As someone old enough to remember when prayer in the classroom was not only permitted, it was mandatory; I find Louisiana’s new law requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom particularly ominous. Note that it is not just allowed, or enforced by intimidation and peer pressure. It is mandated by law.

This new law does not just apply to public classrooms, it is meant for private schools and college classrooms as well. I’m not opposed to anything being posted in classrooms, public buildings or civic monuments, but making it mandatory establishes it as a form of intimidation. It says, essentially, “We’re in charge now, you will do as we say.”

We’ve all heard your dirty stories
Two thousand years
Two thousand years
Two thousand years
Of your God damn Glory

–Paul Kantner, Jefferson Starship.

I know I’ve told this story here before, but it is well worth repeating. In the early 1960 s when my cousin Rudy left Cuba and came to stay with my family, he was soon enrolled in my high school. Our first day in home room, after the Lord’s Prayer and Pledge of Allegiance ceremonies, he whispered to me under his breath; “Its to get me away from this political shit that my parents shipped me out of Cuba in the first place.”

I doubt if this ruling will stand, especially if Trump is defeated in November. But this is how they establish control, first symbolically, through intimidation and peer pressure. Eventually it is escalated to Law. This is what’s really behind all this Confederate Heritage you hear about. Its how they let you know they’re in charge now. We were never told explicitly that we would be punished for refusing to participate in these religious and political rituals. But a couple of kids who did (due to religious reasons, they were Witnesses or Adventists) soon got the shit beat out of them by the upstanding patriotic Christian bullies in school.