Townhall.com Michael Medved February 28, 2007
The left’s fiery obsession with removing Ten Commandments monuments from public property throughout the United States may seem odd and irrational but actually reflects the deepest values of contemporary liberalism.
In the last five years alone, the tireless fanatics at the ACLU have invested tens of millions of dollars and countless hours of legal time in lawsuits to yank the Commandments from long-standing displays in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Montana, Georgia, Iowa, Washington State, Nebraska, Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida. In one of the most recent battles, they delayed their litigation in Dixie County, Florida, because they couldn’t find a single local resident to lend a name as plaintiff in a drive to dislocate the tablets from the local court house.
Even for militant separationists like the ACLU, this ferocious hostility to innocuous and generally uncontroversial monuments looks excessive, even self-destructive. The overwhelming majority of Americans instinctively accept the Commandments as a timeless, cherished summary of universal moral precepts. A closer look at the specifics of the Decalogue, however, suggests that it makes good sense for leftists to hate The Big Ten: each one of the commandments contradicts a different pillar of trendy liberal thinking.
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It could be worse for you. Instead of demanding that the ten commandments be removed from government properties, the ACLU could be demanding that the addition of the five pillars of Islam, the Wiccan Rede, etc. be openly displayed as well. If government did pick a religion to support, Which faith would you have it support?
Theocracy is an enemy of Liberty. The more secular government is, the more religious freedom we enjoy. Go back and read your post about the proposals in Canada to mandate churches allow same sex marriage.
I can think of no other motivation but pure malice for this article. What else would cause a commentator like Michael Medved to take legitimate concerns regarding the appropriate separation of Church and State and deliberately misrepresent them as hatred for the moral values embodied in the Ten Commandments.
I wonder how Medved would feel if he was a minority Jew or Christian living in a predominantly Muslim community and they wanted to display quotes from the Koran about mercy and charity in the Courthouse. How would he enjoy reading an article that says, “Medved hates mercy and charity”?
Dean, Read this review I wrote and you’ll see the Medved is 100% correct about the ACLU: http://www.orthodoxnet.com/articles/Banescu/Review_ACLU_vs_America_2005.php
Dean writes: “What else would cause a commentator like Michael Medved to take legitimate concerns regarding the appropriate separation of Church and State and deliberately misrepresent them as hatred for the moral values embodied in the Ten Commandments.”
Yeah, while complaining about the “liberals” bearing false witness, he himself bears false witness about the liberals. Par for the course.
All of this stuff is tiresome and sophomoric. “Liberals bad. Conservatives good.” Yeah, like whatever dude. Good thing Medved didn’t go to my college, because this crap wouldn’t have survived Writing 101.
I can think of no other motivation but pure malice for this article I can think of no other motivation but pure malice for this article
Really? You can’t think of any other reason? How about the fundamentalism of the left that really DOES hate anything then it’s own? Is this what Medved could be talking about? Dean, you have made your peace with these fundamentalists as because you are one. However, Christians and others have not…
Note 4. Phil, dissenting opinions are tolerated. Debasement of language is not. I’ve deleted your response. Try rewriting it without the implied swearing. Deal with the ideas.
Note 4. Jim writes:
And your post would have? What college did you go to? Look, that liberals have led the cultural juggernaut against cultural mores is indisputable. Now that the chickens have come home to roost (look at the teen STD epidemic for example, or the effort to abolish and mention of Judaism or Christianity from the public square), they want to bury their culpability for the cultural fallout. Sorry, but cooler heads know the argument can’t be dismissed with sophomoric expressions of disdain. Medved’s piece hits some key points hard because they are true. Read Chris Banescu’s review that he linked above. He made an important point characteristic of much cultural liberalism:
Haven’t we seen the same thing this week with the revelation that Al Gore owns four homes and spends more on electricity in a month than you or I do in a year? Do as I say, not as I do. Meanwhile, the cultural ramifications of their elitism remains ignored.
Father Hans writes: “And your post would have? What college did you go to?”
I went to an expensive liberals arts college, that I paid for by working 70-hour weeks running a blast freezer in a fruit cannery in the summers. In that college we were expected to make arguments that were backed up by evidence. Medved manages to write an entire essay about why “liberals” hate the TC without ever quoting a single liberal. He fails to address the most obvious objections. Under “you shall not commit adultery,” he only mentions Clinton. But if he wants to talk about extra-marital sex, what about the host of conservatives who have had affairs or divorces. What about the disgraced Tom Foley, trying to strike up relationships with teenage boys? What about Rush Limbaugh, with three divorces and a bottle of Viagra within easy reach? What about Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and the thousands of other clergy who have had affairs?
Medved zings the liberals about the sabbath, while neglecting to mention that Christians don’t observe the sabbath laws either. And as Phil said in his now-deleted but absolutely correct post, the TC promote Yahweh to the exclusion of every other god or mode of worship, but Medved can’t be troubled to explain how that is consistent with the obligation of the government not to promote a specific religion.
The list of things wrong with that essay could go on and on. As I said, it never would have survived Writing 101.
Fr. Hans: “Look, that liberals have led the cultural juggernaut against cultural mores is indisputable.”
But conservatives are also in the front ranks of that army. What is interesting to me is that the sins of liberals are trumpeted and dissected in detail, while the sins of conservatives are NEVER mentioned. When liberals sin, that is taken as an emblem of what liberalism is all about. When conservatives sin, there is silence. In this venue I have detailed the sins of Rush Limbaugh a hundred times, but not one person here has EVER addressed that. Rush can marry and divorce at will, become a drug addict, sending his housekeeper out to buy large quantities of narcotics, come back from a trip to Central America with a bottle of Viagra in his luggage, and still be seen as a “family values” advocate and a combatant on the right side of the culture war. Rush is as popular as ever, and continues to denounce the “hypocrisy” of the left. And no one on the right sees anything wrong with that. Christians can have a divorce rate that is the same or even higher than that of the general population, and still claim the title of “family values” champions, even as they denounce the liberals. Conservatives can dismiss Abu Ghraib as “college pranks” even as they wear the mantle of “traditional morality.” They only way to describe all of this would be to use a word that would get this post deleted off the site.
