The REAL Reason the GOP Is Trying to Require the Ten Commandments Be Displayed in Public School Classrooms
and the REAL reason establishment liberals oppose the Ten Commandments being in classrooms
CBS reports:
The real reason why the GOP wants to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in school classrooms is this.
First of all, the Ten Commandments, in the eyes of most people in the United States (and many other places), represents the fundamental idea that there is a code of moral right and wrong that has ultimate authority superior to what any particular human beings, even when constituted as a legislature, may assert. Most people, including myself, believe this fundamental idea is true, and I discuss this in some detail here. Whether or not people who support this fundamental idea do so because of some belief in God is quite secondary to their support for the idea.
Secondly, the GOP (like all ruling elites) wants to be perceived by the general public as a champion of this fundamental idea about morality, because this makes people view it as a legitimate authority.
Thus the REAL reason the GOP is trying to legally require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments is in order to make its oppressive rule over the have-nots—which in fact violates the Commandments about not stealing and not killing and not lying (among others)—seem to be legitimate.
What about the REAL reason the liberal establishment opposes requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms?
The liberal establishment seizes upon the fact that the Ten Commandments invokes the authority of God (it starts with the words “I am the Lord, your God…”) in order to prevent there being a genuine public discussion about what moral values should shape our society, by replacing that discussion with the very secondary question of whether there should be a so-called “separation of Church and State” (which, as my above-linked article shows is a bogus concept.)
The liberal establishment, just like the GOP, is part of the oppressive ruling class that violates the Ten Commandments. And just like the GOP, the liberal establishment fears a robust public discussion of what moral values ought to truly shape our society. Like the GOP, the liberal establishment wants society to be shaped by the values that most people oppose: domination of the many by the few, inequality, pitting people against each other to make the have-nots controllable by the haves. The liberal establishment and the GOP both worship the same strange god that I write about in “Worshiping a Strange God.”
This is why the ruling class (both the liberal and conservative wings) fears the growth of a movement to shape all of society by the Golden Rule (the basis for the Ten Commandments and virtually all other world religions), which is what egalitarian revolution is all about, as I discuss here.
Most people care about what is morally right and morally wrong
For most people, the reason they support what they support and oppose what they oppose is because they judge things according to what they think is morally right and morally wrong and NOT according to what they think is or is not in their self-interest.
This is why people who benefit from Medicaid and food stamps, etc., vote for conservative politicians who cut these programs in the name of (deceitfully) ending their freeloader-friendly aspects. People think freeloading is morally wrong.
This is why people support U.S. wars that are always promoted (deceitfully) by the ruling class as being for the purpose of protecting innocent people from harm. People think it is morally right to protect innocent people from harm.
Egalitarian revolutionaries understand this. That is why they work hard to carefully and persuasively refute the deceitful lies that the rulers use to make immoral policies seem to be moral ones. (I discuss this in some detail here.)
The problem with the Left is not that it is weak but that it is wrong
In contrast, the Left (Marxists and non-Marxists alike) does not believe that most people care about what is morally right and morally wrong. The Left wrongly believes that people only care about their self-interest. The Left believes that if people support something that is in fact morally wrong it is because those people don’t care that it is morally wrong and only support it for selfish or immoral reasons. This is why the Left does not bother writing persuasive refutations of the ruling class’s deceitful lies. Instead the Left just accuses people who disagree with the Left of being bad people: racist or homophobic or transphobic or sheeple or complicit with imperialism because they pay their taxes, and so on. This, of course, makes the ruling class smile because it just helps it to divide-and-rule the have-nots. I discuss this in some detail here.
Let's all live by the golden rule: those who have the gold make the rules. That's a ruling idea of any ruling class, which by any means necessary is enforced upon subjects. One traditional means is divide and rule. Get people fighting one another so they never get around to turning on you, their common oppressor.
Here we're to take sides in a divide to distract us from events of truly biblical proportions. For one, we're all being marched into more martial law under such pretext as protecting us from an 'invasion' - by 'those people'. Texas (Remember the Alamo!) is on the front lines of this war against 'them', and 'us', as it rolls out weaponized security infrastructure to eventually build biodigital control grids across a prison planet, possibly inhabited by post-human mutant machines to mark the end of evolution as well as history. Talk about armaggedon or apocalypse!
But they don't want us talking about that. Propaganda, invisible goverment as Bernays called it, doesn't necessarily tell you what to think, just what to think about. And here it pulls on conflict between church and state so standardized or cliche as to guarantee the goods of people up in arms again over repeated programming of this latest news du jour.
No doubt, it will draw audiences from 'the right' rooting for white and/or christian nationalism , however that may be produced on screen or in focus groups for MAGAlomaniacs. But don't discount its appeal to managed perceptions on 'the left' associated with separation of church and state, in favor of state dogma still serving ruling class interests as surely as old time religion, opiate of the masses.
Heads, they win; tails, you lose. Why do we need gods or masters educating or indoctrinating us? It's in the interests of most of humanity to make idols of neither and set about making our history in freedom among equals, without any ecclesial or secular institution dictating the terms and conditions of a social contract for class rule.
Self-interest, in itself, is natural to any sentient being. It's how we live, love, and learn. With second nature of culture under capitalism, it's vice made into virtue by those with the gold to get divide-and-rule competition incentivized for maintaining a predatory system of profit for the few at the expense of the many. Somehow, such human alienation is benevolently guided by an invisible hand, even as it's giving us the finger.
So it's in our self-interest to come up with more cooperative social relations, to build "a world where it's a little easier to be good" (Peter Maurin). The reason ruling powers must deceive us is to have us deny our common sense or sentience of anarchy, being without rulers, rather than falling for their misleading, no-win divides between egotism and altruism, self-interest and morality.
Another superb post which disloses the subleties of the ruling class in the control and oppression of the poor.