What is Wrong with America that Trump Can Clinch the GOP Nomination?

With Ted Cruz dropping out, The Donald has essentially clinched the GOP nomination for the Presidency. Not bad for an on again and off again Republican. But what is wrong in America that some one like Trump can be a threat to taking the Presidency. Last year I wrote a piece that predicted Ted Cruz losing the GOP bid for the Presidency. As a total whack-job, theocrat, I knew Ted didn't stand a chance in a general election, and I sincerely thought he was encouraged to run to make ol' Jeb look more electable. But then the Donald happened. No one could have predicted Donald Trump.

I will not go into Trump's politics, nor his lack of public speaking skills (George Takei already pointed this out in the most perfect way). The reason I will refrain from this is because Trump's politics have nothing to do with his success. Yes. I just wrote that the politics of the GOP Presidential candidate's success is irrelevant. What has America come to? Well, it's a long story, one that began with the spouse of one other potential Presidential Candidate.

The Clinton Presidency was a soap opera. It was as entertaining since the first time Bill played his sax. Yes, there was scandal, but it was of a personal matter. It's not like he was selling illegal arms and getting away with it. However, the Clinton Presidency was the first neo-liberal Presidency whose economic guru was Alan Greenspan, who suckled at the tit of Ayn Rand and was a member of her cult, "the Collective." Thus began the purchase of America by corporate interests.  Furthermore, his policies opened the door for successor to rape the Middle Class in America, leading to the Great Recession.

When li'l Bush stole the Presidency in 2000 he began continuing Reagan-esque trickle down policies. He gave tax breaks for the rich, privatized (AKA segregated) schools along racial and class lines, and lied to the American people to start an illegal war. And that's not to mention the unethical, and un-American detention camp in Guantanamo Bay. The Bush Administration continued the purchase of the American government by the corporate elite as the GOP rose to even greater power. With the marriage of the religious right to the political right now old hat, the Bush presidency led the country into a scientific back-slide. At the national level, climate change was denied, stem cell research suppressed, and creationism, now renamed "intelligent design," was allowed to be taught in schools along side evolution. These things became business as usual. Fortunately, Presidents have term limits, unfortunately, the next one was another neo-lib.

In 2008, Obama upset the DNC by sweeping Hillary Clinton out of the race, thus ending her first bid for the Presidency. He promised hope and change, and while the country hoped, his changes weren't spectacular, when they did occur. His first major change was to implement mandatory health care that was similar to what Hillary Clinton advocated during her husband's Presidency. The ACA, or Obamacare, passed, but not before the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies gutted the bill to the point that it was a mockery of its former self. In fact, States that did not expand Medicaid like they were supposed to have seen rate hikes and poor coverage for the very people the ACA was designed to protect. Added to this debacle, Obama expanded US military interests in the middle east which further destabilized the region. Also under Obama's watch, a corporation's religious belief trumps family planning, and corporations are now people who are allowed to vote with their wallets. Neo-liberalism looks less like liberalism, and more like old-fashioned conservatism.

The funny (or sad, per your perspective) part, is that the Party of Lincoln was hijacked twice in our little story. The first time was when the Moral Majority took controlling influence back in the 80s. This married Gilded-Age economics with religion. From a political point of view, this is brilliant because socioeconomic status is often an indicator (and much more so in the 80s than today) of a person's education. Poorer people tend to be more religious. Less educated people are less likely to question authorities they respect. Like preachers, church elders, priests, what have you. How else do you get an entire demographic to consistently vote against their own interests?

The second time the GOP was hijacked came not from the 1%, but from the product of their political tampering. A grassroots movement sprang up in Red State areas calling for a return to more Constitutional times. The Tea Party: poor conservatives convinced that it was the liberals that were destroying the country. You remember them, they were the ones chanting "Keep the Government out of my Medicare!" The Tea Party exists not to keep the GOP conservative, but to oppose Obama specifically.  Once the Republicans took control of the House and Senate they have stonewalled any left-leaning legislation introduced. This includes shutting down the Federal Government for not getting the 1% friendly tax breaks into the budget. Their obstructionism is so rampant, that the GOP controlled Senate is refusing to hold hearings on a Supreme Court vacancy.  They want to fill the seat, they just don't want Obama to do it. Before the 2016 election, this had become the state of US politics, the party in the Majority, refusing to work at the job they were hired for out of simple hatred for the other aisle, and the brown man in the White House. The only person Tea Partyers hate more than Obama is Hillary Clinton.

