First, let me say that Hitler was a bad choice for the analogy, the Christians
on the list are getting all defensive and not following the logic of the
argument. So, instead of a bunch of Christian zealots building Ten
Commandments monuments on public land, let's say it's a bunch of anti-drug
zealots building anti-drug monuments on public land. Or anti-gun zealots. Or
anti-corporate zealots. Or living wage zealots. Mike, what if, in response
to tightening abortion laws under Bush, the National Organization for Women
put up at the entrance to Golden Gate Park a bronze statue of a woman bleeding
to death with a coat hanger inside her after an attempted back-alley abortion?
Can you honestly say you would not try to get the City to remove that from
the park that your tax dollars are funding? Or would you just stay quiet and
keep hoping that someday the park will be privatized?
Anyway, back to your comments, point-by-point...
The 10 Commandments are more than suggestions. They specifically state
that if you violate these rules, you are certainly hurting yourself and
possibly others.
How does having another God or not keeping the Sabbath hurt me and others?
We ignore them at our own risk. In my opinion, everyone
should know them and understand why they are important.
Why should everyone know and believe it to be important that there is only one
God, and Sunday is only for worship?
The Hitler quotes submitted are perversions of biblical concepts that
are not taken directly from the text and have nothing to do with the
spirit of the text. For example: where Hitler says Jesus also disliked
the Jews and drove them from the temple. It wasn't because they were
Jews, it was because they were not respecting the spiritual aspect of
the temple and were degrading it with material priorities. It could have
been anyone and Jesus would have felt the same way.
Don't care. Not my religion. The point was that the text full of OPINIONS
AND ASSERTIONS that you devoutly believe in (even if it's only the kind and
loving parts written in the last two thousand years) should have no higher
status in government than Adolf Hitler's text full of opinions and assertions.
(Or Greenpeace's, or NOW's...)
Hitler uses the bible sort of like how Republicans like to use
Libertarian sounding phrases to describe their agenda....but the reality
is something quite different and is easily identified by someone who
knows the subject matter.
Again, I wish we'd used another analogy besides Hitler, so you wouldn't spend
all your effort trying to explain that Christians aren't evil. That's not the
point we were trying to make, anyway. My mom is a Christian. I used to be
one. Irrelevant. The question is whether anyone's agenda, good or bad,
deserves a plot of free land, paid for by taxpayers, for the construction of a
monument.
OK back to the question....the answer is that there shouldn't be any
public property. And if there is, then anyone can have their say as to
how it's used. If fact, the faster we make the establishment appear
completely unable to manage the use of public property, the sooner we
will strengthen the perceived value of property rights.
The problem is that the establishment will simply choose to discriminate about
what is acceptable for public land and what is not. Governments don't usually
admit they're wrong. They usually just change the rules. Such was the case
in Alabama, where the Chief Justice would only allow his Christian monument
but would not allow monuments from other religions. Had the federal courts
not stepped in, contrary to Dave's advice, that sort of religious
discrimination would have continued. I strongly believe that, in Wyoming,
unless the courts step in, the local town council will try their hand at the
same kind of discrimination.
Rob