Louisiana governor Jeff Landry signed legislation June 20 to require the posting of the Ten Commandments in the Bayou State.

If you listened to the mainstream media, the caricature of what happened goes something like this: “shrimp po-boy yahoos from Louisiana don’t understand separation of church and state and want to force the Ten Commandments into people’s faces. Opportunistic Republican Governor Landry wants to use this as a red-meat culture war issue to turn Louisiana even redder.”

The only thing that’s simplistic is that “explanation.”

First of all, the Ten Commandments are hardly marginal to American life. The United States originated as a Western country, which means it drew the inspiration of its culture and laws from Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. Yes, Jerusalem, because the reality that we call the Judeo-Christian ethos fundamentally transformed Athens and Rome. Pretending otherwise is just lying about where our history and culture come from.

No other religious “doctrines” played a similarly central role in creating America’s cultural and legal identity. You can’t say the Five Pillars of Islam exercised that role. Neither is that true for Confucius’s Analects or Hindu Upanishads. Those, too, are historical facts.

But the Ten Commandments are hardly some sectarian “doctrine.” The Ten Commandments are also expressions of what we call “natural law” — i.e., those basic moral principles that any normally functioning human being knows. Don’t kill, don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t covet, respect your parents — these........

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