Ethics

John Adams and the Ten Commandments

By Ed Brayton

Jon Rowe has an interesting post at Positive Liberty about the Summum case that will be heard by the Supreme Court in this term. That's the case where a fringe religious group wants to put up a monument to their Seven Aphorisms in a public park next to a Ten Commandments display in two cities in Utah; the cities rejected their application to do so and the 10th circuit ruled in favor of the Summum organization.

Jon points out that John Adams argued that the Ten Commandments in the Bible were not the real Ten Commandments, just as Summum does today. He suggests that Ten Commandments monuments should include the text of Adams' letter to Jefferson in this regard. I like that idea.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on October 19, 2008 (boomark / email).