Poll: 4 of 5 disapprove of moving Commandments

[kysrsoze]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/08/27/ten.commandments/index.html

I'm sorry, but WTF is wrong with this country? I can't believe I live in the so-called Land of Freedom - especially when you consider the fact that some @sshole right-wing local court justice moved it in 2 years ago, admittedly to call out the legal question.

I was raised as a Lutheran but I believe it's an attrocity to have that monument sitting on government property. I have a little different opinion about the pledge of allegience b/c in that circumstance, 'God' could be anybody's God, but legally I even have my doubts about that. I hate the Christian right. They stand for hate and separatism, and they still somehow still call themselves Christians.

Anybody who gets on me for doing a convenient 'op-ed' can kiss my @ss.

[jor_mama]

1. heard a good short monologue on this today

on the radio. It was Neal Boortz. I know, I know, before you shoot me ... lightning storms NE of Austin meant it was tough to get the station I wanted, so as I flipped through, I heard "ten commandments" with a level of consternation. So I decided to hear what he had to say.

He mentioned that he believed the Ten Commandments are divinely inspired. But just as he would not expect a politician to push his agenda in a church, he would no more hope for a religion to push their agenda in the government.

He said that if you admire the ten commandments so much, take your little self to Kinko's, make 50 copies of them, tape them to every mirror you own, make refrigerator magnets, pray with your kids in the morning and evening, read them before you go to bed, while you eat, keep them under your pillow, etc. Not one single entity is stopping anyone from doing this, but that the main motivation for this whole controversy was not the individual expression being lost, but the loss of what the christians perceived as an ability to get their agenda across. I'm not doing the monolgue entire justice. Basically he was saying that I can't go into my neighbor's house and force their kids to pray, so (mwah-ha-ha) I'll just make sure God's in the pledge of allegiance, that the 10 commandments are everywhere, etc.

I have to say I agreed with his position on this. It was well-spoken.

[kysrsoze]

3. Amen!

I have no problem with that. My sense of religion is such a mixture of beliefs by now, but one thing I know is that God doesn't stand behind the government. I don't believe he/she/it would ever stoop that low.

[jfxgillis]

2. Go easy

It's a longtime, chronic neurosis of the American national character. "Prayer in Schools" gets almost exactly the same number, and has for 40 years.

Our saving grace--and how's THAT for an inapt turn of phrase?--is that almost all of that 80% don't care a hellava lot nor do they think a hellava lot about such subjects.

If you ask them "Do you think the Ten Commandments are by and large a good idea?" They'll say yes. And they'll instinctively say "Then don't get rid of them."

Normal people of average intelligence raised in typical fashion leading their ordinary lives have no impulse to THINK through the issue they way you have.

Besides, almost everytime some cunning politician tricks the public into actually adopting a policy based on this, the public gets SCREWED. I'll never forget the Salt Lake City Council authorizing ALL after-school clubs so the city could get around the "Bible Club" ban; first club organized? The Gay/Lesbian/Straight Alliance!!!

After which, they went back and BANNED all after-school clubs.

[kysrsoze]

5. Fuck Utah

Sorry, I know everyone in the state isn't bad, but I guess it's OK to have multiple wives though, right? It amazes me what a mess people have made in the name of religion. Whatever happened to tolerance. I'm pretty proud of the fact that my church openly accepts gays, lesbians and people of every color. They even have a nice view of other creeds - especially given the fact that they don't think everyone else is going to hell for not being a Christian.

[Journeyman]

23. The Mormon polygamy issue shows. . .

there is no separation of State and Church -- if there were, the Federal Government would have had no business forcing the Mormons to renounce their doctrine of polygamy as a precondition of acceptance into the Union as a State. So long as such egregious Federal interference is countenanced against an established religion, and the money in your pocket proclaims our collective faith in a God, all talk about "Walls" and "Separation" is but empty bluster, and each small "victory" merely a stopgap to the wider agenda of reaction's inexorable desires.

[TAH6988]

38. What's wrong

with having multiple wives, if consenting adults want to live with that arrangement??

[madrchsod]

7. to bad the bible club

didn`t read their bibles..there is no direct words about men being "gay" and there is no hebrew word that means "lesbian"...

[zanana]

41. Thank you, jfxgillis.

Excellent response. I sometimes get too worked up by the results of these "overnight" polls that are so conveniently worded to bolster support for Bush. In a week or so, another polling result will emerge showing just the opposite response.