Fr. Hans: ” . . . the effort to abolish and mention of Judaism or Christianity from the public square . . .”
The desire to bolt the Ten Commandments on public buildings is nothing more than a religious version of the gang tag. It is an attempt to assert that public buildings are part of their “turf.” There are thousands of synagogues and churches that are tax-exempt. There are hundreds of Christian radio stations. There are Christian TV networks, school, universities, publishing houses, bookstores, music companies. There are hundreds of thousands of Christian web sites and blogs. There is a Christian president, and a Supreme Court that is starting to look like an arm of the Catholic church. But this is not enough. No, in addition to all that, the TC have to be mounted on tax-supported public buildings. Christian prayer has to fill public schools and their events. And if that doesn’t happen then religion is being “driven” from the public square.
Father Hans: “Haven’t we seen the same thing this week with the revelation that Al Gore owns four homes and spends more on electricity in a month than you or I do in a year? Do as I say, not as I do.”
Yes, and for you the sins of Gore are emblematic of the general hypocrisy of liberalism, even as the hypocrisy of conservatives passes by unnoticed.
Here’s an interesting report on members of congress who denounce pornography and then accept political contributions from the very corporations who make money from porn:
http://www.citizensforethics.org/filelibrary/2005310_addicted_to_porn.pdf
Note that most of them are Republicans. But this report is never going to show up as a lead article in this venue. No, porn is a “liberal” thing, and to the extent that conservatives are involved in it, well, we’ll just sweep that under the carpet. And with the many sins of conservatives swept away, that must be a very large carpet.
Note 6–
Sure, it’s your site. (For those reading after the fact, I’d like to point out that I wasn’t swearing per se, or directing an expletive at anyone on the board.)
Before I expand further, would it be acceptable to say something along the lines of, “Medved speaks so highly of these monuments precisely because they are a large raised middle finger to everyone else in the country”?
Chris Banescu has written a better article than Michael Medved, because Chris at least offers specific grievances (even if they are most negative he can find) while Medved is dealing in generalities and sterotypes.
Hopefully, we all can agree that in our legal system today, the rights of the weak often get steamrolled by interests of the strong and powerful, and at least, in theory, an organization that protects the rights of the underdog is providing a useful service. That said, I have not always agreed with some of the ACLU’s specific case selections. A Christmas Manger in a town square seems pretty innocuous to me. I don’t want to see the Boy Scouts ostacizing gay teens, but otherwise, the Scouts are an organization that do a lot of good and shouldn’t be bankrupted through lawsuits or banned from public spaces.
There is a legitimate discussion about the relationship between Church and State in a pluralistic society and asking questions about that relationship doesn’t make anyone an enemy of Judeo-Christian values. We need to protect the rights of the minorities, even other religious minorities, because someday we could be the minority ouselves.
The play, A Man For All Season, about the trial Saint Thomas More, provides this unforgetable piece of dialogue:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_Man_for_All_Seasons
Note 8. Not really. No one is really interested in your feelings of contempt toward Medved. Expressions of contempt are different than reasons.
Note 9. Dean, your subtext, that the ACLU is a defender of freedom, is simply not true. Medved’s main point, that the cultural left is hostile to moral precepts of the received tradition has in large part created a religion of their own (without calling it such) is true. You might disagree with Medved on some particulars (I do anyway), but there is no doubt that the cultural left is not a creative movement but a destructive force concerned with tearing down the cultural strongholds without substituting anything in their place except platitudes and sentiment.
You are reading the dialogue between Roper and More from the wrong direction, BTW. We are already blowing in the wind.
Note 8. Jim writes:
Don’t react so personally to this stuff. The critique isn’t answered by pointing to a hypocrital conservative or a morally consistent liberal. You will find hypocrites and morally consistent individuals on both sides of the debate.
Medved’s point (aggresively made) is that the liberal assualt on culture is coherent in terms of what it is against rather than what it really stands for. Taken on individual terms, the liberal cultural agenda (the ACLU defintion of the separation of church and state, no parental notification of parents when their child gets an abortion, gay marriage and a pro-homosexual curriculum in the schools, etc. etc.) sounds good because it borrows the language of the received tradition to justify the program. Looked at as a whole however, the parts fit together as aggresive cultural deconstruction.
And yes, the corruption runs deep. Porn has been mainstreamed so that corporations have become the largest porn distributers in the country (Comcast is highest, ATT runs a close second), and they contribute to political parties, Republican and Democrat alike. But it’s the cultural left that has beat down the consensus that once held back the floodgates of this kind of corruption, not the cultural right (even though they too are becoming corrupted). You can thank the ACLU for some of this, BTW.
My point is not Gore’s hypocrisy (although he certainly displays it), but leftist elitism. The left likes Messiah types, it needs them in fact, since so much of their cultural agenda consists of moral posturing rather than substantive engagement with ideas. Global warming, for example, at least how the left constructs the debate, has more to do with expressions of political correctness, than rigorous (and honest) engagement with facts and data. One’s position on global warming becomes a litmus test to evaluate a person’s moral virtue. (Just look at how meany sermons we have to endure about how global warming is the “greatest moral issue facing mankind” or some such nonsense. Gore just did it again yesterday.)
Again, don’t take this stuff too personally. It really is not about Democrats vs. Republicans as much as the ideas of the hard left and how they desconstruct the cultural tradition.
Dean, don’t you realize that if Thomas More were alive today he would still be defending the traditional, Christian-founded understanding of law that is being systematically attacked by the ACLU and others. Thomas More died because of his refusal to aceed to government based on license, passion, and power. The very type of law and governement that those opposed to theism wish to have.
