[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 27 (Wednesday, March 5, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H741]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TEN COMMANDMENTS ARE THE BASIS OF OUR LAWS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Manzullo] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Speaker, the House has just voted on a very
interesting bill expressing the sense of Congress regarding the display
of the Ten Commandments by Judge Roy S. Moore, who is a circuit court
judge in the State of Alabama. The judge had posted the Ten
Commandments on the wall of his courtroom as a remembrance and sign
that all the laws in this Nation and, in fact all of the laws in the
world as we know it, really come from the Ten Commandments, the
Decalogue, which is the laws that were given to Moses.
Another judge in the same circuit in Alabama, in response to a
lawsuit that was brought against Judge Moore, ordered Judge Moore to
remove a copy of the Ten Commandments that hangs on the wall in his
courtroom. The Alabama Supreme Court has decided to review the matter
and has issued a stay allowing the Ten Commandments to remain on the
wall of the courtroom during the pendency of the appeal.
How interesting it is that the U.S. Congress, that the House of
Representatives should have to take a vote on whether or not it is
lawful that a copy of the Ten Commandments be posted in a public
building.
James Madison, who was the author of our Constitution, said: ``We
have staked the entire future of the American civilization not upon the
power of government, but upon the capacity of the individual to govern
himself, control himself, and sustain himself according to the Ten
Commandments of God.''
As one looks at this great Chamber, the House of Representatives, the
people's House, the Chamber where Members of Congress from every State
in the Union and from the territories come in order to do the people's
business, one only has to look at the sculpture directly in front of
the Speaker's dais and the sculpture is of Moses.
The reason for the picture of Moses in the Chamber of the House of
Representatives is to give credence to the people speaking here that
all of the laws that we enact have as their moral basis the Ten
Commandments. In the Supreme Court itself, there are two versions of
the Ten Commandments up on the walls.
Here we are in America today at this point in history where we have
to defend the posting of the Ten Commandments on the wall of the
chambers of a judge who looks upon those Ten Commandments in the
historical aspect that this is the basis of all of our laws. After all,
the reason it is against the law to steal is that this was listed in
the Ten Commandments, Thou shall not steal.
As a person goes over to the Jefferson Memorial and stands inside
that beautiful building, if he stands right in front of Mr. Jefferson,
turns his back and looks in the same direction as Mr. Jefferson,
immediately to Jefferson's right, the first tablet says very simply:
``Can the liberties of a Nation be thought secure if it has removed so
firm a conviction that our liberties are the gift of God?''
As Jefferson and Madison and all of the authors of the Constitution,
and Blackstone, and the people who gave rise to the great common and
statutory law in this country have observed for years and years and
years, it is based upon the law of Moses, it is based upon the Judeo-
Christian doctrines that gave rise to our very freedom in this country.
So it is with sadness that we have to reach that point in America
where one judge orders another judge to remove a copy of the Ten
Commandments from the walls of that judge's chamber. But I am proud
today that the people have spoken through the Members of the House of
Representatives who have voted today in a majority to commend Judge
Moore for having the courage and having the faith to show that he
believes, as most Americans do, that the Ten Commandments are the basis
of American law.
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