I wrote the following letter to the editor of the New York Sun:
In your editorial [“Moore’s Next Move,” Nov. 14, 2003], you write: “No one can dispute that the Ten Commandments are fundamental to Alabama¹s and our nation¹s law and government.” Yet the Ten Commandments had existed for millennia before anything like the Constitution was envisioned, and for good reason. America is a product of the Enlightenment, until then the most secular era in history and the one that overthrew religion’s hold on politics. John Locke and Enlightenment intellectuals insisted on basing law upon the empirical observation of human nature, not on divine revelations. American government rests on a view of man as sovereign and independent, with the law protecting his freedom from religious authority and his right to pursue his own self-interest. The view that the Ten Commandments undergirds our law and government is simply false.
Recommended Reading: The Ten Commandments vs. America, America: Under Rights or “Under God”? and Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative Against Freedom