Ten Commandments in a Courtroom

[richard duncan]

>
>         To follow up on Marie's post, as I have surveyed the
> exchanges on this subject, I found myself wondering how an
> American citizen who was neither Christian nor Jew would feel
> going into a courtroom that bore the motto "Equal Justice Under
> Judaeo-Christian Law."  I suspect he or she might feel that,
> as applied, the promise might be a bit hollow.
_____________

How does any religious believer feel when confronted with the motto
"equal justice under strictly secular law"? I suspect he or she might
feel hollow. How does a devoutly religious child feel when he is made
part of a captive audience for a strictly secular education in a
"public" school? The secular state is neutral toward religion only in
the sense that it marginalizes all religions (or at least all
religions that take the idea of God seriously).

Yes, the Ten Commandments issue is a trivial one--but it comes on the
heels of several decades of relentless secularization of our culture
much of which was commanded by an activist judiciary. Gov. James is
saying "enough is enough." Maybe his methods are not (yet) called
for--but his cause is just.

More and more people (Gov. James, the First Things crowd, and others)
are beginning to lose patience with our judicial masters. The time may
be ripe for major reforms for the judicial branch.
--
                   ----------
             Rick Duncan (rduncan at unlinfo.unl.edu)

"Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance
applies only to truth, but never to persons. Tolerance applies to the
erring; intolerance to the error." --Fulton J. Sheen