It's really very difficult to get worked up about this one. Woke is a religion, coast to coast, enforced with extreme prejudice and with the full power of the state (at least when one side is in power, and when it's not, they disable, undermine, or utilize-in-opposition every institution they control until they're back in). No one can argue it isn't a state religion in 2024.
Considering what woke is, seeing the rainbow flag in every classroom, and every hallway/ chat room monitored by Judith Butlers and Joy Reids, the schools and communities have already allowed far worse than the Ten Commandments to do everything you discuss here. This is a classic barn door closed after horses bolted situation. What you write is true... but no one has cared about this for a long time. We all should, but the obstacle to caring is staring at us right in the face, behind all of THEIR state religions shoved down everyone's throats.
So long as the one situation continues, others matter less. If we have an embedded class with active and ongoing contempt for how America functions getting first preference for any school or job, and lack of pledging allegiance I I just can't care. "don't use the government to subject others to your religion or your beliefs." Agreed. Since they are, though, the problem is that, not the Ten Commandments in Louisiana - or anywhere.
The problem is that this is whataboutism, and boils down to "they're playing dirty, so should we." That's not how principles get restored.
If no one cared, there'd not be any discussion about it. If the Right wants to help "fix" the Left by convincing the sane liberals to eschew the thuggish leftists, regressing on rights is not the way.
Well, no, it's not Whataboutism at all, actually. This isn't playing dirty. That's not what I wrote.
It's about why no one is going to care about this. It's one thing if both sides care - it's another thing entirely if one side cares and the other side games that caring to enforce its own religion.
No one is going to care if one side gets privileges the others don't, especially when those privileges are the birthright of every American, and aren't even privileges but natural rights.
The point is: who are you/ we to tell Louisiana not to do it, when the reason we are giving is not respected or enforced in any other classroom/ only for one religion or viewpoint?
That's not freedom of religion and it's certainly not Whataboutism.
One of the most fundamental roles of government is the protection of individual rights. Among those is freedom of religion, and as I mentioned to Jeff here, 14A gives the Feds primacy over the States when it comes to states violating rights. Hanging 10C in classrooms is a message to every student that they don't truly have religious liberty, that there is one religion that's elevated above others in America.
What's the point of doing this, other than to send that message?
I largely agree, but technically speaking, while wokeism, climate extremism, etc have many hallmarks of religious practice, they’re not religions per se in the “worshipping a deity” sense. Although I’ll grant that at times they sure come close.
Oh, no doubt. Thing is, removing them from the classroom would be via curriculum-setting, which governments certainly control for public schools and which doesn't run afoul of the BoR.
Posting 10C, however, does nothing to counter wokeism.
The deity they worship is themselves; the Omnicause is their religion.
But regardless whether or not the woke see themselves as religious or what they pursue as religious practice, it has the exact same hallmarks as "state religion." They are using "freedom of religion" to deny all perspectives but their own, and they control institutions where this amounts to government coercion. You can't permit ALL freedoms as then you permit the freedom to deny-other-freedom. (I speak to the royal-you here, not you-you)
Put another way, as Ben franklin or one of those guys said, our Constitution only works if we're a moral people. Woke is the religion of anti-Moral, and we see the downstream effect of this everyday. LGQBT+ activism, climate extremism, race marxism, etc. if that's the state religion in everything but name, then the Constitution can't exist. I want the Constitution to exist; therefore I oppose the state religion of wokeism. If the state religion was Southern Baptists, and they just were careful to call it equity and to wear their civilian clothes, so to speak, I'd still oppose it, because it's an environment mutually exclusive to freedom of religion and the Constitution.
p.s. re: LGQBT+ activism, I don't mean just the idea of it, I mean the specific application and praxis of it as laundered through "woke." See Chad Felix Greene and James Lindsay et al. for further, there.
I get all that and generally agree, but if I follow, you're arguing that, since we have a current "state religion" called wokeism, then other "establishing" laws are OK?
As for LGBTQ+, it's worth noting that it's just the letters after the first three that are creating all the problems, and those first three are increasingly unhappy about that. The gay/lesbian cause doesn't really share any commonality with transgender. The former is sexual orientation, the latter is "identity." Yesterday's post has a link that covers that.
