Many liberals are not afraid of the Ten Commandments, in fact many liberals they live by them, too. Christianity is not the exclusive territory of conservatives. What the opposition is afraid of is the erosion of the historic principals of the United States -- the separation of church and state and religious freedom for all.
But that ignores the fact that historically, there was prayer in US public schools. Whereas at present, there aren’t even chaplains in public elementary schools and high schools. Thus prison inmates have access to better pastoral care than our own children.
When I was in public school, my teachers repeatedly attacked my Christian faith, in addition to other unpleasant acts, for example, that time they brought a lobster to the class as a class pet on Monday, had us name it, write stories about it, and then brought a lobster pot and served it up on Friday, which reduced many of the students to tears. This class was a fourth grade class, with the students being between 9 and 10 years of age, and it was an advanced placement class.
And they did other things like that, of an abusive nature, repeatedly, and in so doing managed to dominate some of the students, and also convinced my Sikh friend Hartaj, who was very intelligent and strong, that he was, in their words and in his, “not very strong and not very bright.” It was so sad, seeing him suppressed that way. His parents owned a grocery store where he and I would build forts from the plastic shipping crates, and after the store had closed, we would go to the elevated office from which his parents would monitor the store during the day for loss prevention purposes, since this was before cheap and inexpensive video surveillance, and that office was amazing - we would pretend it was the bridge of a starship.
After that experience I returned to Lutheran parochial school, as I came to the conclusion that the advanced classes in the public school were not worth dealing with, since even though the fifth grade teacher had a very good reputation, there was the issue of sixth grade, and also every one of those kids had been traumatized badly, and while they were more intellectually gifted than my peers at the Lutheran school, they were also harder to be around as a result of the various things that had happened to them in the public school. For some reason the principal saw what was happening in my case and personally protected me from the worst of it, for which I am eternally grateful.
The principal of that school spared me from so much of their abuse once he became aware of it that indeed I don’t have words to express my gratitude. Years later he told me his own son, who was an adult, had a drug addiction problem, which was very sad. At any rate, in my childhood, I loved watching the series V, about the alien invasion, because the actor who played the supreme commander of the Visitor’s fleet, who like all the Visitors only had a first name in a touchy-feely-squeeze way, John, looked exactly like my principal, and even sounded like him, sans the special effects that were done to his voice to give it that weird echo effect (people who have seen that awesome 1980s miniseries will know what I am talking about).
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