[timm22]

A passive display — even on government property — is NOT tantamount to “force” by any stretch of the imagination, whether Conservative OR Liberal, and it certainly does not rise to the level of government establishment of a particular religion.

Constitutional/"Establishment" issues aside, do you think it is appropriate to construct these passive religious displays with taxes collected by force?

[muawiyah]

That's an irrelevant question because in recent cases the government paid for nothing.

The question should be should the government have the privilege of prohibiting religious displays?

[HKMk23]

They built the war memorials with taxes collected by force, and we’ve not had a war that wasn’t protested by a fair number of Americans.

I figure that, if government can build a memorial to a war protested by, say 10% of the population, and use tax money — including money collected from those 10% — to do it, then they can equally well build a Ten Commandments memorial protested by 10% of the population, and use tax money — including money collected from the 10% — to do it.

No matter what you support or oppose, as a taxpayer, one of the first things you realize is that somewhere, somehow some government agency is doling out YOUR tax money to advance an agenda that you’d NEVER DREAM of supporting, so if we’re going to nullify Ten Commandments displays on the basis of the tax dollar argument, we’re going to also have to unhinge a HUGE swath of Federal, State, and local government bureaucracy. And, if it’s ludicrous to do that, than it is equally ludicrous to bar a Ten Commandments display on that basis. If it’s NOT ludicrous to do that, the I’d assert that we’ve got MANY MUCH bigger fish to fry before we go after some local municipality over a couple of tons of sculpted stone.