Thou Shalt Not
While channel-surfing last night, I paused for a moment, despite my better judgment, to observe the nightly train-wreck of logic known as The O'Reilly Factor. The barron of bombast had a bug up his butt about the recent court decision to ban the ten commandments from an Alabama courtroom, and his subject of interogation was a young woman representing the Americans for Separation Between Church and State. After a surreal exchange in which Reilly first disputes that the ten commandments are related to religion ("they're historical documents - what's wrong with that?") and then leaves aside the crucial issue that it was the stated purpose of the Alabama judge who put the shrine to the commandments in his courtroom to prostelytize his religious views, we come to the heart of the matter.
"What I wanna know," blusters O'Reilly, "is what makes it sooo wrong for someone who believes in his faith, which happens to be Christianity, to display something like this in his courthouse?" (quotes are from memory, not verbatim).
The young woman, who obviously has yet to master the art of concealing her shock at the stupidity of these kinds of questions, falls back on some rehearsed answer about the First Amendment protecting religious expression by prohibiting government involvement in religion. She's assertive, but her point isn't quite strong enough and she knows it. It's too narrow, too technical. I keep waiting for her to come up with something devestating - about how the ten commandments are supposed to be God's law, and the courtroom is about human laws, or that the commandments demand faith whereas the courtroom is a temple of reason: something that makes clear that the First Amendment is about keeping the inquiry-blunting, authoritarian demands of religious belief out of the deductive, empirical requirements of civil jurisprudence.
However, if these words are on her lips, she doesn't say them. Someone must have told her to be careful what you say on a network like Fox, and that there can be no real winning of arguments with rock-headed dopes like O'Reilly. She continues on about the importance of respecting the individual religious beliefs, but not imposing those views on others through the power of government. Cool, but not great TV. Where's James Madison or Thomas Jefferson when you need him these days?
O'Reilly soon loses paitence with the canned, timid argument but realizes that shouting down this woman, which he really wants to do, will make him look like a bully. So he wraps up the interview in that condescending dismissive tone that reassures all Fox viewers that "hey, these crazies can have their opinions, but we all know better." The segment ends and once again the day is saved, thanks to the chowderhead guy.
7:46:38 AM 
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