Aside from the blasphemy, which ought not be overlooked, one of the biggest problems with an ad like this (HT: Think Progress, which also has a printed transcript of the ad) is that it undermines itself. It’s simply bad rhetorical strategy.
Whatever potential arguments (economic or otherwise) there may be against minimum wage legislation, virtually no one of sympathetic inclinations is going to listen when you mock Judeo-Christian values by reducing something as vitally important as the divine revelation of the Decalogue to a mere political tool.
Meanwhile, Nicole Greenfield at The Revealer, while concerned with “the obvious church-state and anti-working class issues,” hopes that “this isn’t the start of a horrible new trend in political advertising.”
I hope so, too, but probably for different reasons. I don’t think economic laws, insofar as they are truly “laws” in the proper sense, rise to the level of what Zanchi calls “this perfect law,” or the Ten Commandments.
Gary North, who wrote a 450+ page economic exposition of the 10 Commandments, does connect minimum wage laws as a “price floor” under the commandment to honor parents (Exodus 20:12, North commentary pp. 118-19). This is a rather specious connection, however, and offers no justification for the Stop 42 ad.
Almost any Christian I’ve ever heard argue against minimum wage legislation (and there aren’t many) has argued on the basis of prudential judgment rather than appeals to direct divine mandate. North may be an exception, although I don’t think it necessarily follows from his brief mention of minimum wage laws under the fifth commandment that he thinks that opposition to such legislation is mandated by that commandment.
In any case, arguments against minimum wage laws already face an uphill battle for acceptance. Ads like this don’t help the cause.
Update: Having trouble viewing the Moses ad? Check out the YouTube version. Jamie Court at The Huffington Post says that this ad, about California’s Prop 89, is a “remarkable piece of political jujitsu on the practices of political advertising, and has the possiblity to remake them.”
