063with religion.<\/p>\n<p>the article defends the placement of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, arguing it does not constitute a\u200c government endorsement\u200c of a specific religion but \u200brather a permissible acknowledgment \u2063of the religious foundation of civic morality, akin to non-denominational religious expressions commonly used in public discourse.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Louisiana governor signed into law legislation that requires a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in all public classrooms.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the Left absolutely lost its mind.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The ACLU, who used to stand for free speech but now stands for radical leftism, immediately announced this was unconstitutional and they were going to stand up against it.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">CNN\u2019s Elie Honig was asked if the display violated the First Amendment. He replied:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes, flagrantly, in my view. If you wanted a perfect example of what the First Amendment prohibits, I think this is it. The First Amendment says Congress, government, shall make no law respecting establishment of religion, meaning state entities can\u2019t do things that endorse any particular religion or religiosity in general. <\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/> <\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">And if you look at those 10, there are some \u2014 I know one of the defenses is, well, these are themes that are consistent throughout civilized society and throughout religion. Shall not kill, number six, I\u2019m cheating, because I\u2019m looking. But you know, don\u2019t kill, don\u2019t rob, don\u2019t steal, that kind of thing. But there are some Commandments that are inherently religious. Observe the Sabbath day. I\u2019m the only God that you may worship. So, it\u2019s an inherently religious document.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here is the problem with this particular argument: The United States is not a fundamentally secular country.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The First Amendment was designed to guarantee the practice of religion against the federal government. The idea that there is a separation wall between church and state in the sense that religion was never supposed to impact people\u2019s values in how they vote, or religion could never be promoted in the public square, or religion could never be promoted against irreligion generally by the government is also untrue. There is no historical basis for this. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The First Amendment specifically says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/democrats-target-cable-providers-for-carrying-fox-newsmax-oann\/\" title=\"Democrats Target Cable Providers for Carrying Fox, Newsmax, OANN\">free exercise thereof<\/a>. This was never originally supposed to be implemented in the states. It took all the way until the 1940s for the Supreme Court to declare that this was now going to be applied at the state level.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In fact, nine of the 13 colonies had established churches at the time of the Revolutionary War. Connecticut maintained its Congregationalist church, a state-sponsored church, until 1818. New Hampshire had one until 1819. Massachusetts had one until 1833.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/episode\/ep-1988-member-exclusive\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well past the establishment of the First Amendment, there were states in the United States that established religions. Why? Because the goal here was to stop the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">federal government <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">from establishing its own generalized religion that would prohibit people at the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">state level <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">from having their own religions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The idea that secularism was supposed to predominate in the United States is obviously untrue; none of the Founders believed that. Even the Founders who leaned toward atheism tended to believe religion had an extraordinarily positive effect on the body politic. The promotion of religion generally was considered a good thing by the Founding Fathers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As President, John Adams wrote <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/founders.archives.gov\/documents\/Adams\/99-02-02-3102\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">a letter<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">  to the Massachusetts militia, saying:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government for any other.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">George Washington <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/constitutioncenter.org\/the-constitution\/historic-document-library\/detail\/george-washington-first-inaugural-address-1789\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">said<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">  in his first inaugural address:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality \u2026 there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thomas Jefferson, the guy everyone talks about in terms of coining the phrase \u201cseparation between church and state,\u201d <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/jefferson\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">recognized<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">  \u201cthe moral branch of religion\u201d as \u201chow to live well and worthily in society.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But for the last several decades, the courts have done something that is completely unprecedented and stupid: They have read the establishment clause and the free exercise clause as being opposed to one another.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Constitution says \u201cCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are two ways to read that, and the Supreme Court has read this in the dumbest possible way. One way is that Congress shall not prohibit you from freely exercising a religion. The second way is that Congress shall not establish any religion. And the Court has read them <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">completely separately<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What that\u2019s done is put them in conflict with one another because it turns out that if you express your religion freely in the public square, then the Supreme Court might say you\u2019re violating the establishment clause.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But that\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">never<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">  how these provisions were meant to be read. They were meant to be read <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">in tandem<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. The basic idea was that you couldn\u2019t establish any religion as the official religion of the United States, because in doing so, you would quash the free exercise of people of other religions via compulsion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">That is what the Constitution was designed to prohibit: compulsion in religion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But there\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">nothing compulsory<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">  about a sign on a classroom wall. If there were something compulsory about a sign on a classroom wall, there\u2019d be all sorts of serious free speech issues in a classroom because it turns out classroom walls are filled with all sorts of stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The argument is made that if I walk into a public school and there is a sign that quotes the Bible in a nondenominational way, it still violates my free speech. And the Ten Commandments are nondenominational because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all agree that the Ten Commandments were given to Moses, and they agree on the content of the Ten Commandments.