Defending the Constitution

This from Iowa Rep. Steve King:

"The Ten Commandments are the guiding principles on which our country was founded and which are protected by the Constitution," King said in a printed statement. He said a ruling to the contrary would render the commandments "an artifact rather than a living document."

Many other religious and moral symbols are found in public places around the country, said King, including the phrase "In God We Trust" etched above the speaker's chair in the House chamber.

"Our Constitution requires us to respect those symbols as well as the Ten Commandments, which served as a guidepost for our founding fathers," said King.

This is wrong on a number of levels.

The Ten Commandments were not, in fact, a guiding principle on which our country was founded. So says Thomas Jefferson:

In a February 10, 1814 letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, Jefferson addressed the question directly. "Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland's question why the Ten Commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England we may say they are not because they never were." Anybody who asserted that the Ten Commandments were the basis of American or British law was, Jefferson said, mistakenly believing a document put forth by Massachusetts and British Puritan zealots which was "a manifest forgery."

The reason was simple, Jefferson said. British common law, on which much American law was based, existed before Christianity had arrived in England.

"Sir Matthew Hale [a conservative advocate for church/state "cooperation"] lays it down in these words," wrote Jefferson to Cooper: "'Christianity is parcel of the laws of England.'"

But, Jefferson rebuts in his letter, it couldn't be. Just looking at the timeline of English history demonstrated it was impossible:

"But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it...."

Not only was Christianity - or Judaism, or the Ten Commandments - not a part of the foundation of British and American common law, Jefferson noted, but those who were suggesting it was were promoting a lie that any person familiar with the commonly-known history of England would recognize as absurd.

(snip)

As Thomas Jefferson wrote in a June 5, 1824 letter to Major John Cartwright, "Our Revolution commenced on more favorable ground [than the foundation of the Ten Commandments]. It presented us an album on which we were free to write what we pleased. We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts."

After all, only two of the Ten Commandments have long been enshrined in our law - don't kill and don't steal - and those have been part of human society since the stone age (and are even today part of the rules of "stone age" cultures, who have never had contact with modern religion). These two are clearly part of "nature's law," as Jefferson often noted.

That pretty much disputes King's idea that the Commandments were "the guideposts" for our founding fathers as well.

Of course, the biggest lie is that the Constitution requires us all to respect the Ten Commandments, and I'm sure Muslims, Buddhists, and other religions would object to that as well. This is the only thing in the Constitution that even comes close to discussing them:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.