Enter the 2016 Presidential Election. When candidates announced their running in 2015, there were two political dynasties in the running. On the right you had Jeb Bush, son of Big Bush, and older brother to li'l Bush. Not even the GOP was having him. A dim-witted theocrat, Ted Cruz polled better than Jebbie. That's saying something. On the Left, you has Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and Secretary of State. Billing herself as the first woman President she stole the hearts of DNC hardliners. Of course, it helped that the DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was helping Clinton by making it hard for other candidates to be heard (I'm being nice, she flat out tried to rig the election). Add in that in many of the states Clinton won, there have been severe election issues that smell like purposeful election fraud (funny how it always benefits Hillary). Unfortunately, due to half the states barring independents from voting, hard-line neo-libs in the DNC are giving Clinton a lead over her competition in the polls. But it is her competition, and The Donald, that are defining the Presidential race.

Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are outsiders to the status quo. Clinton has many of the same employers donors as Republican candidates. Just like Bush, Kaish and Cruz, she is a whore to Wall Street too afraid to release her $200K-$400K speeches lest they be used against her during the campaign. The reason why those speeches are so important is because shucking Wall Street is so important. You see, the people are tired of business as usual. We know the game is rigged and we have two candidates that are not beholden to Wall Street. Sanders, like Clinton also works for his employers: the thousands of small donors, formally known as The People, who have financed over 99% of his campaign. Trump, on the other hand, is a Wall Street insider that may belong to the 1%, but he doesn't work for the 1%.  We have Sanders, who is grumpy, and Trump, who is crude. Trump the racist, and Sanders the activist. Two very different candidates, two very different people, two very different visions, but the most important thing is what they both share: Neither are under the thumb of the plutocracy. And THAT is why Trump is able to not only win the GOP nomination, but should Clinton win the DNC, have a good chance of becoming POTUS 45.

Either way, the next President will not be one of the usual crowd. It will be either a Social Democrat from the Bronx, or a sometimes Republican, sometimes Democrat from Queens. But the Witch from Chicago is out. The people are tired of the moneyed ruling elite ruining what was the most prosperous country in the world. The lives of the people are being sold to fatten the fat cats, and we are not going to take it any more.  The election of 2016 is a quiet revolution as The People are trying to use the system to get out Republic back. This is a test to see whether the American Experiment can survive our brush with the nouveau-Aristocracy that has arisen in America today. If not then in a generation or two the revolution may not be so quiet.

I think a little ditty from the 80s can sum up the attitudes of the oft ignored independent voters this election cycle:

Sanders Facebook Support Pages Shut Down on Facebook

It started out good enough. A quiet evening watching the Simpsons and idley swiping through Facebook. Then I noticed that one of the Bernie Sanders supporter pages I was in went from public to private. Later, I see the following post on my time line.  I tried to reply to it, but according to Facebook:

Post Has Been Removed

The post or object that you were commenting has been removed by its owner and can no longer be commented on.

Fortunately, I hadn't closed out the thread so I was able to copy and paste it below.

NAME HIDDEN FOR PRIVACY

39 mins · 

We are connected in spirit and will not be silenced!!! New Bernie groups will form in an instant!

See original post for comments!!!

Please share this to any Bernie groups you're in. The "online activist" group Hillary's super PAC hired (basically paid trolls) are striking tonight. By spamming the "report post to Facebook" feature on posts in Bernie groups, they've successfully shut down 3 of the largest Bernie groups within the past 20 minutes. Bernie Believers, Bernie Activists, and Bernie Sanders is my Hero had over 120,000 group members.

