Christian conservatives win, children lose: Texas textbooks will teach public school students that the Founding Fathers based the Constitution on the Bible, and the American system of democracy was inspired by Moses.
On Friday the Republican-controlled Texas State Board of Education ** you do not have permission to see this link ** along party lines 10-5 to approve the biased and inaccurate textbooks. The vote signals a victory for Christian conservatives in Texas, and a disappointing defeat for historical accuracy and the education of innocent children.
The textbooks were written to align with instructional standards that the Board of Education ** you do not have permission to see this link ** of forcing social studies teaching to adhere to a conservative Christian agenda. The standards require teachers to emphasize America’s so called “Christian heritage.”
** you do not have permission to see this link **
I think I put this link in another post as well. What the framers said they were, if anything, by way of self-identifying. The Freedom From Religion organization will be working on it, no doubt. But thank you for the heads up! peace,
** you do not have permission to see this link **
SWerdal said
** you do not have permission to see this link **I think I put this link in another post as well. What the framers said they were, if anything, by way of self-identifying. The Freedom From Religion organization will be working on it, no doubt. But thank you for the heads up! peace,
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Swerd: The problem with quotes as proof of identification is they tends to expire from time to time. and the question of whether
or not America is a Christian Nation depends on more than how the framers identified themselves: According to Tocqueville
“The greatest part of British America was peopled by men who, after having shaken off the authority of the Pope, acknowledged no other religious supremacy: they brought with them into the New World a form of Christianity which I cannot better describe than by styling it a democratic and republican religion. This con- tributed powerfully to the establishment of a republic and a democracy in public affairs; and from the beginning, politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved.”
And again
Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion–for who can search the human heart?–but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.
Now I am not excusing the Texas book decision or anything like it, but the reality is much more complex than well the founders called themselves this thereofore that.
gmatthews said
Someone will come along and take them to court and win. That’s how these things usually work out.
Why you so certain of that? Are you aware of any court cases on the subject?
Courts consistently strike down teaching creationism and its Trojan horse version, intelligent design. Likewise, teaching Christianity in class does not pass constitutional muster. However, teaching about the influence of Christianity in American history is a much murkier subject. “Mere acknowledgment of religion’s role in American history does not offend the Constitution. Am. Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky v. Mercer County, Ky., 432 F.3d 624, 637 (6th Cir. 2005).
Consider the 2005 case in which the US Supreme Court approved the “10 Commandments” monument at the Texas capital.
In this case we are faced with a display of the Ten Commandments on government property outside the Texas State Capitol. Such acknowledgments of the role played by the Ten Commandments in our Nation’s heritage are common throughout America. We need only look within our own Courtroom. Since 1935, Moses has stood, holding two tablets that reveal portions of the Ten Commandments written in Hebrew, among other lawgivers in the south frieze. Representations of the Ten Commandments adorn the metal gates lining the north and south sides of the Courtroom as well as the doors leading into the Courtroom. Moses also sits on the exterior east facade of the building holding the Ten Commandments tablets.
Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 688, 125 S. Ct. 2854, 2862, 162 L. Ed. 2d 607 (2005). The Court reaffirmed its previous pronouncements that, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”
I continued to be amazed that the court, majority and dissent, all studiously ignored the fact that the “Ten Commandments” monument in Austin has eleven commandments carved into it. A 2003 article about “Roy’s Rock” in USA Today explains why there are 11 commandments:
“Several current lawsuits involve monuments that date to the mid-1950s and the film, ‘The Ten Commandments.’ Seeking to promote his movie, producer Cecil B. DeMille got in touch with a Minnesota judge, E.J. Ruegemer, who had been posting paper copies of the commandments in public schools and courthouses. DeMille asked him to post more permanent displays — bronze plaques instead of paper — and not just in schools and courthouses, but in other public places. Ruegemer agreed, but he wanted granite tablets. Ruegemer got his international service group, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, to pay for some 4,000 tablets, which were distributed by local Eagles chapters. The film’s stars, including Charleton Heston and Yul Brynner, were sent to dedication ceremonies across the land, and the 4-foot markers became a common sight.” Thousands Drawn to Ala. Standoff, USA Today 8/24/2003, ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
Protestants, Catholics and Jews each use different versions of the Ten Commandments and the Eagles recognized that picking one version for government monuments would be sectarian and divisive. They developed the eleven commandments as a nonsectarian version.
