A law has been passed in Louisiana requiring all schools to post a copy of the Ten Commandments, or else. I suppose the law won’t apply to private schools — only to public schools — but there’s the problem with it. Public schools are taxpayer-funded extensions of the government, so the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment applies.
People are reading recent Supreme Court cases to figure out how the current court will rule on this law when the lawsuits show up. I’ve about given up.
To me, the whole issue is laced with irony. Christian nationalists want to turn their backs on the U.S.’s historic identity rooted in the Enlightenment, overthrowing the separation of church and state, while whining the whole time that identity politics undermine traditional values.
They want to redefine American citizenship. The message is, “If you aren’t going to embrace a Christian identity, then get out of the U.S.” There’s no room for non-Christians as far as the American Taliban is concerned.
Or, you can be non-Christian, but do your non-Christiany stuff behind closed doors, the sort of way the Saudis “tolerate” Christians.
There are those who are saying, “Posting the Ten Commandments teaches history to school children.” But the same people won’t let our school children know how, up until it was ended, slavery was routinely justified by Bible passages.
When I was growing up in the U.S. in the wonderful Fifties — the time America was last great according to MAGA-ists — we still had forced prayer in public grade schools. We were also forced to recite the Christian Socialist Pledge to the flag, so long as we didn’t salute the flag like Nazis, the way it was originally done.
I don’t think I learned anything of importance about U.S. history from being forced to recite the Lord’s Prayer, except that history had me by the collar and wouldn’t let go. I think that was the lesson they were trying to teach me. “Your opinion of this means nothing to us. We are your masters.”
Likewise, the fact is that all that had to happen to force the country as a whole to add “under God” to the pledge was for Congress to pass a resolution on it in 1955. The entire country just fell in line with it. In order to prove we weren’t godless communists. But we weren’t godless communists before the addition. So it was stupid. A history lesson, yes. A history lesson in mass stupidity.
The one looming characteristic of the 1950s in America was the amazing prevalence of sheepish conformity, and Trump wants it back. He wants his good buddy Roy Cohn back from the dead too, I’m sure. Sadly, Trump’s not sufficiently godlike to perform a resurrection.
We just observed the historical fact of the Emancipation Proclamation, but there’s no national holiday to celebrate the end of Jim Crow laws and probably won’t be as long as nearly 50% of the population considers them to have been ordained by God — proof that in the Fifties we weren’t godless communists.
I wasn’t planning to go on such a long rant. I distracted myself.
The plan was to talk about the fact that I’ve been thinking about how I might return to art again. It raises all sorts of questions for me. I want to return to art without leaving writing. I don’t want to relive 1991. My 1991 motto was, “One personality to serve you, since 1991.” I earned that motto, and I’d as soon leave it there, back in that decade. Just like I’d as soon the 1950s remained an object of nostalgia, not an ideal to recreate.
Sure, there were some good things about the 1950s. Like tree climbing. In the 1950s, I could climb trees and hardly anyone objected. I was never very good at it; I just did it. It was part of me. It’s the same with art. Also with the making of cheese omelets. But cheese omelets are a topic for another occasion.
You know you can all go back to climbing trees freely if you want, right? You don’t have to restore the 1950s, forced prayer and Jim Crow, right?
In the meantime, how about we celebrate new freedoms? You can marry almost anyone now. How cool is that?
Dr. Wes is the Real Change Circulation Specialist, but, in addition to his skills with a spreadsheet, he writes this weekly column about whatever recent going-ons caught his attention. Dr. Wes has contributed to the paper since 1994. Curious about his process or have a response to one of his columns? Connect with him at [email protected].
Read more of the June 26-July 2, 2024 issue.