Don't panic! This should only be temporary until Facebook reviews the situation. Forgetting for a moment that this is easily one of the slimiest tactics I've ever seen in politics, you can still go to reddit to keep current on what's going on in the campaign. They hit us the night before tomorrow's primaries for a reason. Stay organized and stay informed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/

Bernie Sanders 2016 • /r/SandersForPresident
REDDIT.COM

So far, according to the above thread on Reddit, the following pages have been taken down:

• Bernie Believers
• Bernie Sanders is My Hero
• Bernie Sanders Discussion Group
• Bernie Sanders Activists
• Bernie Sanders 2016 - Ideas Welcome
• Bernie Sanders for President 2016
• Bernie Sanders or Bust

This is a horrible abuse of power from the Hillary camp. While she herself may not have ordered the attack, as the leader of her campaign she is ultimately responsible for it. I, myself, am conflicted. Part of me, the social studies teacher side, hopes she will call out her minions that would do such a cowardly act and hand them over to the authorities (the legality of this in uncertain) or at least flat out fire them. Another part of me wants to see this added to the growing stockpile of unethical deeds the GOP would use against her in the general election. If she gets the nomination that is. Sadly, she is already behind when it comes to millennials, and it is exactly this crowd that know what this kind of attack is!

I will write more as this unfolds, but as far as unethical campaign practices go, this is a new one.

Update: As of 11:30-ish 4/25/2016 the pages were back up thanks to the staff of Facebook looking into the matter as fast as possible.

While this attack may seem minor, it only is so because of the fast acting staff of Facebook, and the thousands of FB users that counter-reported the pages being shut down. This could have been far more serious because the attack happened on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary. This was a coordinated attack by people in the Hillary camp. Redditor, jdkon, was able to procure proof:

On the left you have a $hillbot saying to keep ip the good work shutting down the pages, and on the right are the masses of $hillbots patting themselves on the back.  The attacks were successful thanks to FB's algorithms which look at the frequency of reports an a page or a post. If a mass of people report a page in quick succession, the algorithms give FB's automated systems the go ahead to shut the page down. Better safe than sorry. And that's OK. But the Hillary camp exploited this safety feature to silence a political opponent.

This behavior is exactly why a political revolution is necessary right now. We have lost what it means to be a democracy. In a democracy that values free speech, you NEVER silence your opponent. You engage them, you debate them, you out politic them, but you never silence them. If your positions are genuinely superior to your opponent's positions then the voters will silence them at the ballot box. Anyone who tries to silence political discourse is a failure as a citizen.  This includes anyone in the Bernie camp that is thinking about retaliation. 

Sanders does not have to resort to dirty tricks to beat Clinton. Bernie is the leader of our little revolution, but only because he was in the right place at the right time. It just as easily could have been Elizabeth Warren. Sanders is doing so well because he is there for us, not the other way around. That is something Clinton and many of her supporters are blind to, because Clinton is only there for her. Her supporters that launched these attacks are only in for Clinton as well. Clinton is a demagogue who's only objective is to obtain the power of the Presidency. That power is an ends for people like her. For Sanders, it is only a means to implement policy that makes our democracy fair at the polls and fair at the work place.

Why Bernie Sanders can Save the GOP

The history of political parties in the US is a sordid one.  In George Washington's farewell address, he warned against political parties which had begun under his Presidency.  By the time John Adams became President, two prominent parties had formed: the Federalists and the Republican-Democrats. Eventually, the Federalists went by the way-side, and the Republican-Democrats dropped the Republican part.  A later party, formed in 1854, claimed the Republican moniker, and 6 years later elected their first Presidential Candidate, Abraham Lincoln.

It was the Radical Republicans that called for full equalization of rights and protections under the law for blacks before the Civil War, and during Reconstruction.  While the GOP has always had business interests in mind, there was still a progressive side that wanted to curtail rampant and destructive business practices.  After all, the "Great Trust Buster", Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican.  That goes to show that, historically, the Republican party was a dynamic party, one that covered a spectrum of political ideas.

