Vanity: The Pledge of Allegiance is Unconstitutional - If That Doesn't Convince You What Will?

June 26, 2002 | Jim Robinson

[tpaine]

Seems like NO one is totally rational when discussing religion.

Save for you & me, of course.

[kickstart]

I am amazed that people take the First Amendment to be so precise in its meaning, but the Second Amendment is too vague to mean an individual right to own firearms cannot be infringed.

[hellinahandcart]

But that is not the question that matters.

Yes it is. But okay, I'll play.

The question is one of intent - does a state-mandated, state-run institution requiring a pledge which includes the phrase 'under God' constitute a violation of the principle expressed by the phrase 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.'

No, because the state-mandated, state-run institution is NOT CONGRESS. Now, what do I win?

IOW, does it respect an establishment of religion, and, if it does, does it fall under the jurisdiction of that phrase?

Wow. Talk about twisting the meaning of a word. It's clear as a bell that "respecting" in that sentence is interchangeable with "concerning" or "regarding", not "showing respect to". Sheesh, laws can't "respect".

(I suppose you think "disrespect" is a verb, too)

[Amelia]

Good grief, choosing 'slow socialism', -- now theres a concept.

Do you have a strict Constitutionalist who (1)is running and (2) has enough support to WIN?

Or are you part of the bunch who is going to stay home until there is someone on the ballot you can support 100%?

[Temple Owl]

God bless you all and thank you for bearing with me. I love my country and I love my freedom more than life itself. I don't care what anyone says about me, or what labels they pin on me. From this day forward I am a Bush-bot and proud of it! I am going to help turn this thing around or I'm going down in flames trying.

Me too! But don't get so down. These people have been at it since the days of FDR. They are entrenched in all of the positions that you mentioned. But you and people like you have made a difference.

We have our setbacks, but for the first time since the '30s we are waking up. We are winning!!! And as I have said before on different threads, Thank God for George W. After eight years of filth, I feel clean again. Go Get 'em Jimbo!

[tpaine]

Nope. -- Do you?

[--And we will NEVER get one, with 'politics as usual'.]

[hoosierham]

"I pledge to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America with liberty and justice for all."

This is a pledge I like much better.

[FreedominJesusChrist]

LOL!

Although I do side with my fellow social conservatives on this one. If people want to stick a generic God in the pledge, they should have the Constitutional right to do so without adversarial retaliation from the government.

[groanup]

"does that mean that you wouldn't personally have a cow, or a case of the vapors, were someone to substitute 'allah',"

Oh come on Leroy. I would probably shed a tear if I heard a small Muslim child say "under Allah".

[tpaine]

If people want to stick a generic God in the pledge, they should have the Constitutional right to do so without adversarial retaliation from the government.
- 488

---

They do have that right, --- except in situations where the government is putting the 'God' in the pledge. -- Congress did exactly that, back in '54, now a court told em they shouldn't have. - Big deal, and a tempest in a teapot, imo.

[rustbucket]

Public, back in the 1950s

[KDD]

This ruling ill served both religion and government.

It is not true that political candidates hate to confront moral issues. The fact is, they rush to warm themselves in the glow of moral sentiments. What they abhor is the work of actually sorting out any specific moral controversy. The language of ethics is soothing at the level of generalities, and frightening at the level of specifics. Politicians-aided and abetted by the press-seek the moral high ground of empathy, and we are all a bit relieved by the postponement of hard choices.

Can it be otherwise? Certainly the politicians have only limited room for maneuver. There is usually not much to be obtained by alienating the undecided voters who might well be the difference between victory and defeat. What candidate wouldn't trim his sails to the prevailing winds? President Clinton is a master of this formula for success: preserve your base while moving as far away from it as you can to maximize the undecided vote. Is this not what elections are ultimately all about?

For the rest of us, press and public, surely our interest in preserving comity is enough to discourage contemplation of the differences between us. When disagreements revolve around moral differences, the potential for explosion is high. Even from our point of view, little seems to be served by pushing disagreements to the limits. Far safer to smother them in the platitudes of "different strokes for different folks," "live and let live," and so on. This is, after all, what has preserved the liberal democratic peace.

