A Texas state representative is fighting to instill virtuous values and moral integrity in the next generation of citizens in his state through a familiar list of commands.
Representative Dan Flynn has introduced a measure in the Texas state legislature to allow teachers to post the Ten Commandments in the classroom without fear retribution.
Joining the Todd Starnes Show Wednesday, Flynn explained that his reasoning for introducing the bill was not religious in nature, and he just wanted to provide students with a “great guide for virtue and integrity.”
“Our founding fathers used it as a guiding block as they were drafting all of our formal documents,” Flynn said. “If you walk into the Supreme Court building or the United States Capitol in Washington D.C., you’re going to see it displayed there. Here in Texas, we have it displayed on our capitol grounds.”
Flynn even went so far to call it a “patriotic exercise” to display the Mosaic commands.
“We’re not referring to it as a religious display,” he said. “We’re telling everyone that this is a list of virtuous items and integrity. It’s a patriotic exercise, there’s nowhere in our bill that discusses about religion.”
Flynn made it clear that the legislature was not forcing any teacher to post the decalogue in their classrooms, but was only protecting the teacher’s ability to post them if they so desired.
“We’re not telling anybody to do anything,” Flynn said. “We just don’t want them to get in trouble if they post it on their bulletin boards or wherever they want to put it, and that’s our intent. I’m always into trying to protect our teachers that are trying their very best to raise young people with integrity and virtue, and I’m saying who in the world could be against that?”
Flynn expressed alarm at a recent study he saw that said 40 percent of millennials thought socialism was better than capitalism and 25 percent of them didn’t know what socialism was.
The Texas lawmaker said those people should “make a trip to Venezuela” and then their minds would be changed real quick about socialism.
“We’re the greatest country in the world, and it was based upon those Judeo-Christian founding documents, [the Ten Commandments] was the guide for the founding fathers,” Flynn said.