Today, however, the GOP has been hijacked; first it was the Moral Majority, and lately the Tea Party. Today, the "radical" Republicans are the Libertarians, or at least those who buy into their objectivist ideology.  The GOP has gotten so extreme in it's platforms that the most liberal of Republicans are heavily conservative by the standards of just 40 years ago.  This is spelling the undoing of the Republican Party.  And it must not happen. Crack a history book to see the effects of a one party system.

Enter Bernie Sanders, the Independent Senator from Vermont. Sanders (his supporters just call him Bernie), has a large Republican following in Vermont, and there is even a Facebook page for his GOP supporters. While Sanders is often criticized for being a socialist (he's actually a Democratic Socialist which is still a capitalist), his policy ideas are middle ground for most of the advanced nations of the world. American politics have gotten so far to the right, thanks to the 1% and the religious fanatics hijacking of the GOP, that the middle ground is considered "extremist."  Sanders is not of the 1%, in fact he's their political nemesis, and he's not all that religious.  He's a progressive throwback and one that Republicans of when the party was truly Grand, would embrace.

The fact that someone like Sanders is able to gain such support despite not taking any Super PAC money, shows that the people are behind him.  Some of those people are Republicans.  This is important because the bulk of America is tired of Republican party shenanigans, and the corporate shills they choose for candidates. As an American, and fully aware that our political system is watched around the world, I was embarrassed after watching the first Republican debate. Trump turned the debate into a circus, and he's the GOP front runner. What scared me is that Trump is not really a product of the GOP as he is a reflection of current Republican Party.  He's misogynistic, racist, and cares more about his own wealth than the well-being of his fellow Americans.

No, not all Republicans are that way.  In fact most are not, at least most of the one's I know.  I understand that that was an anecdotal statement on my part, but I live in the Bible Belt, I live in GOP territory, I am surrounded by members of the Republican party.  One of the primary virtues of Republicans is loyalty.  That is why the sane, and good people I know that are Republican are not misogynistic or racist, or pro-1%.  They identify as Republican, mostly because their parent's did, and they are loyal to their party; to attack the party is to attack them.  But loyalty goes both ways.  If not, then it is not loyalty but servitude.  With the exception of the most radical of modern Republicans, the religious extremists, and Tea Partiers, many Republicans are waking up and realizing that the Party they are loyal too, is not loyal to them.

If Clinton gets elected... well, she is a Democrat in Name Only. If this was the 1960s, she would have been a Centrist Republican, not a Democrat. Never mind that she is flip-flopping on nearly everything now and mimicking Sanders, with the exception of her most fanatical supporters, even Democrats take for granted that she is only flip-flopping until after she would take office; she is only changing her views to get elected. Even if she gets protest votes over Trump, nothing would change.  It would be party politics as usual.

If Sander's wins, however, it is a game changer.  Part of his appeal is that he is not just a political leader, he is the leader of a movement.  A grassroots movement of the young and old alike.  The GOP is a repulsive force to to the Millennial Generation.  Even Millennial Republicans can see the writing on the wall if the GOP keeps to the path it is on.  That is IF you can find a Millennial Republican, most pay no attention to the GOP what so ever. In a more diverse-sensitive America, surviving parties must embrace the diversity of our nation. So far Republicans mostly alienate it.

If Sanders takes office, the GOP party leaders will have to wake up or lose their party.  To keep GOP obstructionists from stonewalling the White HOuse and Congressional Dems, GOP candidates will have to be more moderate, more willing to compromise, and more in touch with the needs of their constituents.  Too long have the 1% run politics to the chagrin of voters.  When Sanders takes office in 2017, it will show the 1%, and more importantly the American voter, that money is done.  Politics belong to all of us, not just the 1%.  The GOP will have to listen to their more moderate voters and politicians, and balance will return to American Politics. It is time for the GOP to return to its Lincoln roots, to regain its true fiscal responsibility like what Teddy Roosevelt exhibited, to work for the American People like Ike Eisenhower and not Big Business.

