{"id":8331,"date":"2006-08-30T09:41:36","date_gmt":"2006-08-30T13:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8331.html"},"modified":"2006-08-30T09:41:36","modified_gmt":"2006-08-30T13:41:36","slug":"ten-commandments-as-the-basis-of-our-rule-of-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/ten-commandments-as-the-basis-of-our-rule-of-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten Commandments as ‘the basis of our rule of law’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Rep. [tag]Katherine Harris[\/tag] (R-Embarrassmentville) raised a few eyebrows by insisting<\/a> that voters had to elect [tag]Christians[\/tag] to avoid “legislating [tag]sin[\/tag],” calling the constitutional separation of church and state a “lie,” and arguing that God did not intend for the United States to be “a nation of secular laws.”<\/p>\n

Since then she backed away from the first two points, but struggled a bit<\/a> to explain the third.<\/p>\n

Asked whether the U.S. should be a secular country, Harris said: “I think that our laws, I mean, I look at how the law originated, even from Moses, the 10 [tag]Commandments[\/tag]. And I don’t believe, that uh . . . That’s how all of our laws originated in the United States, period. I think that’s the basis of our rule of [tag]law[\/tag].”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I don’t mean to pick on Harris — my annoyance with her candidacy is quickly turning to pity — but this argument comes up from time to time. Usually it’s phrased a little more articulately, but particularly among far-right conservatives, the notion that our laws “originated” from the [tag]Ten Commandments[\/tag] is very popular. And very wrong.
\n
\nYou don’t need to be a constitutional scholar or have a doctorate in history to debunk the claim — you just need to look at the Commandments themselves. If the “basis” of our laws “originated” from the Decalogue, it’d be pretty obvious — we could look at the Ten Commandments and see how similar they are to our legal traditions.<\/p>\n

The reality, of course, is that the opposite happens.<\/p>\n

* The Commandments say people shall not worship false gods. Any laws against this? Strike one.<\/p>\n

* The Commandments say people shall not make graven images. Any laws against this? Strike two.<\/p>\n

* The Commandments say people shall not take the name of the Lord in vain. Any laws against this? Strike three.<\/p>\n

* The Commandments say people must honor a Sabbath day. Any laws mandating this? Strike four.<\/p>\n

* The Commandments say people must honor their parents. Any laws mandating this? Strike five.<\/p>\n

If Harris is right, and the American legal tradition was formed based on the Ten Commandments, the Founding Fathers and two centuries of lawmakers have done a really bad job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Rep. [tag]Katherine Harris[\/tag] (R-Embarrassmentville) raised a few eyebrows by insisting that voters had to elect [tag]Christians[\/tag] to avoid “legislating [tag]sin[\/tag],” calling the constitutional separation of church and state a “lie,” and arguing that God did not intend for the United States to be “a nation of secular laws.” Since then she backed away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}