All mono-theistic faiths make exclucivity claims. Many in today’s world are appalled by any such claim simply because it is an affront to them and the way they choose to live. Even the thought that God really does have a manner of life that is pleasing to Him is anathema to many. In anger and fear they strike out at even the suggestion of standards and values other than there own based in a being higher than they. No matter how it is parsed, the goal is still the same, the destruction of all moral absolutes and all genuine accountability.
There are many who would rather see Islam than the moral depravity represented by those who attack the Judeo-Christian foundation of the order of our culture. Freedom cannot endure in a culture that is ruled by license.
Note 11-
My writing about Medved’s contempt is not the same thing as expressing contempt toward Medved. I’m sure he’s a very nice guy when he isn’t lampooning leftist beliefs.
To rephrase my earlier post, Medved writes vaguely that the Ten Commandments are something that “the overwhelming majority of Americans instinctively accept […] as a timeless, cherished summary of universal moral precepts.”
But he has, at least, the courage to print the text of the commandments, which includes, “I am the Lord Your God […] You shall not recognize the gods of others…” In what possible way is that a universal precept?
I’ll grant that the ten commandments are cherished, and even that Christian majority accepts them as important. But universal? Hardly. Medved uses his essay to attack the very idea that the state should be respectful of other religions.
Medved is not making a “ceremonial deism” argument; in fact, that seems to be the opposite of his claim. He supports public government-sponsored display of the ten commandments not because they are meaningless symbols, but because the commandments themselves specifically attack the religious beliefs (or nonbeliefs) of people that he disagrees with.
Put another way, Medved is not suggesting that Hindus and atheists (for example) are getting the wrong message from Ten Commandments displays. Rather, they are getting the _right_ message: there is one God, and you aren’t worshipping him the way you should.
Fr. Hans writes: “Don’t react so personally to this stuff.”
Well, yeah, but Medved and a lot of other pundits don’t make any distinctions when it comes to liberals. There is just this monolithic “liberalism” that is responsible for every wrong in the universe. I’m not a conservative, but I would NEVER talk about conservatives that way. And frankly, if you look at liberals “in the flesh,” you would find that many of them agree with conservatives on a number of issues.
There is no monolithic liberalism. There is a great diversity among liberals. Let me offer as an example my wife. My wife is definitely a liberal, and anyone who suggested otherwise would be in big trouble with her. But she carries a knife and a handgun. She can put ten rounds in the bullseye at 50 feet with her HK UPS 40 compact handgun. She has studied the use of lethal force with Massad Ayoob of the Lethal Force Institute. She is an atheist who cares for sick and senile elderly people, and she can’t imagine having an abortion except under the most extreme circumstances. She can work organic chemistry problems in her head, but the simplest poem puzzles her. She is concerned about global warming, but drives a vehicle that is similar to the army’s Stryker armored personnel carrier. Her favorite TV shows are WWII documentaries, in which she rejoices when we stick it to the “Japs” and the “Krauts.” She is a fascinating combination of compassion and violence, liberal and conservative inclinations, conservation and consumption, a working-class girl who achieved and professional goals. And I can’t get enough of her.
And most of the liberals I know are just like that.
But for someone such as Medved she would be just a generic “liberal,” intent upon the destruction of civilization, working to undermine the moral structure of the world. For Medved and his ilk there are no distinctions, no subtle differences. Instead, they would tar my wife with the same brush as the most extreme of the liberal camp.
And so I have a little problem with your advice not to “take it personally.” I’ll make you a deal. Talk to Medved & Company about making the important distinctions, and then I’ll take your advice not to take it personally. Until then, I take it personally.
Phil writes: “Medved is not making a “ceremonial deism” argument; in fact, that seems to be the opposite of his claim. He supports public government-sponsored display of the ten commandments not because they are meaningless symbols, but because the commandments themselves specifically attack the religious beliefs (or nonbeliefs) of people that he disagrees with.”
Most excellent post, and you are 100 percent correct.
Phil in #15 you say, in part, “But he has, at least, the courage to print the text of the commandments, which includes, “I am the Lord Your God […] You shall not recognize the gods of others…” In what possible way is that a universal precept?”
All monotheistic faiths have similar exclusivity statements, since among those who have faith, monotheism is the most prevalent form of belief, it is fair to say that recognizing the exclusivity of one God is pretty universal. It is only the post modern polymorphus perverse anti-theists and the few genuine pagans who might still be around who do not.
Your emotional reaction to a simple defense of a profound cultural belief by a man who actually believes tells more about yourself than about him.
Note 17–
Don’t forget, he’s not just defending the belief. He’s saying that our tax dollars should be used to indoctrinate our nation in that belief, the way that Russians were subjected to statues of Lenin and Stalin. He’s saying that our government should sanction his own beliefs as official, and all others be darned.
It sounds like you’re saying that these faiths universally condemn each other, and so, even if we disagree on specifics, condemnation is the way to go?
Medved isn’t being coy about his disdain for all beliefs besides his own:
“This commandment denies the very essence of multiculturalism and diversity: by what right do we dismiss and disrespect the gods of others?”
“Multiculturalism and diversity” = belief in nothing. Millions of tax dollars are being use to indoctrinate the American public into a belief in nothing. The Communists did that as well. Not far from the center of the M&D mantra is a deep antipathy for both Jews and Christians–an antipathy that is frequently expressed openly in vile terms (ask John Edwards).
Historically Judeo-Christian law undergirds our culture. It is not indoctrination to assert that and value that.
On a theological level, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are absolutely incompatible. Christian theology condemns the theology of Islam and the reverse is true. Jewish theology rejects and condemns the idea that is at the core of Christianity that Jesus is the Messiah even though Jews do not reject the idea of a messiah. Condemnation of wrong belief and unbelief is part and parcel to having a belief. That does not mean that one should set out on witch hunts, quite the contrary. The stronger and more certain one is in one’s belief, the less aggressive one will become toward others and the more postive in the statement and the living of one’s own belief–at least until one is threatened.
