On the surface, this sounds reasonable enough to liberals, but they can’t stand the context: just one chapter later in the same book of the Bible (Exodus, 21:12),God and Moses give orders to break their own rule: “One who strikes a man, so that he dies, shall surely be put to death.” The next verses stipulate capital punishment for a wide variety of causes (like “cursing your father and mother”) so the no-kill commandment really begins to sound like no-murder. In other words, the Bible makes a clear distinction that liberals emphatically deny. The left loves slogans that declare that that execution is murder, war is murder, meat is murder, and so forth, but the God of Exodus who emphatically bans murder also specifically authorizes execution, war and meat.

Seventh Commandment: You shall not commit adultery

To which the post-modern left would quickly add: unless you really, really love her. It’s not just Clinton apologists who have a problem with this inconvenient taboo on extra-marital involvement: when people take their vows by pledging to remain committed “as long as our love shall last,” the Seventh Commandment begins to look incurably outmoded.

Eighth Commandment: You shall not steal

For lefties, this prohibition smacks of the right’s selfish emphasis on private property. Back in the glory days of the 1960’s, the beloved hippie hero Abbie Hoffman penned a liberationist manifesto called “Steal This Book.” Radicals and revolutionaries have always devised comfortable euphemisms to describe the act of theft: “liberating” or “boosting” or “collectivizing” or “nationalizing” private property, or simply “taxing the rich.” If you believe it’s virtuous for government to seize by force the majority of an individual’s earnings (remember the pre-Reagan, top income tax rate of 70%?), you ought to feel somewhat uncomfortable with an absolute ban on stealing.

Ninth Commandment: You shall not bear false witness…

Some liberals may endorse this commandment, but only when it’s applied to Scooter Libby. Otherwise, there’s a problem with the ancient Jewish understanding of the deeper meaning of this verse. Our sages suggest that a secret to understanding each one of the Big Ten involves the parallel structure of the two tablets. In other words, the first commandment corresponds to the sixth, the second to the seventh, the third to the eighth, and the fourth to the ninth. That means that this “no false witness” order connects to the imperative of keeping the Sabbath. The association relates to the basis for Sabbath observance stipulated in the text: “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and the sea and all this is in them, and He rested on the seventh day.” In other words, the Sabbath bears witness to God’s role in creation, and the Rabbis say that the denial of divine creation represents the ultimate in bearing false witness. On this basis, today’s libs insist on false witness, the whole false witness, and nothing but false witness. The very idea of questioning a random, materialistic origin of the universe makes them crazy with rage and contempt: they strenuously condemn the mere notion of suggesting in schools that it was an Intelligent Designer who must have “made the heavens and the earth”

Tenth Commandment: You shall not covet your fellow’s house. You shall not covet your fellow’s wife, his manservant, his maidservant, his ox, his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your fellow.

Among many other problems, this commandment outrages PETA with its unacceptable suggestions like animal companions like oxen and donkeys can ever “belong” to their human friends. Meanwhile, the ban on coveting involves a restriction on a feeling, a desire, and it’s politically incorrect to suppress or deny or stifle authentic emotions, Blaming yourself for coveting can only undermine self-esteem, and the emergence and liberation of your precious inner child. Moreover, the entire leftist project is largely based on covetousness: resenting the “filthy rich” for what they’ve earned, rather than feeling grateful for your own achievements. The implacable liberal focus on the “gap between rich and poor” – as if impoverishing the wealthy worked in any meaningful way to actually enrich the poor – represents covetous attitudes at their irrational worst. The sacred leftist goal of “redistribution of wealth,” mandating heavy taxes on “haves” for the purported benefits of “have-nots”, depends on coveting for its energy and rationale. On the other hand, the Bible’s unmistakable emphasis on the sanctity of private property (“You shall not covet your fellow’s house”) clearly contradicts the left’s emphasis on a communitarian and collectivist outlook, in which the state becomes the ultimate owner of everything.

Reviewing the Ten Commandments one by one exposes their irreconcilable conflict with the demented and dysfunctional philosophy of today’s left.

In other words, in contrast to most aspects of Twenty First century liberalism, the implacable hostility to the Biblical Big Ten actually ends up making perfect sense.