"since we have a current "state religion" called wokeism, then other "establishing" laws are OK"
Before I answer, (I think my answer is no) what precisely do you mean by establishing laws? What we have now is a workaround to "Congress shall make no law..." I'm not sure any new law would counter that; it's more about disallowing it.
I'm sure you saw the Chad Felix Greene thread (I have not read your post yesterday yet, my apologies if it's all covered there,) I think that's defines what anyone would mean using LGBTQ+ activism in 2024. One was purposefully conflated with another to advance something else.
I ask because you brought up wokeism as a state religion that's being permitted to persist.
This post is pretty narrow - it's about whether 10C should be hanging in every classroom in Louisiana. It's not about a denial of religious freedom, and it's not about wokeism.
Well, "some" are correct: it IS a "stunt", or trial balloon, to test SCOTUS' willingness to extend federalism following the Kennedy ruling (coach praying on 50 yard line after the game) wherein the Court abandoned the Lemon test. The Establishment Clause's plain language refers to the Congress, not the States, and has only been "interpreted" to imply a "secular nation". The States themselves didn't sign up for that. But we shall see just how far this SCOTUS is willing to go. I wouldn't say it's a foregone conclusion.
I'm not a hayseed and neither are the legislature of Louisiana, their AG and their governor. These are SMART people. Nobody's forgotten anything. The interesting argument - what we should be talking about - is why Louisiana suddenly NOW thinks they can test this principle. What changed? Resorting to now-marginalized case law and ignoring what THIS Supreme Court is doing is at least uninteresting. So the BETTER question - the interesting one - is why does Louisiana THINK they can do this? Well, they THINK they can do this because they believe they have a "corner case" within which the Kennedy case was argued. That's interesting. They don't think this runs afoul of the "equal protection" clause in 14. Why don't they? Again, first assume they're not stupid....
Your first comment rather obviously excluded 14A, so I replied to that.
As to "not stupid," and here I refer to legislators, I've seen two things. First - history is full of midwits and nitwits who got themselves elected. That proves they are good at getting elected, but says nothing for their legislative wisdom or smarts. Second, many smart people have bought into many stupid ideas.
It's likely some have deeper motives, but I'm comfortable in surmising that some simply want to put the Bible in the classroom.
I think you have a bias here that is clouding your judgment. OF COURSE "some" simply want to put the Bible back in the classroom. But your assumption that they're doing so stupidly or ham-handedly is where your bias shows. I want to challenge you to visualize how this goes to SCOTUS and prevails in a John Roberts majority opinion. Because that's a distinct possibility. Not what you WANT to happen - what MAY happen. Your writing on this subject is predicated on 50 years of "wall of separation" jurisprudence that was intolerant of public display of religion. I get that you LIKE that - but many of us believe it was wrongly decided and is likely to be overturned. Like Roe.
I don't think that concluding that some legislators are midwits or worse is bias. I think it's accurate.
"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
As to what the Court would do? If I disagree, I'll say so and detail why after a ruling. The Court has made decisions you or I have disagreed with before, no?
I find it interesting how hot people are on this bit. My FB share of the post has garnered a lot more response than usual. It's rather revelatory.
"Midwit" Gorsuch's majority opinion in Kennedy: "[the school district's actions] rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech,” “The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.” And in Kennedy there was no compulsion to participate, just as Louisiana will claim there's no requirement that any student read the 10C posters. The Lemon test was dismissed as irrelevant - states don't have to demonstrate a "secular" purpose. Of course the enlightened Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer (billiant non-midwits) disagreed.
My POINT being, this will be interesting to watch how the Roberts majority addresses explicitly compelled display of the 10C - given the context of Kennedy. You believe this is just stupid people blundering accidentally into a SCOTUS case. I disagree - I think it's deliberate and designed specifically to push the Kennedy boundary to see how far it goes.
Smart people aren't necessary smart about everything. We all have our blind spots. I think that Kennedy was wrongly decided and the charade ended when he resigned a few days from his position after getting it back. I expect that the SC will buy the argument that the ten commandments are a part of our history and so should get a bye without addressing the explicit religious content in the ten commandments.
After the fiasco of the Kennedy ruling, I wouldn't be surprised at anything the current SC comes up with regarding the relationship between church and state.
