Channel 6 News Director: I Decide What’s Trivial

Channel 6’s news Director Scott Picken has a post up on the Ten Commandments Controversy and the resulting lawsuit:

Fischer revealed in his blog the city has put liens on his property and demanded he and Swindell start making payments on the $10,131 a judge ordered them to pay for the city’s legal fees in the infamous ‘10 Commandments’ controversy.  For those of you who missed it, four years ago, Fischer and Swindell took Boise to court after city council decided Boise should no longer keep the 10 Commandments monument in Julia Davis Park.  The city was being challenged by another group that wanted to put up an anti-gay monument on religious grounds and council simply didn’t want taxpayers to pay for a legal fight.

This is where the News Director goes off-base. First of all, the city wouldn’t have to pay for a legal fight, national groups were ready to provide the city pro-bono representation. It says something about the media when a news director doesn’t seem to know the facts of the case he was commenting on. See here for a complete rundown of the case written in 2004.

It’s not like the city was destroying the monument or hiding it … some would argue the monument was moved to an even more prominent location … but the idea of Boise somehow divorcing itself from a religious symbol sent Fischer and Swindell into a frenzy, so they sued and lost.  In doing so, they ignored the 11th commandment.

“Thou shalt not fight city hall over trivial matters.”

So apparently, the Keep the Commandments Coalition should have to pay, or bringing the issue to court was not okay because, in the view of the Channel 6 News Director, the issue was trivial. I’m sorry. When did Scott Picken get the right to decide what issues are trivial or not? The idea that City Hall should never be fought if the issue is “trivial” makes a mockery of free government, because, as the definition of “trivial” expands, the issues that you and I can challenge the city on decrease.

Picken goes on later and suggests, with a Solomonic sense of wisdom, that some at city Hall ought to play, “Let’s make a deal” and reduce the penalty for “pennies on the dollar.” That’s nice as far as it goes, though he doesn’t seem to grasp how extraordinary it is for citizens to be tasked with paying these legal fees.

He says the city should have more public consultation because, “What may seem trivial from an objective standpoint can still stir passions and I suspect city officials knew that.” Objective viewpoint?

The statement that an issue is trivial is, by definition, not an objective viewpoint based solely on facts and not influenced by “personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice.” (see dictionary.com) It’s a value judgment and value judgments are always subjective and based on interpretations and feelings.

So, what did the issue come down to for me? It came down to fairness, because across the street was a monument, the Anne Frank Memorial, which, while honoring Anne Frank and some other undisputably good causes in history, was based on humanism and pushed the United Nations and the gay rights movement among other things. It seemed that if we really believed in tolerance, we wouldn’t have a problem with a monument that was about 5 feet by 3 feet.

The second reason, though, was from scripture, but it wasn’t one of those really hefty ones. It came from the Book of Proverbs. In the midst of purely practice advice, the author of the Book of Proverbs writes, “Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set.”  (Proverbs 22:9)

Why would you tell someone not to remove an ancient landmark? Because without the landmark, a lot of people would become lost.

A few years back, I took my wife on a tour of the places I’d lived when I was a child. In Kalispell, there’s a place called Lower Valley Road where we used to live in a mobile home, which is no longer there. I was able to find the exact spot we’d lived even though I hadn’t been out that way in about 6 or 7 years.

How could I find my way? The landmarks. Some things had been changed, but there was still Mr. Frey’s shop, and there was still a turnoff. Then again, I’d been some places where everything has changed and you may think you know your way around, but you don’t know your way around this town anymore because the landmarks have changed, and you can’t find your way.

I wasn’t worried about the Ten Commandments as a physical landmark, but rather as a landmark of heritage and history. The Ten Commandments monument pointed the way back to something: our heritage and what type of country we were founded as.

Secular liberals have not been content to simply change America’s present policies on religion. Rather, they want to transform the view of our past in order to insure their own legitimacy. Ten Commandments Monuments that survive on lawns and in courthouses are landmarks that point to the truth of our nation’s history, and the foundations of its laws.

Dr. Del Tackett has said, “If you can change what I believe about the past, you can change what I believe in the present.” Teaching revisionist history, removing monuments to a private place where they’re obscured by trees in church courtyards, has the ultimate goal of insuring the landmarks are removed. If the landmarks are removed, truth is lost and instead those who wish to control our present and future can revise our past.

In essence, what’s at stake in these issues across our country is the past, present, and future of our country. Or as Mr. Picken would say, “Trivial matters.”