To me, this is not a minor point. The Eagles no doubt intended to be pluralistic and inclusive when they considered the beliefs of different Judeo-Christian religions in concocting their hybridized commandments. However, the Eagles donated the monument in 1961, and they apparently did not consider Buddhists, Hindus and other religions that do not believe in the Judeo-Christian God. No one on the US Supreme Court considered this point worth mentioning.
Why do you believe we can rely on federal courts to throw out the Texas textbooks in question? I say federal courts because you certainly do not want to take this to the Texas Supreme Court. I do not mean this question sarcastically or try to come off like I know it all. I am a consumer bankruptcy lawyer, not a constitutional law scholar. I live in Texas. Do you know of any cases that might give me comfort regarding what the courts might decide in this case?
Lawyerskeptic said
In this case we are faced with a display of the Ten Commandments on government property outside the Texas State Capitol. Such acknowledgments of the role played by the Ten Commandments in our Nation’s heritage are common throughout America.
I don’t see this as a violation of the first amendment since that is a limitation on congressional authority. This is to say congress was invested with the the ability to make the laws EXCEPT X type. Now as to the significance of the 10 commandments, they are an example of written law which is valued and institutionalized in our society. But our institutions don’t presuppose a supreme being. They presuppose human frailty and corruption. A divided government and written law are a buffer against abuse of power. it’s not accidental that societies whose institutions presuppose a supreme being also presuppose, to use Locke’s phrase, the Right of Kings.
Stephen said
The problem with Moses and the Ten Commandments is that the story presupposes that laws are established by GOD. This is the exact opposite of the views espoused by our Founders, that laws are created by HUMAN BEINGS. This is the real issue and the source of the conflict.
Good point, BUT having a display of the ten commandments doesn’t necessarily mean that. Their is nothing erroneous about seeing them as an example of written law. At any rate, I think I made the exact same point,
our institutions “presuppose human frailty and corruption. A divided government and written law are a buffer against abuse of power. it’s not accidental that societies whose institutions presuppose a supreme being also presuppose, to use Locke’s phrase, the Right of Kings.”
Under different circumstances we might have copies of the Hamurabic code instead. Their is no conflict. If we were talking about using them as a or the legal standard, you’d have an argument. Since they are only displays, it hardly matters what people think of them. Show me one judge who has decided a case based on the more religious of these.
spiker said
Under different circumstances we might have copies of the Hamurabic code instead. Their is no conflict. If we were talking about using them as a or the legal standard, you’d have an argument. Since they are only displays, it hardly matters what people think of them. Show me one judge who has decided a case based on the more religious of these.
Challenge accepted. A panel of three judges on the Louisiana Court of Appeals used the 10 Commandments to determine that stealing was “immoral” when deciding to uphold the termination of a bus driver under a statute authorizing discharge of public employees for immoral conduct. Rochon v. Iberia Parish Sch. Bd., 601 So. 2d 808, 809-10 (La. Ct. App. 1992), writ denied, 605 So. 2d 1128 (La. 1992).
“This Court recognizes that a community has standards assigning immorality to the act of theft. Moses, in his sermon on the mount, established ten commandments that has served the Judeo–Christian community for thousands of years. One of the commandments is “Thou shalt not steal.” Stealing and theft are synonymous and are criminal acts. For example, Moses castigates in these same ten commandments that “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” which is an immoral act, yet to thus sin one does not commit a criminal act. (See the Owens case, infra). Au contrare, to run a stop sign in a vehicle one commits a criminal act, but it is not immoral to do so. So, this Court holds that theft (especially of these funds) is an immoral act.”
I am not saying this is right, but judges use the 10 Commandments. They never use the Code of Hammurabi for the same purpose.
I agree with you that our government should not presuppose the existence of a supreme being. However, the majority of the US Supreme Court disagrees with us. I find that disturbing. When I said “our institutions presuppose the existence of a Supreme Being “, that was a quote from a US Supreme Court majority opinion, not my opinion.
Lawyerskeptic:
Hope your court room skills are not as sloppy as your reading. The “challenge” was to find cases based on “the more religious of these e.g, having no other god’s for example rules against stealing aren’t inherently religious
Yes, “they never use the Hammurabic code for the same purpose”, but that is entirely consonant with my statement that
“Under different circumstances we might have copies of the Hammurabic code instead. What would those different circumstances be? The absence of Christianity in General and the reformation in particular. Thus as Tocqueville observed
“
“Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion–for who can search the human heart?–but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.”