I am one of them but at times it seems that I am mostly in the minority if the population you're talking about are conservative Christians. To be honest, I think that Jesus was arguing for the separation of church and state when he recognized a difference between rendering under Caesar and rendering unto God. Plus, his statement that his kingdom was not of this world puts the kibosh (in my opinion) on the idea that a nation as such can be Christian.
In my dealings with WCNs, they are explicit that America should be a Christian nation based upon their misinterpretation/interpretation (your choice) of our history and the Bible. There should be a bias in favor of Christianity not given to other religions in their opinion. I wonder at times why many Christians emphasize the ten commandments when Jesus in Matthew said that everything is summed up in love God and love your neighbor. However, under the guise of honoring tradition as they have ruled in other church/state issues, I suspect that the current SC will rule in favor of Louisiana.
Did the law specify which 10 Commandments are to be posted? The Protestant, Catholic, and Hebrew ones are slightly different. Anyway, aren't our energies better spent on winning easier fights, and this building our energies for further fights?
But would it establish Christianity, or would it be Judaism? Since Moses wasn't Christian. So a broader brush. But I agree with you that it's not a good idea. Could we put up the 12 Steps, 12 Traditions, and 12 Concepts of AA? Just kidding..
Well, that's another angle, and one I haven't bothered to bring up. People talk about Judeo-Christian values, or ethics or culture, but the OT and the NT are not remotely the same. OT ethics include genocide, mass murder, infanticide, human sacrifice, and more "values." NT repudiates some of them.
Beyond that, there are the schisms between the main subsets of Christianity, and the differences between denominations. Those have been very real, and often violent, even in the very young United States. It's only recently that everyone has mashed them together under the "Christianity" banner, and that's purely for political purposes, since the doctrinal differences remain.
Peter - I received an email about my subscription renewing. Of course, I'll be renewing. However, do you know anyone who would want a subscription and can't afford it? I'd be glad to give a gift subscription.
It's really very difficult to get worked up about this one. Woke is a religion, coast to coast, enforced with extreme prejudice and with the full power of the state (at least when one side is in power, and when it's not, they disable, undermine, or utilize-in-opposition every institution they control until they're back in). No one can argue it isn't a state religion in 2024.
Considering what woke is, seeing the rainbow flag in every classroom, and every hallway/ chat room monitored by Judith Butlers and Joy Reids, the schools and communities have already allowed far worse than the Ten Commandments to do everything you discuss here. This is a classic barn door closed after horses bolted situation. What you write is true... but no one has cared about this for a long time. We all should, but the obstacle to caring is staring at us right in the face, behind all of THEIR state religions shoved down everyone's throats.
So long as the one situation continues, others matter less. If we have an embedded class with active and ongoing contempt for how America functions getting first preference for any school or job, and lack of pledging allegiance I I just can't care. "don't use the government to subject others to your religion or your beliefs." Agreed. Since they are, though, the problem is that, not the Ten Commandments in Louisiana - or anywhere.
The problem is that this is whataboutism, and boils down to "they're playing dirty, so should we." That's not how principles get restored.
If no one cared, there'd not be any discussion about it. If the Right wants to help "fix" the Left by convincing the sane liberals to eschew the thuggish leftists, regressing on rights is not the way.
Well, no, it's not Whataboutism at all, actually. This isn't playing dirty. That's not what I wrote.
It's about why no one is going to care about this. It's one thing if both sides care - it's another thing entirely if one side cares and the other side games that caring to enforce its own religion.
No one is going to care if one side gets privileges the others don't, especially when those privileges are the birthright of every American, and aren't even privileges but natural rights.
The point is: who are you/ we to tell Louisiana not to do it, when the reason we are giving is not respected or enforced in any other classroom/ only for one religion or viewpoint?
That's not freedom of religion and it's certainly not Whataboutism.
One of the most fundamental roles of government is the protection of individual rights. Among those is freedom of religion, and as I mentioned to Jeff here, 14A gives the Feds primacy over the States when it comes to states violating rights. Hanging 10C in classrooms is a message to every student that they don't truly have religious liberty, that there is one religion that's elevated above others in America.
What's the point of doing this, other than to send that message?
Again, if they're already sending a message that one religion is elevated above others in America, THAT is the problem.
Students have been receiving this message - with greater and greater prejudice and exclusion - for about two generations now.
The Ten Commandments in LA is a reaction, not the proximate cause. The side that hangs its religion is the one who needs the lesson.
