The Ten Commandments are in the news again, and not just because of the recent passing of the venerable Charlton Heston. The Supreme Court is set to take up the issue once again of whether displaying the Ten Commandments on public property is permissible, or more precisely whether other viewpoints must also be accommodated if the Commandments are already there. The Supreme Court ruled in a 2005 case that displays of the Ten Commandments are generally permissible. Most often these displays can be understood as an expression of the nation's religious heritage, and the faith they express has been vital in shaping the nation's culture and laws. As the Court put it, 'Texas [where the case originated] has treated her Capitol grounds monuments as representing the several strands in the State's political and legal history. The inclusion of the Ten Commandments monument in this group has a dual significance, partaking of both the religion and government.' The Court added that thousands of such monuments exist in public parks and places throughout the United States.

The group Summum has taken this ruling and argued that if the Ten Commandments can be displayed, we'd like our Seven Aphorisms included too, and the group sued two communities in Utah for refusing to permit them along side the Ten Commandments. This group's New Agey Aphorisms include the belief that the universe is a mental creation, the principle of vibration (everything moves), and the principle of opposition (everything is dual)'etc. Summum won their case at the appeals level with that court holding the group had been unconstitutionally discriminated against. Now the case is on its way to the Supreme Court. Atheists groups, which lost in 2005, are thrilled with the results in the Summum case so far because, if the ruling should stand at the Supreme Court, the likely effect would be to force the removal of Ten Commandments monuments nationwide. These groups will have accomplished coming in the back door what they couldn't accomplish coming in the front. Government officials would be stripped of the power to decide what is in good taste and relevant to their community's values. If all ideas are equal, then any group wishing to place their monument would have to be included or none at all. One can imagine that even war memorials honoring those who have fought and died to secure our nation's liberty would have to be balanced by peace monuments addressing the evils of war and why peace at any price should always be the nation's chief aim—otherwise away with the war memorials by this line of legal reasoning.

The Founders of the United States certainly didn't consider all beliefs to be equal. They argued in the Declaration of Independence that based on the laws of nature and Nature's God, the British government had become a tyranny and therefore could justly be opposed. The laws of nature are those laws God established when he created the earth and man and can often be ascertained byobservation and reason. God has also specifically aided man (because of the various passions that can distort his reason) by specifically revealing lawsthroughout history: the laws of Nature's God. Central among those laws are the Ten Commandments. These laws create corresponding rights. 'Thou shalt not murder' creates the right to life; 'Thou shalt not bear false witness,' the right not be falsely accused of a crime; 'Thou shalt not steal,' the right to own property. These laws and others, when taken together create the rights to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' as the Declaration so eloquently puts it: the ability to be able to live free of the unlawful intrusions of one fellow man or his government. According to the Declaration, governments are instituted to secure these rights. The British government was doing exactly the opposite. They were in fact burning down colonists' towns, blockading their ports, seizing their citizens and forcing them into military service, paying the native populations to attack the colonists, imposing arbitrary taxes to which the colonists had no redress, charging them with false crimes and taking them back to England to be tried. The list went on, but all pointed to the British Crown and Parliament acting contrary to both the laws of God and man.

This belief in God's overarching laws and the corresponding rights they create has been a vital part of the American political experience. Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and many others appealed to them to point out the injustice of slavery. Franklin Roosevelt used these laws to weigh the totalitarian regimes of Hitler's Germany and the Japan Empire and find them wanting. Martin Luther King, Jr., during the Civil Rights Movement, exposed the nation's failure to live up to its ideals by turning to those truths found in the
Declaration of Independence and other divine laws. President Reagan stood up to the communist world on the firm ground of these beliefs. President George W. Bush, following 9-11, sent out the clarion call of the need to oppose Radical Islam as well as the need to promote liberty in the Middle East, stating that freedom is 'Almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world.'

Director Cecile B. DeMille introduced his movie the Ten Commandments to audiences in 1956 saying, 'The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God's laws or whether they ought to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like [the Pharaoh] Ramses. Are men the property of the state or are they free souls under God?' The Supreme Court in 2005 rightly pointed out, we as a nation have chosen the later. I trust in 2008, they'll see the Seven Aphorisms possess no such moral authority or role in our history and that communities nationwide can exclude them or any like them, while keeping the Ten Commandments.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Randall DeSoto is the author of the book We Hold These Truths about how leaders have appealed to beliefs found in the Declaration of Independence throughout United States' history.