"Whatever is wrong with being guided by character, a sense of justice, a code of conduct, moral sensitivity or the letter and spirit of the law?"

a sticky subject, indeed.

Tough to find the balance between making sure that government does not establish (or favor) a specific religion (unless one religion is expressly denying the rights of another) without both implying the falseness (couched in the language of empiricism) of all religion and the disenfranchisment of the religious from the public discourse.

And yet, historically there has been little "moral sensitivity" without a religious basis -- even if those practicing "moral sensitivity" are no longer religious but merely raised by the religious or influenced by a pervasive culture of religions.

And "the letter and spirit of the law" is what we're all "fighting" for. The secularists want to shape the letter and spirit of the law as much as the religious do (and have).

And they have. The secularist philosophy is winning the day -- all public policy is still moving in that direction (which is the point I've made all along about these 10 commandment displays -- they are being defeated).

Every law in our country that has ONLY religious foundation is being soundly thrashed and defeated no matter how loudly the religious might protest. The aforementioned displays, abortion on demand, restricitions on homosexuality. Only those laws that share both religious and pragmatic (the coin of the secular realm) basis are not in play.

In this democracy we all (so far) get to hash this out. But it's not enough, as currently fought, for the secularists to have their say in our democracy. No, they wish to make sure that the religious do not have their say. And they are couching this wish in language that is MaCarthy-like in its paranoia

If I were to make a guess I'd say that one strong reason the secularist so wishes to remove these decades (centuries) old displays is that it is harder for the secularist to maintain the arguement of the harm of religion while still acknowledging our history of having been developed while fully steeped in religion and religious people.

Furthermore, that "steeping" resulted in a pretty damn good constitution as well as an arguably pretty sound government and governmental mission. These public displays that hint of our history and the role that the religious played in it are a constant public reminder that those of judeo-christian philosophical extraction are not the demons that the secularists need to make us out to be in order to disenfanchise the current crop of religious.