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 1971, the Supreme Court took up the case <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lemon v. Kurtzman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. And they came up with an incredibly stupid test to determine whether some sort of government action violated the separation of church and state. They said that any law had to fulfill three conditions. One, it had to have a secular purpose. Two, it had to have a predominantly secular effect. And three, it had to not foster excessive entanglement between government and religion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">When you read that, it is, on its face, nonsensical. It basically doesn\u2019t set any standard at all because you can make an argument for virtually any religious display that it both violates the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lemon<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">  test and also does not violate the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lemon<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">  test.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 1980, when the Supreme Court ruled in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stone v. Graham<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, there was a law that required classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, and the Supreme Court found that it was unconstitutional because it had no <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ten-commandments-must-be-displayed-in-all-public-school-classrooms-according-to-new-state-law\/\" title=\"New State Law Mandates Display of Ten Commandments in All Public School Classrooms\">secular legislative purpose<\/a>. They said the Ten Commandments convey a religious undertone because they include the religious duties of believers worshiping the Lord God alone, avoiding idolatry, not using the Lord\u2019s name in vain, and observing the Sabbath day.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But that was based on a fundamental misreading that is enshrined in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lemon<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, that the government of the United States has to take no position between religion and irreligion, that the government of the United States has no interest in promoting public morality via generalized religion, that the government has to be absolutely agnostic about whether it is promoting the Ten Commandments or whether it is promoting paganism.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2005, there was a similar case about a public display of the Ten Commandments. Justice Antonin Scalia dissented in this case. He <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supct\/html\/03-1693.ZD.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">wrote<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u201cWhat distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">He was ripping the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lemon<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">  test. He was saying there\u2019s no consistently applied principle. He continued:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">That is what prevents judges from ruling now this way, now that\u2013thumbs up or thumbs down\u2013as their personal preferences dictate. \u2026 the Court acknowledges that the \u201cEstablishment Clause doctrine\u201d it purports to be applying \u201clacks the comfort of categorical absolutes.\u201d What the Court means by this lovely euphemism is that sometimes the Court chooses to decide cases on the principle that government cannot favor religion, and sometimes it does not. \u2026<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Besides appealing to the demonstrably false principle that the government cannot favor religion over irreligion, today\u2019s opinion suggests that the posting of the Ten Commandments violates the principle that the government cannot favor one religion over another. That is indeed a valid principle where public aid or assistance to religion is concerned, or where the free exercise of religion is at issue \u2026 but it necessarily applies in a more limited sense to public acknowledgment of the Creator.<\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If religion in the public forum had to be entirely nondenominational, there could be no religion in the public forum at all. One cannot say the word \u201cGod,\u201d or \u201cthe Almighty,\u201d one cannot offer public supplication or thanksgiving, without contradicting the beliefs of some people that there are many gods, or that God or the gods pay no attention to human affairs. <\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">With respect to public acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our Nation\u2019s historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In other words, every time Joe Biden finishes his speech and says, \u201cGod bless our troops,\u201d why isn\u2019t that an establishment of religion in the same way it would theoretically be an establishment religion to put the Ten Commandments in a public school classroom?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The answer is because it\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">not establishing religion<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Biden isn\u2019t forcing you to do anything, and neither is the sign on the public school classroom. It is encouraging you to abide by the central fundamental moral premises of the West.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The attempt to remove the Ten Commandments says more about the society than the attempt to replace them. All of Western civilization is based on a merger of Judeo-Christian ethics found in the Old and the New Testaments and Greek reason.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here\u2019s why the Ten Commandments are important: They take certain fundamental principles and put them beyond the scope of debate, which is good. You don\u2019t want to live in a society where \u201cthou shalt not kill\u201d is a debatable proposition. How about \u201chonor thy parents\u201d? We\u2019re now a society that does not honor our parents and scorns our parents as racists and bigots and white supremacist and vestiges of the past.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">How about \u201cdo not bear false witness\u201d? We live in a society in which you are allowed to bear false witness so long as the political motivations of the person against whom you are bearing the false witness are suspect.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A society that abides by the Ten Commandments is going to be better than a society that does not.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The centralizing philosophy of the United States used to be grounded in Judeo-Christian virtue. That is why it is good to put the Ten Commandments back up on the wall. Not everyone will abide by them, but they will remind people that a functional society has to have a functional philosophy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the most functional philosophy over the last several thousand years has sprung from those Ten Commandments.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Louisiana governor enacted a law mandating that all public classrooms display a poster-sized Ten Commandments. The ACLU, shifting from its original free speech advocacy to a more radical stance, declared the law unconstitutional and vowed to challenge it. This sparked significant outrage from left-leaning groups<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":2272905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2024\/06\/GettyImages-525003049.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2272904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2024\/06\/GettyImages-525003049.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2272904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2272905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2272904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2272904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2272904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}