Vanity: My Letter to Alabama Attorney General Pryor

Self | 11/11/2003 | Self

[farmer18th]

Are you proposing that we should revive the colonial laws you are quoting from?

Recently an arson was accused of setting a rather devastating wildfire in California. I would have no problem--and I think the majority of the country would have no problem--with due process and then public execution.

But that's not the subject here. The subject was how profoundly our early jurisprudence was influenced by the Ten Commandments. Since that was the generation that set in motion a republic that has lasted longer than another currently on earth, their precepts might be worth listening to?

[Looking for Diogenes]

"Are you proposing that we should revive the colonial laws you are quoting from? "
Recently an arson ....

That doesn't answer the question I asked. Do you think the 18th Century colonial laws you are quoting should be made the law of United States of America in the 21st Century, regardless of our Constitutionally protected rights?

The subject was how profoundly our early jurisprudence was influenced by the Ten Commandments.

No, the topic is the vanity post you put up regarding whether Alabama AG Pryor has objections to the Ten Commandments. If you need to check again you'll find it is at the top of the page. I submitted a specific list of potential objections. I am still waiting to hear back from you on most of them, as you suggested you would.

[Poohbah]

But if the German people were better schooled in the Ten Commandments they might not have fallen for the paper-hanger. Worth considering?

Wow.

That paragraph managed to fly into exospheric levels of stupidity; German culture was probably the most openly "churched" of all of Europe prior to 1933, with large-scale government affirmation and support of religion in the public square. Yes, they were extensively schooled in the Ten Commandnments. No, it didn't stop them.

[LowOiL]

Bookmarked... Loved your comments (along with a few others). Thanks for posting this.

BTW..I am from Alabama so my opinions will count in future elections.

[LowOiL]

German culture was probably the most openly "churched" of all of Europe prior to 1933, with large-scale government affirmation and support of religion in the public square. Yes, they were extensively schooled in the Ten Commandnments. No, it didn't stop them.

I think they were stopped by those that held the 10 a little closer to their hearts.

[Poohbah]

I think they were stopped by those that held the 10 a little closer to their hearts.

Which is 100% independent of whether there's a 5,280-pound statue of the 10 Commandments in the courthouse rotunda.

[jwalsh07]

Barron v. The Mayor and the City of Baltimore (1833)
brief Fifth Amendment was not "applicable to the States"

Prudential Insurance Company v. Cheek (1922) 259 US 530
"The Constitution of the United States imposes upon the states no obligation to confer upon those within its jusrisdiction the right ot free speech."

The Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)
Rejected the view that the Fourteenth Amendment's' priviledge and immunities clause incorporated the Bill of Rights.

Missouri Pacific Railway Co. v. Nebraska and Chicago (1896) 164 US 403
Burlington & Quincy Railway Co. v. Chicago (1897) 166 US 226
Both rulings involved the application of the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. Hurtado v. California (1884) States need not honor the Fifth Amendment's requirement the individuals be indicted by a grand jury before being prosecuted.

Maxwell v. Dow (1900) 176 US 581
States were free to convict before juries of less than 12 members and without unanimous verdicts.

Twining v. New Jersey (1908) 211 US 78
States need not honor the Fifth Amendment's priviledge against self-incrimination

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You can start braying any time now. :-}

[farmer18th]

That doesn't answer the question I asked. Do you think the 18th Century colonial laws you are quoting should be made the law of United States of America in the 21st Century, regardless of our Constitutionally protected rights?

You're assuming the laws on the books in New Hampshire were seen to have violated the Bill of Rights at the time of its ratification? Is that your point? I believe Massachussetts had a state religion until the 1830s. The laws against adultery, buggery, and fornication had no Constitutional dimension whatsoever. The establishment clause was designed to protect religious denominations against FEDERAL intervention. CONGRESS SHALL PASS NO LAW. The Judeo-Christian consensus of the time wouldn't even have dreamed of positing a Constitutional right to break the sabbath or commit adultery. Enforcement of the shared moral law was an obligation of the states, as was cleary seen in the sample criminal law I have posted.

Judge Moore's stance has had the effect of asking the culture, "are these timeless and ancient moral truths still the standard of the American people?"

Can Americans, at least, agree that murder, adultery, theft, purjury and covetousness are wrong?

And, if so, can they agree that the great source of those truths must remain immutable, fixed, unbending, omnipotent, omnipresent, and divine?

Can Americans, or anyone else, afford the alternative? If the last century is any guide, I think not.

[farmer18th]

That paragraph managed to fly into exospheric levels of stupidity;

Your orbital path, I suppose, if you believe the German people were schooled in God's law at the time of Hitler's rise to power. Could anyone who actually knew the eighth or the tenth commandments endorse Kristalnacht? Could anyone who actually knew the the sixth commandment ignore the carnage of the camps? Was the Berlin cabaret scene of the 1930s a shrine to the seventh commandment? The Lutheran church had become an insipid tool of German Nationalism Socialism, a testimony to the danger of the state influencing the church more than the church influencing the state.