Cultures are founded on belief. Reject the core belief of a culture and you reject the culture. Many of the Founding Fathers were quite specific that freedom demanded voluntary adherence to the order of Providence, i.e., God. Natual law, of which many saw the 10 Commandments as an expression, was foundational.
Only in the Untied States and Western Europe is it consdiered offensive to value, assert and defend the core ideas of one’s own culture.
I’m sure that I will be unable to make a dent in your mind set and so I will make no further attempts to convince you.
I think this is the source of a lot of misunderstanding.
Cultures are not “founded.”
“He’s saying that our tax dollars should be used to indoctrinate our nation in that belief, the way that Russians were subjected to statues of Lenin and Stalin.”
Bah! It’s just this sort of crazy left wing relativism (yes, your statement is groundless – Stalin – BAH!) that Medved is trying to point out. It is a secular fundamentalism that tries to equate the history of our culture to “Stalin”, and exactly why such fundamentalism is to be pointed out at every opportunity. Only a deeply militant religion such as this would prompt it‘s radicalized adherents to accuse Christians (and all others that are not secular fundamentalists) of “hate“ as Dean did and “indoctrinating as Stalin“ as Phil does…
Michael writes: “Historically Judeo-Christian law undergirds our culture. It is not indoctrination to assert that and value that.”
That’s true. The issue how that is asserted, and the purpose behind the assertion.
In the case under discussion, the proposal is that public facilities — facilities paid for and used by people of all religious persuasions — should be used to promote one particular view of religion to the exclusion of other views.
And we have to look at the purpose of such displays. And I find a serious inconsistency between the stated purpose, and the actual purpose. The argument is that displaying the Ten Commandments is not religious at all. Rather, the purpose is merely to assert the historical fact (inasmuch as it may be a fact) that American law and culture is founded on religion.
But then — when people oppose the display of the TC, the advocates complain that the opposition is trying to force God (or religion, or Christianity or Judaism — the argument changes) out of the public square.
For example Newt Gingrich writes that “There is no attack on American culture more deadly and more historically dishonest than the secular Left’s unending war against God in America’s public life.”
http://www.newt.org/backpage.asp?art=2643
An article by Roy Moore is titled “Putting God Back In The Public Square.”
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_2664_129/ai_65230211
I could list a hundred articles like that, but you get the idea. When you scratch the varnish off of the historical argument for displaying the Ten Commandments, you find a religious argument.
The idea is that government failure to endorse the Ten Commandments somehow constitutes an opposition to religion. But clearly that is not the case. Just because the state of Utah doesn’t display quotations from the Book of Mormon in its public buildings (of course the book of Mormon is an important part of Utah’s history) doesn’t mean that the state of Utah is hostile to the Mormon religion.
Actually, Medved is the one who brings up Stalin and Lenin. He writes in support of putting giant statues in the public square, and he writes about how the Soviet Union did that with Lenin and Stalin. Perhaps the irony is lost on Medved, but that’s par for the course.
The presupposition here is that there is no choice but to indoctrinate. Or, that if the government is not fervently advocating Christianity (for example), then it is by default advocating something else.
But that’s a false dichotomy. I’m a moderate in this discussion. I would also oppose a massive state-funded statue that bore the inscription “There Is No God.”
You might believe, as you seem to, that Hindus are worshiping the wrong gods and need to be set right. But why is it the place of the government to do the persuading?
Phil, cultures have foundations, those foundations are always in some kind of belief.
Michael, I think this is just semantics. Cultures aren’t founded the way some nations and religions are founded. You can’t point to the day that Western Civilization was founded, or pinpoint the moment Creole culture came about.
I think it a more accurate metaphor to say that cultures are “found.” But I think what you’re saying is that cultures come about through a series of myths, legends, or stories which provide a people with a shared sense of narrative, and I’d say there’s a lot of accuracy to that.
Would you say that it is right and just for Muslim nations to build monuments that say “Allah is the only god,” or for Greek cities to inscribe in stone in their government buildings, “Zeus and his Olympians rule over all the inferior gods?” It seems like your culture argument is that the religious context of the message doesn’t matter, as long as you’re being true to the founding beliefs of the area you’re living in.
Here’s an interesting piece on the web site of the Greek Orthodox Church on the first of the Ten Commandments:
http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article7115.asp
According to the Greek Orthodox Church, the first commandment overtly condemns belief in any other god. The first commandment “does not have meaning” to atheists. It’s purpose is devotional, leading the believer into worship of the true God, “especially through our Lord Jesus Christ,” and such worship should be “nourished daily and constantly through prayer and study” so as to make sure that he is not tempted by any other gods.
Given the above, I don’t know how anyone is this venue can claim that a public display of the Ten Commandments is a neutral cultural and historical artifact proclaiming a shared heritage and values. If the Ten Commandments are merely historical and cultural in nature, then so are crucifixes, statues of the Virgin Mary, and monuments on which the Christian creeds are engraved.
The ACLU stands accused of opposing the display of the Ten Commandments in government venue because it opposes the values contained in the Ten Commandments. This is a damaging accusation, one that would certainly cause me to form a negative opinion of the ACLU, so before I make up my mind I want to see the evidence.
Before finding the defendant guilty and passing sentence, the accuser is obliged to provide evidence of the accused’s guilt. So would-be judges of the ACLU, where is it?
Carefully reading the Medved piece above, again, as well as the comments above I see nothing at all that substantively supports the accusation that the ACLU hates the values contained in the Ten Commandments. What I see are a lot of vague inferences, dubious associations and comically weak syllogism.
Clinton commited adultery – liberals liked Clinton – therefore liberals must like adultery and hate the Commandment against adultery. This is actually what Medved says. Come on! Are you serious?
