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This is the cartoon The Washington Post censored last week. The cartoonist, Pulitzer prize winner Ann Telnaes, has resigned out of dignity.

The 10 Commandments belong in (some) places of worship — not in public schools

Photo/Brad Bowie/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via the AP / Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signs bills related to his education plan on Wednesday, June 19, 2024, at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School in Lafayette, La. Louisiana has become the first state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom, the latest move from a GOP-dominated Legislature pushing a conservative agenda under a new governor.

By St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Board (TNS), June 24, 2024

Do Americans have the right to not practice religion?

When the question is phrased like that, even most fervent religious believers out there would likely concede that, yes, non-belief (like belief itself) must qualify as a fundamental American right.

Yet that right is under frontal attack, from a religiously driven political movement operating under the premise that if government doesn't promote religion, it is by definition attacking it.

That premise is not only backward but is a slippery slope toward theocracy. The latest slide comes in Louisiana, with a new law requiring that every public school and college post the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the law Wednesday. It makes his state the first to test the Constitution's church-state separation in this manner since a U.S. Supreme Court opinion in 1980 that found a Kentucky requirement to display the commandments in public schools violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

That clause is unambiguous: Congress (and, by extension, the states) "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

As clear as that seems, it won't necessarily be clear to today's radical-right Supreme Court. The conservative majority in 2022 upheld a public high school football coach's right to pray on the school's football field after games and invite his players to join him. The ruling brushed off the obvious implied pressure the coach created on his players to pray.

The Louisiana law goes beyond merely implied pressure: Every student attending publicly funded schools in the state will literally be a captive audience to a religious doctrine specific to Judeo-Christian faith. The new law even sets minimum dimensions for the commandment displays (11 by 14 inches) and mandates that they must be "in a large, easily readable font."

That slippery slope we mentioned? This is what it looks like.

Defenders of the new law maintain that the commandments aren't solely a religious statement but a historical document of cultural principles ingrained in the laws of America and elsewhere over the ages.

That may apply to some of the commandments — the prohibitions on murder, theft and false witness, for example.

But what is an adherent to polytheist religions like Hinduism or Buddhism supposed to do with "Thou shalt have no other gods before me"? And what is an atheist supposed to do with any of it?

In fact, even many of the Judeo-Christian faithful may discover that with this law, Louisiana officially relegates their beliefs to secondary status as well. The law specifies wording that religious scholars say generally represents a Protestant version of the commandments — a version distinct from those recognized by Catholics and Jews.

What is it that business conservatives always say about the free market? The government isn't supposed to pick winners and losers? Shouldn't something as complex and personal as faith have at least that level of insulation from government?

Allowing the religious beliefs of a few to dictate public policy for everyone creates dangers that go beyond the merely philosophical.

There's some irony in the fact that Louisiana's new law is fervently supported by the same conservative movement that has turned school board meetings into culture-war battlefields over books and curriculum.

They argue that teaching racial history or gender issues in schools strays from legitimate education and into the realm of cultural indoctrination. But it's OK to force religious belief (and, in fact, one specific version of religious belief) into every classroom?

If this law stands, every public school student in Louisiana will face what amounts to a daily religious sermon — whether they (or their parents) like it or not.

The Ruination of Britain

By Peter Oborne

The New York Times, 21 October, 2022 

LONDON — Until very recently the British Conservative Party was able to claim, with a great deal of credibility, that it was the most successful political party in the Western world.

The party of Benjamin Disraeli, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher has governed Britain for most of the last 200 years. Through much of that time the Conservatives have been synonymous with good sense, financial sobriety and cautious pragmatism. Despised by progressive elites, allergic to ideology, provincial rather than metropolitan, the Conservative Party rejoiced in being the stolid party of the boring middle ground. Not anymore. Today, the Conservatives are synonymous with chaos.

Liz Truss, the latest Tory prime minister to crash and burn, must bear her share of the blame. There are sound reasons for why she was forced to resign after just 44 days, the shortest term in history. It was a foolish notion to suppose that she could sack the most senior Treasury official, reinvent the laws of economic management and defy the collective wisdom of the financial markets. There was going to be only one result.

But the bigger truth is that the hapless Ms. Truss is a symptom rather than the cause of Britain’s chronic crisis of governance, which has reduced the country — once respected around the world — to a global laughingstock. The Conservative Party chose her, remember, even though she was obviously not up to the job. You didn’t need the foresight of Nostradamus to know she would fail. For the fiasco of her premiership and the disastrous state of the country, the Conservative Party must collectively take responsibility.

Oscar Wilde once wrote that to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose both looked like carelessness. For the Tories to lose two prime ministers in the space of three months shows, more than carelessness, that they are out of control. The government is already on its fourth finance minister this year; one of them, Kwasi Kwarteng, crashed the pound and ruined the party’s reputation for good financial management.

Like the Republicans in the United States, the Conservatives are detached from reality. In a generation, they have become a party of monomaniacs, incompetents and ideologues. Like a thoroughbred that has run one race too many, it needs putting out to grass. After a decade or two in the wilderness, perhaps the party can recover — though let’s not rule out the possibility it is finished once and for all.

That’s still a way off. In the wake of Ms. Truss’s resignation, the party announced plans to hold another leadership election, its second in three months. As with the contests that anointed Boris Johnson and Ms. Truss as prime minister, the choice will be made jointly by Tory lawmakers and party members. Even if, by some fluke, a half decent candidate won, it would not help their fortunes. The party is so riven by internal feuds, personal hatred and ideological disagreements that it has become ungovernable.

This is a perilous time. Britain is facing perhaps its biggest economic, political and even constitutional crisis since World War II. It’s daft to expect that the Conservative Party, which has done such damage over the past decade, might at last be about to govern sensibly. Two years could pass before the next general election. But Britain needs one now.

Admittedly Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour opposition, lacks charisma. Though far from brilliant, he conforms to a recent pattern of global leaders — Joe Biden in the United States and Anthony Albanese in Australia are two examples — who are reassuring even if they don’t set the world on fire. His frontline lawmakers, too, look more competent than the Tory shambles. Nor are they scarred by defeat or compromised by failure.

A growing number of Tory voters, let alone the rest of the country, are prepared to give them the time of day. That’s why a general election is in the national interest. It might seem foolhardy to expect the Conservative Party, staring down almost certain defeat, to call an election. But one of the glories of the traditional Conservative Party used to be its readiness to place country before party.

This doctrine was set out by — who else? — Winston Churchill in one of his last acts before standing down as prime minister in 1955. “The first duty of a member of Parliament,” he told an audience at his constituency of Woodford, “is to do what he thinks in his faithful and disinterested judgment is right and necessary for the honor and safety of Great Britain.”

This rhetoric may be orotund, but the argument is irrefutable. It would have been well understood by the patriotic and fair-minded Conservative Party that governed Britain with such wisdom 70 years ago. Today’s Conservatives, by contrast, cling to power for power’s sake. Besides doing further damage to the long-term reputation of their own party, their obstinacy is ensuring the ruination of Britain.

Mr. Oborne is a British journalist, broadcaster and former political commentator for The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail.