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[bryant]

Above the main door of the Cambridge City Hall is a stone bearing these words: bq. God has given Commandments unto Men. From these Commandments Men have framed Laws by which to be governed. It is honorable and praiseworthy to faithfully serve the people by helping to administer these Laws. If the Laws are not enforced, the People are not well governed. The asserted motivation behind "Roy Moore's monument to the 10 Commandments":http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/1103/13mooreverdict.html was acknowledgement of the law's moral foundation: namely, the Commandments inscribed on his monument, which are certainly the Commandments referenced in the inscription above. To the best of my knowledge, there's been no national outrage about the Cambridge City Hall. One senses a slight dichotomy here. I think, however, the dichotomy involves the real reasons why Moore's actions are repugnant. It's not that Moore's trying to set religion above the law, because that's not his real motivation. It's that Moore is a selfish, greedy, power-motivated man who doesn't particularly care about God. He cares about using the belief of others to advance his own career. He's no kind of Christian. It's a bad move to allow people of Moore's ilk to cast this as a fight between atheists and God. You can't give someone a free ride just because they claim to be religious. The dichotomy only exists if we ignore Moore's motivations and let him get away with framing the terms of the argument.

Comments

[gentlyepigrams]

The difference also has to do with the difference between allowing older historical buildings, where religious references are part of the history of the building, to leave historical references intact and adding new religious references to modern buildings. How old is Cambridge City Hall?

[bryant]

It was designed in 1888, and completed in 1890. Frederick Hastings Rindge reportedly wrote the inscription; he also funded the building. "All of his gifts came with the condition that didactic inscriptions be included in the designs and that his name never appear on the buildings."

That last clause is, I think, particularly significant. We don't really know if he wrote the inscription or not, either. He wasn't a limelight kind of a guy.

[gentlyepigrams]

This is an issue that reminds me very much of Confederate monuments on various public grounds throughout the South. I'm appalled when people fly Confederate flags over them (seen it in the last couple of years) and would rabidly froth at the idea of new monuments today. At the same time, I'm not comfortable with the idea of knocking them all down or moving them all into the basement.

In the same way, it seems to me that chiseling an inscription out of a 110-year-old building is just plain wrong, even if the inscription annoys the snot out of me and I think it's wrong on the history.

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

I always wonder how these people rationalize away the fact that they are doing something explicitly forbidden in the Gospels, namely standing on streetcorners proclaiming how righteous they are.

[marith.livejournal.com]

As has already been said, big difference between removing an inscription from a historical monument and adding a new one.
(How many people stop and read the Cambridge text, anyway?)

But yes, about the framing of the fight. I would actually have preferred it if the Court had chosen to leave his religious object in place - on the condition that the state add a Jewish monument, a Muslim one and a secular humanist one as well.

[bryant]

Actually, there was an attempt to get another monument in there side by side. Moore said "no."

This is sort of what I mean about the framing of the debate, though. You never heard of the attempt to get a secular monument next to the ten commandments -- all anyone knows about is how the liberals denied Moore the right to honor God. He completely owns the media perception of the situation. It's very poor tactics on the part of the left.