Editor's Note: Peter Heck returns to the studio and to the Liberty Tree on June 18.

Well if this isn’t a sign of the times, I don’t know what would be.  You may have heard about one of the most recent battles over the Ten Commandments being displayed on public property – this time in the Giles County (VA) School District.  As expected, the school wants to keep them there as a tribute to influential historical law codes, and the anti-religious freedom zealots on the left want them removed.  What you may not have heard about is the proposed “compromise” being offered by one of the federal judges.

Eighteen months ago, a parent objected to the Ten Commandments being posted in a district high school as part of a huge collage of documents linked to America’s political and legal heritage. Several other documents in the school display reference God, including the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence, but no one is asking that those be taken down or edited.

The school district does not want them removed and the case remains in U.S. District Court.

Now federal Judge Michael Urbanski has offered a compromise. He suggested scrapping the first four commandments and leaving just the final six. Urbanski suggested that could resolve the dispute since the first four commandments directly refer to mankind’s relationship to God and the final six concern mankind’s relationship to creation, other people, and things.

“You can’t have a display or discussion of American history and law without reading about, or mentioning God,” Mathew Staver of Liberty Counsel told WND. “It’s just part of who we are, it’s what shaped our Western Civilization.”

Liberty Counsel, which is representing the school district in court, rejects the judge’s proposal and so does the parent, who is allied with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

When you hear folks on the left like “Silent Joe” Donnelly complain about conservatives not wanting to compromise (like Richard Mourdock), this is a prime example of why.  Compromise with idiocy only ensures that you will end up with a greater degree of idiocy than you had to begin with.  Standing on principle (and sanity) is the much wiser course of action.