I largely agree, but technically speaking, while wokeism, climate extremism, etc have many hallmarks of religious practice, they’re not religions per se in the “worshipping a deity” sense. Although I’ll grant that at times they sure come close.
Oh, no doubt. Thing is, removing them from the classroom would be via curriculum-setting, which governments certainly control for public schools and which doesn't run afoul of the BoR.
Posting 10C, however, does nothing to counter wokeism.
The deity they worship is themselves; the Omnicause is their religion.
But regardless whether or not the woke see themselves as religious or what they pursue as religious practice, it has the exact same hallmarks as "state religion." They are using "freedom of religion" to deny all perspectives but their own, and they control institutions where this amounts to government coercion. You can't permit ALL freedoms as then you permit the freedom to deny-other-freedom. (I speak to the royal-you here, not you-you)
Put another way, as Ben franklin or one of those guys said, our Constitution only works if we're a moral people. Woke is the religion of anti-Moral, and we see the downstream effect of this everyday. LGQBT+ activism, climate extremism, race marxism, etc. if that's the state religion in everything but name, then the Constitution can't exist. I want the Constitution to exist; therefore I oppose the state religion of wokeism. If the state religion was Southern Baptists, and they just were careful to call it equity and to wear their civilian clothes, so to speak, I'd still oppose it, because it's an environment mutually exclusive to freedom of religion and the Constitution.
p.s. re: LGQBT+ activism, I don't mean just the idea of it, I mean the specific application and praxis of it as laundered through "woke." See Chad Felix Greene and James Lindsay et al. for further, there.
Carry on.
I get all that and generally agree, but if I follow, you're arguing that, since we have a current "state religion" called wokeism, then other "establishing" laws are OK?
As for LGBTQ+, it's worth noting that it's just the letters after the first three that are creating all the problems, and those first three are increasingly unhappy about that. The gay/lesbian cause doesn't really share any commonality with transgender. The former is sexual orientation, the latter is "identity." Yesterday's post has a link that covers that.
"since we have a current "state religion" called wokeism, then other "establishing" laws are OK"
Before I answer, (I think my answer is no) what precisely do you mean by establishing laws? What we have now is a workaround to "Congress shall make no law..." I'm not sure any new law would counter that; it's more about disallowing it.
I'm sure you saw the Chad Felix Greene thread (I have not read your post yesterday yet, my apologies if it's all covered there,) I think that's defines what anyone would mean using LGBTQ+ activism in 2024. One was purposefully conflated with another to advance something else.
I ask because you brought up wokeism as a state religion that's being permitted to persist.
This post is pretty narrow - it's about whether 10C should be hanging in every classroom in Louisiana. It's not about a denial of religious freedom, and it's not about wokeism.
"Any narrower and you're in danger of missing the forest for the sake of the one tree" is a better way of putting what I initially wrote.
Well, "some" are correct: it IS a "stunt", or trial balloon, to test SCOTUS' willingness to extend federalism following the Kennedy ruling (coach praying on 50 yard line after the game) wherein the Court abandoned the Lemon test. The Establishment Clause's plain language refers to the Congress, not the States, and has only been "interpreted" to imply a "secular nation". The States themselves didn't sign up for that. But we shall see just how far this SCOTUS is willing to go. I wouldn't say it's a foregone conclusion.
You forget about 14A. The Bill of Rights applies to the States as well as Congress.
I'm not a hayseed and neither are the legislature of Louisiana, their AG and their governor. These are SMART people. Nobody's forgotten anything. The interesting argument - what we should be talking about - is why Louisiana suddenly NOW thinks they can test this principle. What changed? Resorting to now-marginalized case law and ignoring what THIS Supreme Court is doing is at least uninteresting. So the BETTER question - the interesting one - is why does Louisiana THINK they can do this? Well, they THINK they can do this because they believe they have a "corner case" within which the Kennedy case was argued. That's interesting. They don't think this runs afoul of the "equal protection" clause in 14. Why don't they? Again, first assume they're not stupid....
Your first comment rather obviously excluded 14A, so I replied to that.
As to "not stupid," and here I refer to legislators, I've seen two things. First - history is full of midwits and nitwits who got themselves elected. That proves they are good at getting elected, but says nothing for their legislative wisdom or smarts. Second, many smart people have bought into many stupid ideas.