To be sure, he described it as a ” a democratic and republican religion.”
Moses in his sermon on the Mount!? HILARIOUS! Yet the statute in question had specified moral criteria. Regardless of the reasoning, stealing is a crime and punishable in our criminal justice system.
“I agree with you that our government should not presuppose the existence of a supreme being”
My point was a bit different. Our institutions of government do not presuppose a supreme being. ( Institutions are not intentions or assumptions) Conversely, it assumes human frailty and corruption. I think the question here is whether that claim , the institutional presupposition of some deity becomes the basis for actual legal force. It hardly matters if someone rattles on about a supreme being and decides therefore freedom of the press is constitutional.
Some years ago I worked for a thread manufacturer, the second shift would bring in a case of beer and put it in the refrigerator in the maintenance department. So they could drink when all the bosses were gone.
Meanwhile the day shift would come in and wonder why a brand new bottle of creamer was going sour in the refrigerator.
Turns out they could not fit the beer in there without removing the creamer. So they would put that on the floor until the end of the shift.
When one of the maintenance guys came in and caught them, they all got fired. The second shift supervisor
got canned (is that a pun?). His defense was, that what they were doing wasn’t forbidden in the employee manual. Neither was using a sand blaster on your face, but I digress…
It’s instructive that stealing (in the case you mentioned) wasn’t enough; that a special morality statute was required.
spiker said
Hope your court room skills are not as sloppy as your reading. The “challenge” was to find cases based on “the more religious of these e.g, having no other god’s for example rules against stealing aren’t inherently religious
I feel from the tone of your answer that I given offense. That was not my intent. I meant the “challenge accepted” to be humorous. I apologize if I offended you. I misunderstood your reference to “the more religious of these.” I thought you meant that the 10 Commandments are more religious than the Code of Hammurabi. It did not occur to me that you meant some of the 10 Commandments are more religious than others. So far as any judge relying on “the more religious” of the 10 Commandments, I could only meet that challenge by citing very old cases, such as a 1927 Delaware case prohibiting professional football on Sunday.
However, it still matters a great deal to me that, in 2005, a majority in the United States Supreme Court said, and I quote, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”
No offense taken, but now you’ve got me lost on the whole Hammurabi 10 commandments religiosity . The phrase challenge accepted reminded me of the Neil Patrick Harris character from the show How I Met Your Mother. Any time someone wondered aloud about some odd situation or whether he could pick up a girl without using words with the letter “e” He would say Challenge Accepted! That was sort of his catch phrase Yes it does matters a great deal; however, the reality is that most Americans call themselves Christians and then we have what you might call secondary religious groups Jews, Budhists etc.
As for the court, I still think their beliefs are less important than their judgments. I would note that you didn’t write that they RULED this way. There are a couple of different issues here, whether whether this is the sort of thing covered by the first amendment?
Secularist who like to play the Jefferson card are in an incredibly dicey position. There’s a bit of an undemocratic sensibility underlying
their claim which amounts to : Jefferson, a founding father, meant this, therefore that.(an edict of sorts) Note, Jefferson’s “meaning” expressed some 15 years later, trumps the written law or the understanding of the other parties in the ratification process.
As an attorney, I am sure you deal with this all the time whether in terms of contracts or actual laws. In neither case is it ever a simple matter of what either party meant: Assume for the sake of argument, you have a contract with me to publish your book, and it specifies that the job has to be done today. Now when you wrote out the contract, you understood “Today” to mean by the end of business today, but in signing the contract I understood I had till the actual end of the day and completed the the work by 11:30PM. I think you’d agree that this matter is a bit more complicated than what you had in mind when you drafted the agreement.
My point here is that we should know where the cracks are BEFORE the ice breaks: If there are areas that need fortification we ought to think seriously about firming them up and not just rely on half baked assumptions like well Jefferson meant and therefore…
Consider the affect of such petty concerns as whether the motto on our currency or the substance of a graduation speech includes the word, God. Instead of developing a tolerant disagreement, we now have a climate where Christians will most likely treat their neighbor as they feel they have been treated
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