[madrchsod]

4. you know

these assholes have never read anything about st.mark,of matthew ,mark, luke and john. if you read the history of st.mark and his founding of the coptic church you realize how the words of christ got totally screwed by paul and his "letters"..these people are not followers of christ but believers in themselves-which will never get them into heaven...

[kysrsoze]

6. Precisely. And the book of Revelations is figurative ONLY

It scares the fuck out of me to think that some of these people are wanting to mess with things over there b/c they think they're helping bring about the second coming. I'm sure it is going to happen, it would happen without their help anyway.

[Rooktoven]

10. a nice site expounding on your point...

http://liberalslikechrist.org/

[kysrsoze]

13. Thanks, I'll make sure to read the whole thing

[PartyPooper]

8. Where was this poll conducted?

Montgomery? Mobile? Anyone polled outside of the state of Alabama...Or, the South?

[rudeboy666]

12. Hate to break the news

but secularism is not yet the accepted religion of America(or of the world___the only exception being the communist states of the 20th Century).

True, many progressives and intellectuals already succumb to this new religion. However, most regular Americans(and the rest of the world!) are somehow still clinging to the old ways.

[haymaker]

17. Secularism is not a religion.

It is a state of mind.

[sujan]

19. secularism is not religion

it is being neutral in affairs of religion.

[RainDog]

27. this is not about secularism

...which fundamentalists try to label as a religion, but it is, in fact, a product of The Enlightment and the central determining idea that humans can use reason to govern themselves...which is the same foundation for the Constitution and, thus, the same foundation for this country. humans, not some disembodied spirit or some reading of chicken entrails, reason together to determine the laws which best promote the ideals of liberty, equality and humanity...again, foundations of enlightenment...remember...all created equal, endowed by creator...that does not mean that god is speaking in someone's ear. deism was the predominant religious idea at the time.. the idea that an impersonal god set the universe in motion and gave it to humans to reason their way to a just and ennobling society.

of course, there are so many b.s. church schools who are indoctrinating children with their theocratic view of the world, some of that may have interfered with your knowledge of your own govt.

but I digress...

because the issue is not secularism, unless, by secularism, you mean the very foundations of this country embodied in Englighenment philosophy, and wise restraint in the idea of the the separation of church and state. the issue is representative democracy, rather than mob rule, as the republicans are so fond of saying. the issue is respect for the rights of the minority to practice the faith of their choice, or to practice no faith, and to still be a fully franchised citizen, because we do not require loyalty oaths to a church of any sort in order to be a citizen in this country.

I read a very good discussion of this issue via a blog yesterday. I'll see if I can track it down and I'll post the link here.

edited to add link and quote

http://markarkleiman.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_markarkleiman_archive.html
The eight Associate Justices of the Alabama Supreme Court, taking their political lives in their hands (judges are elected in Alabama) have defied their Chief Justice and obeyed the federal courts in ordering the Ten Commandments monument blocked off from public view. Almost all of the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives (along with 50 renegade Democrats) have already violated their oaths of office (sworn, by most of them, on the Bible) to "preserve, defend, and protect the Constitution of the United States," by adding a rider to the appropriations bill for the judiciary forbidding the Marshal Service from enforcing the federal court order. <*>
The case really couldn't be simpler: When the federal courts declare what the Constitution, "the supreme law of the land," says, is that declaration binding? Or to put it even more bluntly, do we still live under a government of law?
Bill Pryor, the Alabama Attorney General who defended Moore's stance in court, and whose nomination as a federal appellate judge is still before the Senate, put it clearly <*>: "The rule of law means that no person, including the chief justice of Alabama, is above the law," Pryor said. "The rule of law means that when courts resolve disputes, after all appeals and arguments, we all must obey the orders of those courts even when we disagree with those orders."
Does the President of the United States agree? And if he does, will he summon up the courage to say so? Respect for the rule of law used to be a bedrock conservative principle. Anyway, the last time I checked, "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" was part of his job description. But my guess is that he will, once again, decide that the better part of valor is disretion, and discreetly continue his silent pandering to the religious bigots.


this is one of a series of posts about this issue. more recently the blogger also mentions a serious problem with a recent House vote which did not get enough attention, if you ask me.