Isn’t it much more likely that the ACLU’s intent, one that it may pursue a little bit too zealously, is to oppose anything that resembles state etablishment of religion. Isn’t it also more likely that the ACLU is fighting to prevent state etablishment of religion, not because it opposes religious values, but because it doesn’t want to see the rights of religious minorities
To Christians the display of the Ten Commandments on a courthouse wall is not disturbing because we view them as a list of values which have informed our moral values and system of government. To a religious minority they government’s validation of the beliefs of one religion over those of another. This is what the ACLU is opposing.
More importantly, the accusation that the ACLU opposes religious values is directly contradicted by the fact that the ACLU has also fought for the exercise of religious freedom. Here are some examples:
ACLU’s Defense of Religious Liberty
The charge against the accused is found to be without merit. Not guilty. Case dismissed.
Note 29. Window dressing, Dean. They feel the sting of the criticism. Note the dates of the ostensible defense of “Christian” speech.
The ACLU defends NAMBLA, the organization that wants to sanction sexual relations between men and boys. Nice group this ACLU. It destroys the Boy Scouts, but defends child molesters.
Note 15. Phil writes:
Yes up to the last clause. Religious symbols are not meaningless. If they were, the ACLU would not be as aggressive in removing the Jewish and Christian symbols from the public square. Put another way, the reason the ACLU is aggressive against Jewish and Christian symbols is that the symbols represent a moral vision they disdain and ultimately want to see overturned.
Further, a defense of the Ten Commandments is also a defense of the moral norms of Western culture which makes them part of our historical legacy as well. The American founders understood this. They knew that religion is the foundation of culture, and because religion is the wellspring of morality, interference by the State in religious expression is a step towards tyranny. The ACLU definition of the separation of Church and State in fact subverts this original intent by defining separation as government suppression of religious expression.
So to argue that Medved’s support of the Ten Commandments “attack(s) the religious beliefs (or nonbeliefs) of people that he disagrees with” is one way of framing the discussion, but the point is as true from the other direction as well. For example, when you argue that gay marriage should be granted moral parity with heterosexual marriage, you implicitly “attack” the moral sensibility informing the Ten Commandments, and thus “attack” the religious and cultural heritage of Western Culture. Put another way, if competing moral visions are framed only in the context of an “attack”, then it applies to both sides.
Your implicit solution is to relativize the conflict, ie: subsume cultural mores to individual desire. But this too is never a neutral enterprise. Going back to the example, sanctioning gay marriage will have enormous cultural ramifications. Relativizing morality, in other words, draws from a religious well too, even if it not named as such. Pretending it doesn’t is just pulling the wool over our eyes.
(Not related to your point but still relevant: Relativizing morality and removing Judaism and Christianity from the historical memory of Western Culture lays the groundwork for a final subservience to Mohamed and his Allah.)
Fr. Hans writes: “The ACLU defends NAMBLA, the organization that wants to sanction sexual relations between men and boys. Nice group this ACLU. It destroys the Boy Scouts, but defends child molesters.”
Oh come on. The ACLU doesn’t “defend” anyone per se. They become involved in cases in which there is some legal principle they want to defend.
In the NAMBLA case, the issue is whether the author or publisher of information should be held responsible for the possible criminal use of that information. This lawsuit was in some ways similar to the suit of several years ago against Paladin Press. Other similar lawsuits have been filed against various TV programs, movies, etc.
If you like the idea that the publisher of information should be held responsible for the criminal use of the information, great. The you disagree with the ACLU and believe in authors and publishers exercising self-censorship so as to avoid being sued.
The ACLU doesn’t make legislation. They don’t appointed judges. All they can do is make legal arguments; those arguments either work or don’t work. But their arguments as just as likely to be offered in support of the Republican Party as in behalf of the Nazi party. The even came to the defense of one of their harshest critics, Rush Limbaugh, when the police wanted to get access to his medical records.
No, you’re framing the debate as a zero-sum game, when it isn’t. I can disagree with you about gay marriage, or about blue laws which prevent businesses from operating on Sunday, and I’m not “attacking” your right not to have a gay marriage, or to keep your business closed on Sunday. I’m not responsible for your fervor in believing what you might believe, and the offense you take in those cases (if you do) is your own.
The “attack” that a ten commandments display makes on other religions is not figurative or metaphorical; it is contained in the text of the commandments themselves.
From your post, I really get the impression that you think the only way for a society to function is for everyone to believe the same things and march to the same drummer, and that any disagreement about the best way to live my individual life is somehow an attack on your beliefs. Whether you express it or not, it’s the sentiment contained in the notion that support for gay marriage is an “attack” on your beliefs. I disagree wholeheartedly. I think the best way for a society to run is to ensure that citizens are able to live their lives as they see fit, without impeding the ability of others to do so.
We both agree that religion is important in our society. I happen to think that it is _so_ important that the government should stay out of it. And state-funded monuments that say, in no uncertain terms, “All gods except one are inferior,” are the _opposite_ of the government staying out of religion. It’s government proselytizing, and you agree with it because it would be proselytizing your own faith. You justify it historically, but if it was another faith, you would oppose it.
But it’s not a zero-sum game. We can _all_ oppose government proselytizing, together, without attacking anyone’s religious beliefs. Perhaps you’re right in that it all depends on how you frame the debate, but I think we can both agree that not having a Ten Commandments display is different than having a giant statue that says “There is No God!” or a state-funded fountain with the text, “The Wiccan Earth Mother is the Only One Worthy of Worship!”
The absence of a display is not an attack. A giant statue which says that your religious beliefs are inferior? That looks a lot more like an attack.
(On an unrelated note, I’ve noticed that you tend to bring up old discussion threads in the midst of new discussions. On some blogs, that’s not accepted, but this one is yours, so I wanted to check with you to see if that’s something you prefer? In a good discussion, I’m willing to talk about anything you wish, even if it’s off-topic for a particular thread.)
