Sarah Palin: Base law on the Bible
Palin's latest declaration — that America's law should be explicitly based on the Ten Commandments — is confounding critics
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Peeved by a recent ruling that a National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional, Sarah Palin is urging America to base its laws on the Ten Commandments, telling Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that we should "go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant. They're quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible...." While Palin supporters remained mostly silent, secular critics quickly shot back. "More people in the United States are Christians," says Joe Gandelman in The Moderate Voice, "but the United States is not a Christian nation. And the founding fathers most assuredly did not define it as such." Not only "should we not base our laws on the Ten Commandments," adds Ed Brayton in Science Blogs, but "8 out of 10 are indisputably unconstitutional." Besides, the Declaration of Independence's "principle author," Thomas Jefferson, once described the Judeo-Christian God as "cruel, capricious, vindictive and unjust." Watch Palin's interview:
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.