[jfxgillis]

14. No, those numbers seriously sound right.

As I said, quite comparable to 40 years of polling on prayer in school.

Numbers like this on issues like this almost never move policy.

The question is instinctively translated by ordinary people into "Should the Ten Commandments be venerated or disrespected?"

[Syrinx]

24. first paragraph

"Only one in five Americans approve of the federal court order under which workers removed the Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of Alabama's state judicial building Wednesday, according to a new poll."

[SodoffBush]

9. Did you notice how long it took to remove it? Two years

It should have been 24 hours, courtesy of Moore's muscle power and pocketbook.

[dfong63]

11. poll: 4 of 500 obey commandments

j/k

[opihimoimoi]

15. Hey, men should have the FREEDOM to marry as much wives as he

can afford. and Women too, they should be able to marry x husbands.

This IS the land of the FREE

[dfong63]

31. i'm not sure how your comment ties in

... with the topic here, but one does have to wonder. if gay marriage is legalized, where will the trend stop? why not polygamy? or communal "marriages"? who decided that monogamy should be uniquely blessed by the state?

[sujan]

16. 4 out of 5 are morons

[ComerPerro]

18. FREEPERS are what is wrong with this country

They are very warped, and there is something seriously wrong with them.
They go to sites and vote en masse.
As if that were not enough, the dumb their cache and vote as many as twenty times.

No way a margin like that is correct.

Consider these links, all of which are polls that they have tampered with in the past 3 days:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/970969/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/971366/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/971008/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/970936/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/970876/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/970805/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/970682/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/969597/posts

This one is particularlly telling:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/968915/posts

It is a Fox News poll on whether the ten commandments should be removed. It ended well around 4 to 1. Plus this thread has a link to another poll on this same issue.

This is my favorite: They try to FReep THEIR OWN POLL!!!!!!!!http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/969702/posts

[prolesunited]

22. Would you please take a minute

and forward those links to the people who sponsored the polls. They should know their is an organized effort to skew the results.

[Fozzledick]

20. Is it just me?

Or has anyone else noticed that this whole idolization of the statue and invocation of divine names in a petty political squabble actually violates the first three commandments?:shrug:

[xchrom]

fundamenatalism is idol making

you cannot fix the bible in stone and call it anything else -- god would be a moveable spirit -- and it's the spirit that counts.
the bible opens the metaphoric door to relationship -- and that's all. to fix it or cement it in tradition or dogma makes an idol of it and that's a sin.

[screembloodymurder]

21. Stupid white rednecks

and their ignorant, misguided, second cousin spouses. NASCAR lovin, beer drinkin, gun totin assholes don't even go to church.

[sasquatch]

25. Maybe we should've let the south succeed from the union

Would we've missed them? Probably not; we should've just sanctioned them and bombed them everyday like we did Iraq. If we had maybe we wouldn't have all the problems we have today because it all seems to come out of the south. I know that I don't have to go to the south to see facism I know it exists in the Buckeye state as well. In Cincy we recently had a shooting in a bar where a young black man was supposevly robbing the bar when this man shot them in defense of everyone in the bar. The Cincinnati DA who once sentenced a women to prison for selling porn out of her house said "I obviously won't be pressing charges against this man". The only thing missing is the weapon that used for the supposive robbery but, Oh well. The south always seems to be the source of this crap so maybe we should've just freed the slaves and left them to their own ruins not assisting them in anyway. Not serious I'm just venting.

[TreasonousBastard]

26. Well,

I was raised as a Lutheran, too, and around here we were absolutely for a complete separation of church and state. "Render unto Caesar..." and all.

We took the rather extreme position that while religion could be a moral force, neither the government should tell religion what to do, nor religion tell the government what to do.

While I am no longer a Lutheran, I still believe that, and my current affiliation is even more stringent about it.

I can't begin to express just how depressed I am seeing those crowds crying about the loss of their precious Commandments. I can't begin to express how pissed I am hearing his nonsense about how our law is based on them.

I had a very depressing discussion with a woman who talks freedom of religion all the time, but wanted prayer in the schools, etc. and couldn't see how these fundies were little different from certain Islamic states.

"Oh, Islamic states are wrong, but we are a Christian nation"

Huh?

[tlb]

28. I can't really object to the 10 Commandments in a courthouse

since it's a recognition of the basis of western civilization's legal framework. I am guessing a lot of the people in this poll make the distinction between the religious and the secular aspects of their importance to western jurisprudence. As do I.