Cynthia Davis (R-O'Fallon) doesn't know how government works.

The following link is to the original post from the Turner Report:
The Turner Report: Cynthia Davis: Radical left wants to keep all Chri...: (From former Rep. Cynthia Davis, R-O'Fallon, who is now an internet talk show host) Last May I was invited to attend the St. Charles C...

Davis is another legislature that is jumping on the "persecuted" Christian bandwagon.  Cynthia Davis is the same State Representative that in 2009 wanted to do away with the Summer Lunch Program in Missouri schools because, I quote, "hunger can be a positive motivator."  Yeah, because all a 9 year old poor kid needs is a little hunger to go out and get a job.  That's a big F-You to parents and kids of parents who were hit hard by the recession just a year earlier.

Anyway, Davis is making the outrageous claim that "the left" is trying to do away with Christians in government and create a new government.  Yeah, this is a woman people elect to government who is saying this.  Of course she is referring to Kim Davis (no relation), who has been imprisoned for contempt of court for refusing to issue licences to gay couples.  So, because the clerk is not doing her job, and is being penalized for defying court order, now Christians are being persecuted.

C. Davis tries to explain why there are Constitutional bases to fight against the "persecution" of Kim Davis.  C. Davis lists four Constitutional reasons why Kim Davis, and thus all Christians, is being persecuted.

1) The Kentucky State Constitution says that marriage is between ONE MAN and ONE WOMAN. This, Kim Davis was upholding the Kentucky State Constitution.

FAIL:  The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land.  The Supreme Court ruled that banning gay marriage is against the protections within the Constitution.  The reasoning is the same as former bans on mixed race marriage (whose opponents gave the exact same arguments against it as they do now for gay marriage), banning marriage for certain groups violates the right to their religion, privacy, and their 9th and 14th Amendment rights.

Thus, the Supreme Court's ruling trumps Kentucky's Constitution.  Their one man, one woman amendment is a waste of ink.  This is how America works, a Representative, even at the state level, should know this.

2) C. Davis then emphatically stresses that Supreme Court opinions do not create new laws. In fact, the Supreme Court can only declare a law unconstitutional and cannot ever create a new law.

FAIL: C. Davis throws out a Fallacy of Equivocation in this bit.  She tries to be slick by putting the word opinion in all-caps.  Why this is slick, is that the is trying to equivocate a court opinion with an emotive opinion.  An emotive opinion is one that cannot be falsified, one that is solely personal preference.  These opinions are such, "blue is the prettiest color," or Justin Bieber is a better singer than Justin Timberlake,"

You see, each court ruling is accompanied by an opinion by the judge.  This is an opinion in the same way as a doctor uses it.  The Judges opinion is his view on the correct course of action -- his ruling --  (a diagnosis for a doctor) based on facts presented (symptoms for a doctor) and how they fit together gleaned from arguments by the attorneys (or how the symptoms interact in the patient).  These opinions make case precedent.  Precedent is used to keep laws consistent, that way what will get you punished one day, is acceptable by another judge at another time.

Secondly, the Supreme Court cannot make a law.  But it can interpret laws and declare laws unconstitutional.  And that is what the Supreme Court did in this case, it interpreted existing laws and declared that discrimination against gays in regards to marriage is unconstitutional.  So, no new laws were made, the Supreme Court only upheld existing laws.

3) C. Davis states that the governor of Kentucky should be able to order the release of Kim Davis, and that the gay-thing is a state issue, not a federal one.  She then reiterates that Kim Davis would be breaking Kentucky law if she issued marriage licences to gay couples.  In fact, C. Davis says that there is no federal law to counter the Kentucky law.

FAIL:  First, C. Davis fails on whose "issue" it is.  Kim Davis is a representative of the state of Kentucky.  Disagreements between citizens and their state IS a federal problem!  I do not mean the state of Kentucky disciplining Kim Davis, I mean the gay couples in conflict with the state of Kentucky.  That is a federal issue, and a federal judge gave a lawful order for Kim Davis to comply with the law under the current interpretation of the Supreme Court.  Kim Davis was not persecuted for refusing gay marriage, she was prosecuted for contempt of court!

