ACLU in Error

Let's face the facts: Although our Constitution mandates equal civil rights for individuals who practice any religion or none, the historical fact is that all religions have not had equal influence on our culture.

Furthermore, as a matter of historical record, our culture's legal system has Jewish roots, which only rabid Christian-phobics have ever even tried to ignore. Our Declaration of Independence also has roots in Greece, Rome, England, and the Iroquois Nation...but it's pure revisionism to try to study, discuss, or illustrate the roots of the Declaration of Independence without mentioning the Bible.

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/05/07/aclu-fights-to-remove-ten-commandments-display/?mod=google_news_blog

(Refresher: Here's the link to Exodus 20 online:

http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/book.php?book=Exodus&chapter=20&verse=

Verses 2-11 are here counted as the first four, and verses 12-17 as the last six Commandments; some scholars have numbered them differently.)

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/judge-suggests-stripping-10-commandments-down-to-6-to-remove-religious-elements-in-aclu-led-lawsuit/

A good historical lesson could be based on the fact that Roger Williams divided the Ten Commandments into four that concerned people's relationship with God and six that concerned our relationships with other people. However, Williams' idea has been subject to criticism. The fourth Commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy," has been the historical basis for the whole idea of workers' rights--the idea that everybody deserves one day off work every week. And in Moses' time "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" meant to Semitic tribesmen "Thou shalt not practice human sacrifice or 'baptism by fire.'"

In order to conduct a fair historical study of the influences on the Declaration of Independence, a teacher should acknowledge that ideas similar to those found in the Torah had percolated up to the surface of other cultures by the eighteenth century, not always entirely due to Jewish influence on these cultures. The teacher might even use C.S. Lewis's comparative study of the ethical teachings of other religions, found in The Abolition of Man. (It would be helpful for the teacher to read the rest of The Abolition of Man.)

However, the teacher must admit that the primary cultural influence on the framers, the common ground of all eighteenth-century education to which all educated people could and did refer, was the Bible; the primary influence on law, specifically, was the part of the Bible known as the Torah or "Books of Moses." Failure to admit this fact would be teaching a lie. It's not possible to read eighteenth-century literature in English without acknowledging its biblical basis.

And if some poor little sensitive plant out there really feels hurt by seeing the Ten Commandments in a display of historical documents, then there are two rational solutions to this child's problems: (1) Remove the display of historical documents, and presumably stop teaching history, altogether; or (2) Refer this child for counselling to help him or her deal with the reality that, in historical fact, all documents, all cultures, and all individuals have not contributed equally to every important development.

Even the most important influences on the history of A (as it might be the Chinese empire) had no influence whatsoever on the history of B (as it might be the American Declaration of Independence). If you can't deal with that, you're emotionally unfit to study history at all.