It's likely some have deeper motives, but I'm comfortable in surmising that some simply want to put the Bible in the classroom.
I think you have a bias here that is clouding your judgment. OF COURSE "some" simply want to put the Bible back in the classroom. But your assumption that they're doing so stupidly or ham-handedly is where your bias shows. I want to challenge you to visualize how this goes to SCOTUS and prevails in a John Roberts majority opinion. Because that's a distinct possibility. Not what you WANT to happen - what MAY happen. Your writing on this subject is predicated on 50 years of "wall of separation" jurisprudence that was intolerant of public display of religion. I get that you LIKE that - but many of us believe it was wrongly decided and is likely to be overturned. Like Roe.
I don't think that concluding that some legislators are midwits or worse is bias. I think it's accurate.
"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
As to what the Court would do? If I disagree, I'll say so and detail why after a ruling. The Court has made decisions you or I have disagreed with before, no?
I find it interesting how hot people are on this bit. My FB share of the post has garnered a lot more response than usual. It's rather revelatory.
"Midwit" Gorsuch's majority opinion in Kennedy: "[the school district's actions] rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech,” “The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.” And in Kennedy there was no compulsion to participate, just as Louisiana will claim there's no requirement that any student read the 10C posters. The Lemon test was dismissed as irrelevant - states don't have to demonstrate a "secular" purpose. Of course the enlightened Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer (billiant non-midwits) disagreed.
My POINT being, this will be interesting to watch how the Roberts majority addresses explicitly compelled display of the 10C - given the context of Kennedy. You believe this is just stupid people blundering accidentally into a SCOTUS case. I disagree - I think it's deliberate and designed specifically to push the Kennedy boundary to see how far it goes.
Smart people aren't necessary smart about everything. We all have our blind spots. I think that Kennedy was wrongly decided and the charade ended when he resigned a few days from his position after getting it back. I expect that the SC will buy the argument that the ten commandments are a part of our history and so should get a bye without addressing the explicit religious content in the ten commandments.
After the fiasco of the Kennedy ruling, I wouldn't be surprised at anything the current SC comes up with regarding the relationship between church and state.
There are some very religious people who nevertheless want religion and the State to remain apart.
I am one of them but at times it seems that I am mostly in the minority if the population you're talking about are conservative Christians. To be honest, I think that Jesus was arguing for the separation of church and state when he recognized a difference between rendering under Caesar and rendering unto God. Plus, his statement that his kingdom was not of this world puts the kibosh (in my opinion) on the idea that a nation as such can be Christian.
In my dealings with WCNs, they are explicit that America should be a Christian nation based upon their misinterpretation/interpretation (your choice) of our history and the Bible. There should be a bias in favor of Christianity not given to other religions in their opinion. I wonder at times why many Christians emphasize the ten commandments when Jesus in Matthew said that everything is summed up in love God and love your neighbor. However, under the guise of honoring tradition as they have ruled in other church/state issues, I suspect that the current SC will rule in favor of Louisiana.
Did the law specify which 10 Commandments are to be posted? The Protestant, Catholic, and Hebrew ones are slightly different. Anyway, aren't our energies better spent on winning easier fights, and this building our energies for further fights?
But would it establish Christianity, or would it be Judaism? Since Moses wasn't Christian. So a broader brush. But I agree with you that it's not a good idea. Could we put up the 12 Steps, 12 Traditions, and 12 Concepts of AA? Just kidding..
Well, that's another angle, and one I haven't bothered to bring up. People talk about Judeo-Christian values, or ethics or culture, but the OT and the NT are not remotely the same. OT ethics include genocide, mass murder, infanticide, human sacrifice, and more "values." NT repudiates some of them.
Beyond that, there are the schisms between the main subsets of Christianity, and the differences between denominations. Those have been very real, and often violent, even in the very young United States. It's only recently that everyone has mashed them together under the "Christianity" banner, and that's purely for political purposes, since the doctrinal differences remain.
I call it Louisiana’s Folly.
Peter - I received an email about my subscription renewing. Of course, I'll be renewing. However, do you know anyone who would want a subscription and can't afford it? I'd be glad to give a gift subscription.
Thank you for offering, but no name comes to mind. Hard to know who can or can't afford.