Secondly, Kim Davis would break no law in issuing a gay marriage license. The reason is that the Supreme Court's ruling was that states cannot restrict marriage based on sexual orientation.  That ruling nullified the Kentucky law.  In other words, the Kentucky constitutional amendment is rendered null and void.  It is NOT a law anymore.

Lastly, since Cynthia has yet to learn this, there is a federal law that trumps the Kentucky law.  It is called the Constitution of the United States.  The laws are the 9th and 14th Amendments.  The 9th says that rights not given to the government belong to the people, and the 14th says that a citizen cannot be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process and extends the law to all citizens. In other words, states cannot discriminate against people when they write laws.  Laws like no interracial marriage... or gay marriage.

4) Cynthia (I cannot continue to give her a formal moniker, as she has lost all of my respect at this point) then comes up with an absurd scenario of the Governor of Kentucky sending the national guard to arrest the federal judge and "rescue" Kim Davis. Then she reiterates that the federal judge had no legal right to order Kim to do her job.  Lastly, Cynthia pleads that if nothing is done, then states won't be able to write their own laws.

FAIL: Yeah, a state that rises up against the federal government is a conservative's wet dream.  But the governor of Kentucky had no legal ground to send troops to "rescue" Kim, let alone arrest a federal judge.

Again, the judge was in the right, Kim wasn't.  I won't reiterate why, I've already done so.

The bit about stopping the federal government lest states be powerless.  She makes not only a false dichotomy (either we fight against this one law, or states won't be able to pass laws any more), but also she over exaggerates.  No, Cynthia, gays being able to marry is not going to nullify state constitutions, just like ending Jim Crow didn't.

5)    Here, Cynthia offers some Christian-rant about how screwing doesn't require a license.  And if sex doesn't require one, then gays don't need one.

FAIL: Neither do straights.  Straight people do not need to get married either.  But then some people, such as Kim Davis, like getting married so much they do it four times.  Basically, Cynthia lays out every bigoted reason Christians have against gays in one paragraph.  It's a pedantically written, vitriolic prose that perfectly captures the bigotry taught by many Christian churches.

6) Cynthia has the audacity to claim that gays should stand up for Kim Davis as well. Her reasoning is that the issue is not gay rights, it is civil rights. She states that if gays do not fight against barring Kim Davis from refusing to issue licenses then we all will lose our freedom of religion, state constitutions and civil rights.

FAIL: Here, Cynthia has just failed as a human being.  It is her bronze age religious beliefs that pit her against gays.  If you want to sit around thinking all gays are bad, fine.  If you want to sit around thinking that all women need to be subordinate to a man (which is in the same gay-hating book) then fine.  If all of that is in your religion, so be it.  You have the right to think that way.  What you do NOT have the right to do is interfere with anyone else's right to religion including their rejection of religion in general, and rejection of YOUR religion specifically.

In America, your right to punch ends where the other guy's nose begins.  Kim Davis is abusing her powers to punch out gays.  Sorry, Cynthia, sorry Kim, but your religious beliefs do not entitle you to force others to live with your bigoted and immoral values.  This is doubly true for agents acting on behalf of the government.  You see, Cynthia, in America, our civil liberties are tied directly with enfranchisement with the system.  When you treat a certain class of people differently, it runs the risk of disenfranchising them, of creating a second class citizenry.  Plessy v Ferguson institutionalized racism in America for about 70 years.  It has taken decades of fighting to desegregate the US, and fully enfranchise blacks and other racial minorities in the US.  Cynthia, your bigoted rage against gays and gay marriage is no different than your Jim Crow loving predecessors.

George Takei said it best in a recent Facebook post (emphasis mine):

Well this is a bit of a circus. So let us be clear: This woman is no hero to be celebrated. She broke her oath to uphold the Constitution and defied a court order so she could deny government services to couples who are legally entitled to be married. She is entitled to hold her religious beliefs, but not to impose those beliefs on others. If she had denied marriage certificates to an interracial couple, would people cheer her? Would presidential candidates flock to her side? In our society, we obey civil laws, not religious ones. To suggest otherwise is, simply put, entirely un-American.

