The governor of Louisiana just signed a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools.

There are two problems with this. The first and most obvious is that the Constitution prohibits the government from making laws that mandate an establishment of religion. While the Ten Commandments may be central to the Judeo-Christian tradition, the government has no right to pass laws that discriminate against Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Taoists, Sikhs or atheists.

But there is a second problem: Whose Ten Commandments are going to be displayed? The original text does not number the commandments and contains more than 10 imperative statements. Even within the Judeo-Christian tradition, there are disagreements on how to parse them and what they mean.

The standard Jewish version holds that the first commandment is, “I am the LORD thy God,” while the second commandment is, “Thou shall have no other gods before Me.” For Christians, “I am the Lord thy God” is not a commandment but a preamble. So, the first commandment for Christians is not an identification of God but a prohibition of worshiping false gods.

Catholics and some Protestants differ on where to put the prohibition of graven images and how to interpret it.

According to the Exodus version of the commandments, observance of the Sabbath day (or in some versions the Lord’s Day) is justified because God rested on the seventh day from all the labors associated with creation. But according to the Deuteronomy version, the Sabbath day is supposed to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt. In any case, Jews celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday and Christians on Sunday.

There is still confusion on whether the text means “Thou shall not kill” or “Thou shall not commit murder.” Though most editions of the Bible have “murder,” the King James edition has “kill.”

Adultery in the ancient world involved a man sleeping with a married woman. Nothing in the original text of the Ten Commandments prohibits a married man from sleeping with an unmarried woman, concubine or enslaved person.

While there is a commandment prohibiting false testimony in court, contrary to popular belief, it does not prohibit lying, at least not explicitly. Nor does it prohibit promise breaking. One can argue that both are contained in the spirit of the commandments, but that is a matter of interpretation.

According to some versions, there are two commandments dealing with coveting: one involving your neighbor’s house and another involving your neighbor’s wife. Other traditions combine them into one commandment.

Are the Ten Commandments the basis of our moral system? If they are, then it is odd that they say nothing about slavery, rape, torture or other heinous crimes. Jesus reduced the commandments to two primary ones: love of God and love of one’s neighbor. But neither of these is mentioned in the original 10.

So which version does the governor of Louisiana want to put up in public schools and how will students be instructed about their meaning?

Your guess is as good as mine. It was disputes like these that led the Framers of the Constitution to decide that when it comes to religious matters, it is best for the government to step aside and let people make up their own minds.

In an age when many people complain about the intrusion of government into people’s private lives, wouldn’t it be better to put up the Bill of Rights, whose wording is beyond dispute, rather than the Ten Commandments?

Kenneth Seeskin is an emeritus professor of philosophy and the Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick professor of Jewish civilization at Northwestern University. He wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune.

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You know you’ve touched a nerve with progressive activists when they tell you not just that you’re wrong but that you’re on the other side.

Such is the fate of any old-school liberal or mainstream Democrat who deviates from progressive dogma. Having personally been slapped with every label from “conservative” to “Republican” and even, in one loopy rant, “fascist,” I can attest to how disorienting it is given my actual politics, which are pure blue American only when they aren’t center French.

But it’s not just me. New York magazine’s liberal political columnist Jonathan Chait was accused of lending “legitimacy to a reactionary moral panic” for critiquing political correctness. When Nellie Bowles described the excesses of social justice movements in her book “Morning After the Revolution,” a reviewer labeled it a “conservative memoir.” Meghan Daum, a lifelong Democrat, was accused of having fallen into a “right-wing trap” for questioning the progressive doctrine of intersectional oppression.

If this was just about our feelings, these denunciations could be easily brushed aside. But the goal and the effect is to narrow the focus of acceptable discourse by Democrats and their allies. If liberals are denounced for “punching left” when they express a reasonable difference of opinion, potentially winning ideas are banished.

This narcissism of small differences effectively leaves it to Republicans to claim mainstream ideals like patriotism, which Matthew Yglesias (another targeted apostate) argues still holds value for non-MAGA America, and smart politics, like attending to the concerns of the working class, as George Packer (also frequently attacked) points out.

In the run-up to a tight election with a weak Democratic candidate and a terrifying Republican opponent, pushing liberals and centrists out of the conversation not only exacerbates polarization, it’s also spectacularly counterproductive.

Take President Joe Biden’s recent executive order severely limiting asylum. The Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal accused him of trying to “out-Republican the Republicans.” Mother Jones called the action “Trump-like.”

Meanwhile, according to a recent Axios poll, even 42% of Democrats support mass deportations of immigrants in the country illegally. It’s no secret this election will be fought in the swing states and won in the middle, which makes another poll’s finding that 46% of independents in support even more concerning for the party’s electoral prospects.

Consider other liberal political positions that have been denounced by the progressive left: Criminal offenders — even those not named Donald Trump — should go to prison and a well-trained and respected police force provides community safety.

Then look at where voters stand on these issues. According to a recent Pew poll, “a majority of voters (61%) say the criminal justice system is generally ‘not tough enough on criminals’ and “overwhelming majorities of Biden and Trump supporters say it is extremely or very important for police and law enforcement to keep communities safe.”

This also holds true for certain culture-war issues. Contrary to progressive diktat, “a growing share of voters (65%) say that whether a person is a man or woman” is determined by sex.

Yet shunning anyone on the left who insists otherwise has become a progressive strategy. What better way to dismiss or delegitimize the heretics than to smear them as covert members of the opposition?

And labeling people makes it easier to avoid hearing their critiques or dealing with the actual issues in question.

Those on the left who’ve been dumbstruck as Trump has intimidated his most vociferous Republican critics (see: Chris Sununu, Nikki Haley) into falling in line might exert a little more self-awareness of similar moves by the left.

The goal of progressives may be solidarity, but their means of achieving it are by shutting alternative ideas down rather than modeling tolerance. Leah Hunt-Hendrix, a co-author of a recent book called “Solidarity,” said those liberals who critique illiberalism on the left are “falling into the right’s divide-and-conquer strategy.”

But liberal people can disagree without being called traitors. Liberals can even agree with conservatives on certain issues because those positions aren’t inherently conservative. Shouldn’t the goal be to decrease polarization rather than egg it on? Shouldn’t Democrats aim for a big tent, especially at a time when registered party members are declining and the number of independents is on the rise?

Those on the Democratic side of the spectrum have traditionally been far better at nuance, complexity and compromise than Republicans. It would be to our detriment if policies on which a broad swath of Americans agree are deliberately tanked by a left wing that has moved as far to the left as Republicans have moved to the right. Those who denounce militant fealty within the Republican Party shouldn’t enforce similar purity tests in their own ranks.

Pamela Paul writes a column for the New York Times.

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