Zim > This one's for you, Micro.
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SCOTUS May Overturn 45-year Precedent — Which Itself Overturned 193-year Precedent
http://thenewamerican.com/us/education/scotus-may-overturn-45-year-precedent-which-itself-overturned-193-year-precedent/
Should the Ten Commandments be displayed in public schools? With relatively new Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas laws mandating such, this matter may soon come before the Supreme Court.
The reportage on this is interesting, too. The “Court may soon consider overturning 45-year precedent,” reads a recent Newsweek headline. Unmentioned is that this now-“45-year precedent” itself overturned a 193-year precedent: That of almost two centuries of American tradition and practices, nationwide and by numerous generations, based on consensus constitutional understanding. For it wasn’t uncommon for government schools to display the Ten Commandments prior to 1980. For that matter, the Bible was also typically used in American education in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Apparently, though, an entire civilization’s multi-generational determinations are irrelevant. Only the momentary judgments of a handful of lawyers in black robes can be considered “precedent.”
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The article does continue.
My thinking has always been "Why shouldn't the ten commandments be displayed in public schools?"
I mean, don't they start with such goodies as "Thou Shalt NOT Kill" and "Thou Shalt NOT Steal"? We have reams of laws on the books which, in essence, say killing and stealing is illegal and those practicing those deeds need to be jailed or even executed for them. The Ten Commandments are sort of like an 'Honor Code'. Guidelines to help our young ones live in civilized harmony with everybody else.
I suspect most of the worlds religions have similar sentiments embedded within them. And, correct me if I'm wrong, don't all the Christian, Catholic, Baptist, type sects have the same Ten Commandments?
Putting them up in schools is not trying to promote a 'State Religion' . . . It looks to me like a sane, easy way, to try and educate our children in ways to help make a better America.
Zim.
Mad Poet Strikes Again.
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