Phil writes: “Whether you express it or not, it’s the sentiment contained in the notion that support for gay marriage is an “attack” on your beliefs.”
But this is the whole premise of the “culture war.” The idea is that these disagreements actually constitute “attacks” on adherents of the religious right, and on the values they say they promote. In the Ten Commandments issue even God is “attacked” by being “driven” from the public square.
As you note, there is no attack. It’s all in how the issue is framed. In fact what’s going on is simply that people feel strongly about issues and have disagreements. But for many in the religious right the attack language is the “juice.” It is what gets them pumped up. It’s what raises the money. It’s what provides the ammunition for the right-wing pundits.
Conservative religion HAS TO HAVE an enemy. You never know who the enemy will be from week to week, but you KNOW that there will be an enemy.
Jim:
Here’s Andrew Sulivan reporting from the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference).
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/03/the_faggot_vide.html
Actually I heard Brownback this morning on NPR, and he didn’t sound bad.
Sam Brownback, ‘Bleeding-Heart Conservative’
Brownback may be the man to lead the conservative movement away from the hatemongering of the Rove’s, Limbaughs and Coulters, and back to sanity and reason. I think he is the Republican with the fewest skeletons in his closet and the greatest potential to hold the conservative base while reaching out to moderates. We will see.
Note 33. Phil writes:
This holds true when morality is relativized, ie: expressed in individualistic term with no consideration of the cultural ramifications of select behaviors. But clearly, gay marriage will have enormous cultural impact (teaching homosexual sex education in schools, confused parenting roles in raising children, more teens adopting a homosexual lifestyle and experiencing the attendant diseases and shorter life span, etc.). Homosexual marriage is a larger cultural question than you are willing to allow.
As for “zero-sum game”, again, if all moral matters are reduced to private decisions with no regard for the larger culture, then sure, the statement makes sense. But maturity has to prevail here and the principle that private decisions have public effects is self-evident to anyone who recognizes that morality is a matter of both private and public concern.
No, I bring it up because ideas have consequences and given your ideas about gay marriage, it follows that any moral system that prohibits it will meet with your disapproval. Judaism and Christianity are clear about the immorality of homosexuality, which is why homosexual activists (to name one group) wants the symbols of Judaism and Christianity removed from the public square. Your interest in the discussion, in other words, is not neutral.
Note 32. Jim writes:
I go farther. Perversion can be censored (child pornography for example). The ACLU however, in defending NAMBLA, lends intellectual legitimacy to child molestation and thus is another push on the door that opens to the sexual exploitation of children. Cover this with any kind of rationalization that you want (the ACLU is particularly adept at rationalizations) but the truth is we are one step closer to sanctioning the victimization of children. The ACLU knows this. They are not stupid people. (Their supporters should know this too and if they don’t, they have no business offering their opinions.) To argue then that the defense of NAMBLA is a matter of high principle is naive. The result of their high-minded idealism will be more damaged children.
The opposite of this, which you seem to advocate, is that all moral matters are public decisions, where the majority force the minority to tow the line. Honestly, it shocks me that this does not horrify everyone who considers it as much as it does me.
Fr. Hans writes: “To argue then that the defense of NAMBLA is a matter of high principle is naive. The result of their high-minded idealism will be more damaged children.”
The ACLU argues legal positions related to all sorts of popular and unpopular organizations and individuals. In that sense I suppose you could say that the ACLU aids NAMBLA, nazis, fundamentalist Christians, and Rush Limbaugh.
Personally, without considering the legal consequences, I’d just as soon that Rush Limbaugh were handcuffed and strip searched every time he left his mansion, with his private medical records posted on the web. Without considering the legal consequences, I’d just as soon that fundamentalist street preachers were hog-tied and gagged with duct tape. I’d be very happy if nazis were shot on sight, and that NAMBLA were outlawed. But if that can happen to them, it can happen to me, or to you. And that’s not a naive or trivial consideration.
So the point is the legal principles involved in these cases, not the organizations or individuals.
While I lament the fact that many work and school environments have gotten to where one must avoid referencing some of the positive artistic contributions inspired by Christianity out of political correctness and agree that religion in general provides a foundation for understanding moral precepts, I’m uncertain as to how our laws reflect Judeo-Christian values specifically.
We don’t criminalize taking the Lord’s name in vain or working on the Sabbath, and even if we could do so, I’m doubting we would fine those who covet. The societal restrictions against theft and murder date back to the ancient pagan societies of Greece. These ideas are universal and are found in Buddhist and Hindu societies today.
Given that, on what basis can we suggest that our laws enshrine “Judeo-Christian” morality in a unique way?
Note 39. Jim writes:
Really? If this is true there is no real regard for human rights anyway and the much vaunted comittment to principles that has become part of the ACLU boilerplate won’t help you. (I really think it’s hyperbole, however. Still, you hear it a lot in defense of the ACLU which makes me wonder why it is necessary.)
The ACLU is lobbying arm of the hard left, pure and simple. That take on conservative cases here and there because it is good for their image; it perpetuates the myth that the ACLU is an organization driven by principle rather than ideology. They want to “shield” Americans from the harmful effects that viewing the Ten Commandments might impose, but defend the trafficking of child pornography.
See: The ACLU vs. America
Note 38. Phil writes:
It’s not that hard to grasp. Many private decisions have public consequences. That’s why we have laws against stealing, assault, polygamy, and so forth. So yes, in some cases the moral minority has to toe the majority line. We don’t allow polygamy for example even though a couple might privately agree to the arrangement. Why? Because more is at stake than their private desire.
Fr. Hans writes: “If this is true there is no real regard for human rights anyway and the much vaunted commitment to principles that has become part of the ACLU boilerplate won’t help you. (I really think it’s hyperbole, however. Still, you hear it a lot in defense of the ACLU which makes me wonder why it is necessary.)”