[lugsoul]

You can call it "attempting" a refutation all you want. Barton can't cite a source for it - and you know it. And whether SOME of the Commandments are reflected in law or not, that is no basis for claiming, as you did, an AGREEMENT by the Founders that the 10 Commandments would form the basis for the entire legal system.

The Sabbath laws you cite are not based upon the Commandments. I don't recall any Saturday Sabbath laws in the colonies.

[lugsoul]

nope.

[farmer18th]

You can call it "attempting" a refutation all you want. Barton can't cite a source for it

He cited two sources; they just weren't primary, and that was a mistake on his part. Perhaps you could tell me, though, about legal assumptions in colonial America: would a law against blaspheming the Lord have surprised a member of the Constitutional Convention? Would a law against adultery? Would a law against breaking the sabbath? The answer is no. The convention itself assumed the Ten Commandments had shaped criminal law and would continue to do so. Care for more quotes from colonial statutes?

Or how about this, written retrospectively in 1800 about William Penn, the law giver:

But however liberal his ideas were on controverted points of theology, yet the pernicious member of society - the immoral man, whose actions are hostile to virtue and a good life, was justly held in abhorrence, and delivered up to the secular power to be dealt with according to his desert. The drunkard, the swearer, the adulterer, the Sabbath breaker, the gambler, with the whole crew of moral disorganizers, were, in his judgment, proper objects of legal cognizance; because no dictates of conscience can be pleaded for violating the duties of natural religion, or justify overt acts, or even expressions, when they are subversive of private rights or social order.

The Pennsylvania Gazette October 15, 1800

[lugsoul]

It was your cite in support of your claim. Not mine. And the fact is that it cannot be attributed to Madison by anyone who heard him say it or who read his writing of it. It is unsupportable.

Now, how many of the Commandments would you say have to NOT be codified as law before we can determine that the Commandments are not the entire basis for our legal system? We don't have a law for the 1st. We aren't legally required to honor our parents. It is only when coveting crosses the line into that other commandment, stealing, that it becomes a crime. There is no law with regard to graven images. And even the Sabbath laws you cite do not follow the Commandment - I don't recall seeing any punishment for generations decreed for breaking the Sabbath.

[farmer18th]

.Now, how many of the Commandments would you say have to NOT be codified as law before we can determine that the Commandments are not the entire basis for our legal system?

The commandments are not even the entire basis of Old Testament law. A hebrew boy of King David's day would memorize, what, more than 600 biblical statutes? There's a difference between basis, meaning the spring from which the river flows, and the entire river.

Your distinction about the "sabbath" is meaningless. The cultural consensus had shifted to take Sunday as the "Lord's Day," (and arguably the 7th day of the week, if work starts on Monday) to which the commandment applies. Early 17th century New England law did indeed apply punishment to covetousness and even gossip.

Does it make you uncomfortable that the founders had no problem with laws against adultery? Why?

[lugsoul]

Covetousness? What is that, a thoughtcrime? How exactly does one prove that I want your wife?

"The cultural consensus had shifted" - SURELY, farmerboy, you are not contending that a shift in a cultural consensus is sufficient to alter the immutable law of God, are you?

You still didn't answer my question - how many of the Commandments must be enshrined into law to establish your view that they are the basis of law? 5? 6? Don't you think we can identify societies with that many similar laws that have no cultural roots in the Jewish tradition?

[lugsoul]

As for your other question - does it make me uncomfortable? No. Did every society that outlawed adultery base its legal system on the 10 Commandments? No.

[farmer18th]

You still didn't answer my question - how many of the Commandments must be enshrined into law to establish your view that they are the basis of law? 5? 6?

Go to www.interloc.com or www.abebooks.com and buy yourself 2-3 colonial statue books. They range in price from $75 to $300 a piece, generally. Read the blasphemy and Lord's Day statutes, and then ponder how Shinto-like our early criminal code really was. If murder and adultery were the only standards, I would expect to see similarities between, say, the Roman code and ours. Somehow, though, a New Hampshire law forbidding anyone to deny the authority of Genesis, Exodus,...Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John just doesn't seem to be anything other than Biblical in its origins. Wouldn't you think?

[farmer18th]

Covetousness? What is that, a thought crime?

Perhaps it didn't occur to you that covetousness could be expressed?

[farmer18th]

SURELY, farmerboy, you are not contending that a shift in a cultural consensus is sufficient to alter the immutable law of God, are you?

Of course not, but surely you aren't implying that uniformly and perfectly faithful adherence to the laws of God is the only test for determining whether a society values those very laws? By your standard, a society that has a "sabbath" law on the books is not really conscious of the Ten Commandments at all, because it varies with your interpretation of the original.

[lugsoul]

First - it is not MY interpretation of the original. There is no doubt in anyone's mind which Sabbath those wandering Israelites were commanded to keep.

Second - now you are on shaky ground. Either the Commandments are the basis of law or they are not. How can you possibly argue that the Commandments "as modified by cultural consensus" are the primary basis for law? Are you a judicial activist or something?