I believe you'd see a totally different response to a similar monument with engraved psalms.

[ClintonTyree]

29. The 10 commandments are in NO WAY.................

the basis of western civilizations legal framework. The 10 commandments had been "borrowed" from earlier laws and codes. Christians took them as their own and made it seem like these basic tenets never existed before.
Christianity itself was concocted from many earlier religions (most of them apocalyptic) and transformed into the "one true religion". It's true, look it up.

[dfong63]

33. not quite

The 10 commandments had been "borrowed" from earlier laws and codes. Christians took them as their own and made it seem like these basic tenets never existed before. Christianity itself was concocted from many earlier religions (most of them apocalyptic) and transformed into the "one true religion". It's true, look it up.

Christianity was derived from Judaism, which is where we (Christians) got the 10 commandments. look it up.

[ClintonTyree]

34. And Judaism was derived from?

And please don't say "god himself".

[mikeytherat]

39. Your challenge is accepted!

This is very simple, and will only consume about five minutes of your time. Ready?

List each of the Ten Commandments, in order, and explain each commandment's relevance or correlation to American jurisprudence. Not just the Easy Three (no killin', stealin' or lyin'), ALL of them.

I've applied this test hundreds of times and have yet to have anyone explain how Commandments 1-4, "Thou shalt have no God before me", "Thou shalt make no graven images", "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain", and "Honor the Sabbath" have any basis, for anything, in American law. Especially since Commandment No. 1, as written, specifically forbids religious freedom (damn that 'ol pesky First Amendment).

I await your response.

mikey_the_rat

PS
I posted this in the GD forum yesterday and got no response (which is what happens usually when I propose this).

PPS
20 years I've used this "test," and NONE have given me answers. Most folks start immediately with the No Killing and No Stealing, and I must remind them they have stated "The 10 Commandments are the basis of American law," NOT "Some of the 10 Commandments sort of have some kind of relation to our laws, or something."

[Democat]

30. The media

As long as the media is right wing, the people will repeat what they are told.

[Sweetpea]

32. Maybe because of all of the press it is getting

people may be reacting to the "big dealness" of the issue. I have heard some say...let them have their monument.

[leftyandproud]

35. come on now..

I think we need to admit that our attitudes aren't exactly mainstream...I think there are 25% on the hard left in this country, 25% on the hard right, and 50% moderate rep/dem. Everyone I've spoken to really doesn't give a f*** if it stays or goes...but they feel negative about it being wheeled away...they don't see the importance of its removal...where we (an informed minority) really understand the need for it. I think the poll reflects that.

[TAH6988]

36. Anybody else

see anything contradictory in this stement from the original poster -- "I hate the Christian right. They stand for hate and separatism..."? Seems like the poster stands for "hate" also. Either that or he's part of the Christian right!

Hating those with whom we do not agree is NOT the answer.

[acropolis]

37. I loosely 'disapprove' too

seems a waste of our federal governments time and money.

But what I strongly disagree with is disobeying the federal judge. Obviously he made the right decision, and obviously Moore should obey even if the decision was wrong.

My point:
I think if you rephrased the survey question "Is Justice Moore right in disobeying the federal judge to keep the ten commandments up?"

you'd get the 80% going the other way.

[Mari333]

40. Not ONE mediawhore

said anything about the FACT that other groups tried to ALSO have their monuments to their ideas and their religion get a monument put INTO the Alabama rotunda and were DENIED..

the US public does not ever get all the facts from the media..ever.

[cspiguy]

42. 10 Commandments = HATE LITERATURE

to many people. Look at how many respected people and politicians in this country and the world would be perscuted by these 10 restrictions on freedom, choice, and diversity.

[jos]

43. Not a surprise

Whenever these church/state issues come up, such as school prayer, the numbers run heavily in favor of the religious action. Most Americans are either unfamiliar with the rationale behind the separation of church and state, or don't believe the action in question crosses the line.

[0007]

44. Ha! LOL!!

This is a typical piece of propaganda. It makes me laugh.

[ZenLefty]

45. Hi kysrsoze

When posting in LBN, please use the article's actual title as the title of your post.

"Ten Commandments monument moved"

Thanks.

ZenLefty
DU Moderator