Well, rights are indivisible. The rights that nazis have to assemble and preach an unpopular message are the same rights that you have to assemble and preach an unpopular message. There is not a separate set of rights for NAMBLA and you. There is not a separate set of rights for Rush Limbaugh and me.
Fr. Hans: “The ACLU is lobbying arm of the hard left, pure and simple.”
It’s not a lobbying arm of anything. They deal with specific legal cases and pieces of legislation.
Fr. Hans: “They want to ‘shield’ Americans from the harmful effects that viewing the Ten Commandments might impose . . . ”
Let’s be clear about that. They only object to displays of the TC on public property. People are free to read about the TC in books. They are free to preach the TC on street corners. Monuments to the TC can be erected in church property or on any private property. Students can learn about the TC in church schools. TV and radio preachers can hold forth on the TC day and night on public airwaves. The TC can be printed in all of the tens of millions of Bibles sold every year. Politicians can talk about their love for the TC, and you can vote for those politicians. If Christians and Jews wanted to, they could all walk about the streets of America with TC posters and sandwich boards, all on the same day, all day long.
So this whole argument that “religion,” or “moral values,” or “God,” or the “Judeo-Christian heritage” are being driven from the pubic square just seems weird to me. You talk about the agenda of the ACLU. I want to know what is the true agenda of people who can literally blanket the country in the Ten Commandments, who, in spite of that, then potentially want to affix the TC to every school, courthouse, and lamp post in the country. What’s that agenda about? Where does that agenda end? Will the TC be painted on every fire truck? Will new immigrants have to memorize and recite the TC as part of their citizenship test? Will we have the Stations of the Cross in every public park? Will the Apostle Paul’s image show up on the national currency? Where exactly does this end? Or does it end? Because given the reasoning of the TC advocates, I am unable to discern where it would end. If you can display on public property a document that specifically endorses Yahweh as the one and only true God, then what CAN’T be displayed on public property? If the TC are part of our religious and cultural heritage, then so are Jesus, St. Peter, and the Virgin Mary. If the TC promotes moral values, then so do the words of the New Testament.
Fr. Hans: ” . . . but defend the trafficking of child pornography.”
That statement is meaningless. Since the ACLU deals with specific legal cases and legislation, to what specific case do you refer?
note 40:
Really? Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether the regular lib’s here are joking or serious (when you display such bold ignorance!). In any case, IF you are serious, you really should think about a basic historic text. One used to be able to get “educated” about our civilization in college but the humanities are not what they used to be. Something starting with Greek/Roman history of law and how we got to where we are today. Equality before the law, the value of the person/minority vs. majority, the whole history of common law, etc. are all rooted in Christian culture “tweaking” the ground of Roman law…
Note 43. Jim wrote:
The case where the ACLU defended NAMBLA against a lawsuit filed by parents of a little boy sexually brutalized and murdered by two men who got instructions from the NAMBLA website. See: No Boy Scouts: The ACLU defends NAMBLA.
Holman asked: “Since the ACLU deals with specific legal cases and legislation, to what specific case do you refer?”
Fr. Hans responds: “The case where the ACLU defended NAMBLA against a lawsuit filed by parents of a little boy sexually brutalized and murdered by two men who got instructions from the NAMBLA website.”
Ok, so we all agree that NAMBLA is a vile organization. I think that even the ACLU called them a vile organization.
But the legal issue here is the whether or in what situations an individual or organization can be held legally liable for damages for providing information that is used by some other party in the commission of a crime. I would argue that this is in fact a serious issue dealing with the First Amendment.
There have been several related cases. For example, one anti-abortion web site published the names and addresses of doctors who perform abortions, called them criminals, and put their pictures on western-style “wanted posters.” Three of the doctors listed on that web site were in fact murdered. As they were murdered their pictures were crossed out.
Unlike the NAMBLA case, here was in instance in which specific individuals were obviously being targeted for violence. Nonetheless, on appeal the court found that the information on the web site constituted protected speech. The court followed the 1969 Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, in which it was held that a threat has to be likely to cause “imminent” violent action. The court held that if site merely encouraged “unrelated terrorist action” then it was protected free speech.
In another cases Paladin Press was sued for the wrongful death of an individual who was killed by someone who had read the publisher’s book on how to be a “hit man.” Paladin has a number of regular books on martial arts and firearms, as well as some more “marginal” books on how to construct a homemade silencer, how to turn a semi-auto rifle into full auto, how to establish a false identity, and so on. Paladin settled out of court, so the potential constitutional issues were not addressed.
So here’s a question for you:
Is the main problem for you that the ACLU is defending NAMBLA? In other words, if it were some other organization — for example, the organization that ran the web site targeting the abortion doctors — would that be Ok? Or are you saying that “vile organizations” in general should not be provided any legal defense when sued, regardless of the legal issues or the merits of the case? Or are you saying that you disagree with the view that speech that inspires an unrelated third party to commit violence should be protected? I know you don’t like the whole NAMBLA thing and I don’t need a recap of their sins, but I’m trying to understand what specifically you object to with respect to the ACLU’s involvement in this case.
Jim: I’m reminded of that scene in the movie The Shawshank Redemption:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0111161/quotes
Your point is crystal clear: The fact that the ACLU provides legal defense to unpopular organizations does not mean it actually supports the causes of those unpopular organizations. If an attorney defends an accused murderer, no one accuses the attorney of being pro-homicide. When a lawyer represents a doctor accused of medical malpractice, no one accuses the lawyer of being an advocate for careless surgery. Similarly the fact that the ACLU defends NAMBLA does not make it pro-pederast, or anti-Ten Commandments.
I lived in Chicago when the ACLU defended the American Nazi Party in their petition to march in Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago suburb with a large Jewish community and a number of Holocaust survivors. Nobody was happy about it. Nobody liked the Nazis. John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd even featured the Nazi marchers as clownish villians in their Blues Brothers movie, which was made about the same time.