The Ten Commandments and the Constitution

In honor of Arkansas’s decision to place the Decalogue at the state capitol, today I will look at whether or not our government is based on the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments are as follows:

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
5. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
6. Thou shalt not kill.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

To break this down, we will ask but a simple question: Are any of the commandments upheld in the US Constitution?

To answer this, the obvious solution is to go through the list and see where it applies to the Constitution.  As a reminder, the body of the Constitution sets up the how the government works, the only bit of law is an outline of preceding of treason. Since treason is not expressed in the Ten Commandments, we can disregard the bulk of the Constitution.  That leaves us with the Amendments which spell out individual rights.  We must limit ourselves to the first ten Amendments as the others were added after our founding fathers.

Ok, so Commandment 1: Only worship God (Yahweh).

Amendment 1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

We can stop there.  The First Amendment directly invalidated the First Commandment.  Where God commands worship only for him, the Constitution says that the government neither force you to, or force you not to.

But I shall go on.

The second Commandment is also annulled by the First Amendment.  Again, you have the right to make a statue of Marduk out of your boogers and worship him as you please.

The third Commandment is to not take the Lord’s name in vain.  This is often interpreted in two ways.  One is to not blaspheme.  Again the First Amendment trumps the Commandment as blasphemy is protected speech.  The second interpretation of the third Commandment is to hold to your word, to keep your contracts.  Between individuals, there are no contract laws written in the Constitution, which would satisfy the name-in-vain Commandment.  However, there are limitations to what kinds of (essentially) contracts the States can make.  But Article I, Section 10 outlines prohibitions on contracts and treaties between states and with foreign powers without consent of Congress.*  I think we can safely say that keeping contracts are as much of secular life and be it between governments or individuals, it is better for the general assumption that one’s word will be true.  Otherwise, why bother with contracts?

The fourth Commandment is not mentioned in the Constitution at all.  In fact, most businesses are open seven days a week.  In fact, it is generally held that laws forcing businesses to close on a certain day, or limiting sales of certain goods on a certain day are thought to be a violation of the First Amendment’s prohibition of promoting religion.

The fifth Commandment is not a matter of Constitutional law.  The closest thing to it are state laws that require not the child to honor the parents, but that the parents honor (provide for) the child.  A child can neglect a parent, and nothing happens legally.  But it is illegal for a parent to neglect a child.

The sixth through eighth Commandments are also not in the Constitution.  Homicide, and theft are defined by the states, not the federal government, except in rare cases.  But in any case, murder and theft are not in the Constitution.  Neither is adultery, which is legal everywhere.

The ninth Commandment prohibits perjury, libel, and slander.  Again, this is found in common law, not in the Constitution nor in any of the Amendments.  While it is found in common law, like murder and theft, all civilized countries have prohibitions against such things.

The tenth Commandment says not to covet your neighbor’s property.  Included in that property are slaves and wives.  Yes, slavery is in the Constitution, and before the 13th Amendment it allowed slavery, just like the teachings of the Abrahamic prophets.  But you could covet them as much as you wanted to!  In the Constitution thought crimes are not addressed, and to say coveting is evil is to create thought crime.  Fortunately, Amendments past the Tenth in the Constitution not only freed humans from slavery, but gave women the vote, recognizing them as no longer property of their husbands.

So before you vote on or petition for the Ten Commandments displayed on or in a government building, remember that not only is the Constitution written without them, but to adhere to them would be a step backwards for civilization.

So, what is the point of all of this?  If you want to put up the Decalogue on government property, it is the same as “respecting an establishment of religion”.  It is no different than a Muslim group wanting to post Sharia law, or Buddhists wanting to post the Eight Fold Path.  Want to post something in your town square?  Try the Ten Amendments, not the Ten Commandments!

*Thanks to Mike Wyner for pointing this out.