What are they thinking? It has me flummoxed.
Four out of five Americans disapprove of removing the Ten Commandments monument from the
rotunda of Alabama’s state judicial building. I know America is populated by weirdos. How
else do you explain TV shows like Fox’s “Miss Dog Beauty
Pageant“? But have we gone so completely nuts that we want
to install a theocracy? Have we learned nothing from the Ayatollahs? Take a look at
walking man. Anyone for putting him
in the rotunda?
Postscript: Leave it to Christopher Hitchens for
the punchline: “Too many editorialists have described the recent flap as a silly confrontation with
exhibitionist fundamentalism, when the true problem is our failure to recognize that religion is not
just incongruent with morality but in essential ways incompatible with it.”
Still, Arts Journal reader Shane Hockin has a point:
Both sides are totally overreacting. On one side, one hunk of concrete in a
courthouse does not mean the Bible is going to become America’s lawbook just because it has
religious jargon on it. On the other side, one hunk of concrete taken out of a courthouse does not
mean that everyone’s religious rights are going to be taken away from them next
week.
If we take a single step right or left, everyone gets all up in a hissy fit. Nine
times out of ten the hissy fit is unwarranted and we soon step back in the middle again. The whole
thing has been blown out of proportion. … In the end I blame Judge Moore. To make
himself look like a martyr he has made a mockery of our judicial system. At least someone had the
sense to suspend him. Hopefully soon we can all get on with our lives and worry about important
things like ending war, fixing the economy, and getting some tacos for lunch.