I don’t remember any ill will towards the ACLU, however. Most people realized the Jewish War Veterans could want to march in a parade somewhere and some Anti-Semite groups could object? If we can ban the Nazis today why can’t we ban the Jewish War Veterans tommorow, or the Knights of Columbus, or the Children from the Christian academy?
Most people were able to understand then, as they should now, that if we want to protect the rights of all we cannot make any exceptions when it comes to protecting the rights of even the most unpopular group or despised person. I don’t understand why this is such a hard concept to grasp.
Note 47. Dean writes:
The ACLU has an agenda. If the Nazi’s want to march fine. But why through Skokie where many of the victims of Hitler’s concentration camps lived? You don’t think that the ACLU was promoting a political agenda here? Is this really standing for principle or is it abetting abuse and degrading real human suffering?
The same goes for NAMBLA. Understand that the ACLU defense of NAMBLA occurred after the murder of a young boy by two homosexual psychopaths who were instructed in certain particulars of their crime by information found on the NAMBLA website. Do you really think that the defense of NAMBLA served the public good in this case? Is NAMBLA really the victim here?
When it comes to the Ten Commandments however, they troll the states looking for a disgruntled claimant (yes, they troll), trying to bring cases to eliminate any reference from the public square, often in cities where the vast majority of people object to the action, and where city leaders cave because of the huge legal costs involved. This defense of “principle” is nothing more than legal extortion. Nice. Obliderate the symbols of the well spring that keeps child abuse on the dark side of moral awareness, but fight to keep the perpetrators of the darkness on the side of cultural approval.
This notion that the ACLU is above the political fray, that it is driven solely by principles above reproach and thus criticism is naive. How long before, say, the ACLU defends pornography on computers in high schools? Just as soon as the moral taboo against it erodes. Their ideas about “free expression” allows no other option. The only thing holding them back so far public outcry.
Jim writes:
We censor things all the time: child pornography, cigarette advertising on television, alcohol advertising near schools, etc. These are moral judgements that really have no bearing, and certainly no chilling effect, on free speech. When free speech is defined as any kind of expression however, and when that expression is selective like the defense of child molesters or Nazi’s marching through areas where concentration camp survivors live, an agenda is at work no matter how high highly principled the defense of those positions might sound. The same holds true of the sites that advocate the shooting of abortionists — whatever they are. People who incite violence have culpability in the violence they incite. In the case of NAMBLA, sorry, but anyone who sanctions the sexual abuse and gives information on how to molest children shares in the culpability of molesters who used the information.
The problem with your (and Dean’s) defense of the ACLU (besides sounding like it was lifted from an ACLU promotional pamphlet), is that it is shorn from any moral bearings. Even legal principles draw from a moral grounding and thus require the service of morality to ensure that freedom really remains free. Legal principles don’t stand apart from a larger moral referent. Even the Constitution presupposes a moral vision, something the ACLU and other secularists are loathe to examine. We can argue how to define that grounding and what the barriers should be, but the ACLU has no interest in this, or more precisely, it seeks to erase the Judea/Christian ground of the Constitution and the body of American law and interpret law from a secularist basis. This is how defending an organization that promotes the molestation of children (or removing all religious symbols from public places), appears virtuous when in fact it aggresively deconstructs the moral fabric of the culture.
Now, if you really believe that the ACLU doesn’t promote a hard left agenda, read these:
The ACLU Shadow
The ACLU Saves the Boy Scouts from God
You Can’t Say That!
Dung and the ACLU
An interesting observation. The ACLU argues no religious symbols allowed unless they are defiled by feces and pornographic images. Then they must be protected. This isn’t a hard left agenda?
Falsifying History
Fr. Hans writes: “We censor things all the time . . . ”
This isn’t about censorship per se, but about whether the publisher of material can be sued for damages over the criminal actions of an unrelated third party that are allegedly inspired by the material. Neither the genre nor the medium matter. It could be fiction, non-fiction, book, web site, movie, TV program, whatever. A related issue is who can be sued. If NAMBLA can be sued, how about the company hosting their web site? (Which as I recall actually happened.) If Paladin Press can be sued, how about a bookstore selling their books? If the producers of a movie can be sued, how about the theater in which it is shown, or the TV station that broadcasts it?
Fr. Hans: “People who incite violence have culpability in the violence they incite.”
Ok, here in your post we get to a legal issue. What does it mean to incite violence? I studied martial arts for some years, including knife fighting and other kinds of brutal techniques. Let’s say that I unjustifiably kill someone using what I have learned. Should the family of my victim be able to sue my instructor for damages? If not, why not? Or, let’s say that I learned the techniques from a book instead of a person. Should the family be able to sue the publisher or the book seller? Or if you give a fiery sermon against homosexuality, noting that homosexuals used to be stoned to death, and one of your parishioners is inspired by that and actually stones a homosexual, should the victim’s family be able to sue you? NAMBLA is a reprehensible group, but that case involves an important legal principle.
Fr. Hans: “The problem with your (and Dean’s) defense of the ACLU (besides sounding like it was lifted from an ACLU promotional pamphlet), is that it is shorn from any moral bearings whatsoever. Even legal principles draw from a moral grounding and thus require the service of morality to ensure that freedom really remains free.”
I don’t think free speech is a moral issue per se, though it certainly has moral implications. It’s more of an issue of what kind of country you want to live in. For example, if we lived in a country with a state church, violations of church teachings were harshly punished, and it was illegal to speak or write against the church, it might be a very moral country. It just wouldn’t be a free country, at least not in the sense that we understand freedom.
Even legal principles draw from a moral grounding and thus require the service of morality to ensure that freedom really remains free. Legal principles don’t stand apart from a larger moral referent
Exactly. However, Dean and his fellow travelers DO have a moral ground of their idea of law, it is the atomic individual who is his own moral referent…