But it is also what has given an air of pervasive unreality to our society. We have a right to arm ourselves to the teeth; we have a right to enjoy pornography; we have a right to burn the American flag; we have a right to abort our fetuses; we have a right to die. We have a right to be reckless, inconsiderate, immature, and downright crazy. At least up to a point. There are of course limits, especially when we can discern a measurable impact on the rights and welfare of others. They too must have the same maximal space for self-abandonment. Is there not something truly nutty about a society that defines itself in such terms?

No wonder we have such an ache for the certainties of a bygone era. Family values, individual responsibility, community building are code words for that deeper yearning. The more fractured and fractious the assertion of our rights to personal freedom, the more the idyllic integrity of a communitarian era beckons us. Who wouldn't be drawn by the wholesome images of family and neighbors pulling together through the ups and downs of life, rather than the cacophony of rights claimants that seems to dominate our own noisy public square? The only difficulty is that we haven't a clue about how to get from one to the other. Merely cutting back the government won't bring about a deeper change.

Neither will endless talk about the need for personal responsibility and a new ethos of civility within civil society. Without tackling our specific moral responsibilities such talk is empty rhetoric. Its vacuity is all the more painfully exposed when the moment of undifferentiated empathy has passed. If we fail in our obligation towards specific human beings, then we have discredited the humanitarian sentiments espoused. The problem is that concrete moral issues have been preempted by the liberal presumption of privacy, and the relentless extension of the liberal language of autonomy has removed a common moral framework from our society. Somewhere we have lost our hold on the sense that there is a moral order independent of our choices and wishes.

We can point to many suspects in history as the causes of this loss, but only their common character really matters. It is the fate of a liberal political tradition to progressively consume its own moral substance. By removing more and more of the controverted issues from the public sphere and placing them in the private realm, it conveys the inexorable sense that there is no common moral order. There are only the "values" we choose to apply to ourselves. All that matters is that we are legally right in asserting our rights claims, and the legal order is finally accepted as the only moral order.

The independent moral order has not been abolished, of course. The fact that pornographers pose as (moral) champions of the First Amendment may be the clearest evidence that we still have in our civil society some sense of morality, and within that inchoate germ of self-realization lies the best hope for a moral reawakening. The inescapability of an order of good and evil, which is not ours to command but by which we will eventually be measured, is a steady pressure on our individual consciences, and it is made manifest by the elaborateness of attempts to deny it.

The problem is to find a way to make this moral order a presence in the public square amidst the dominant ethos of relativism. The Republicans have the best prospects, because their traditionalist intuitions are closer to the answer most of us seek.

snip

Wherever the exercise of self-restraint begins, it has the inestimable value of forcing the recognition that we live within an order of limits. Our rights are not a poisonous brew destined to subvert any sense of difference between good and evil. We may not be able to define to our satisfaction where the line is to be drawn. But we can discern clearly its outer limits. The unambiguous recognition of such boundaries is an indispensable element in preserving the awareness of a moral order beyond our construction. Without that awareness we would eventually cease to regard respect for an order of mutual rights as itself something right.

An order of rights without right is simply that. Only if we recognize this do we have any chance of retaining contact with an order of right beyond rights. What we have a right to do may not in fact be right to do. The difference is crucial and it must be embedded in the law itself, because only then can we prevent the collapse of the morally right into the legally right. Acknowledging the limits of the law is indispensable to preserving the recognition of a moral order beyond it. Conversely, relieving legality of the burden of moral rightness is also indispensable to its preservation. The legal and the moral must remain distinct if they are to perform their roles of supporting and facilitating one another

Rights Without Right
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/fo rum/a39f7ad0d0b86.htm

[tpaine]

Sounds fine to me. --

[M. Thatcher]

Twisting this into a pro-Republican election issue is pure demagoguery.

Nope. Nixon appointed this DEMOCRAT judge because Congress was controlled by DEMOCRATS, and he was Alan Cranston's guy. Get it? Dem Congress = Dem judges = retarded rulings.

This is a total pro-Republican election issue because Dems = LIB JUDGES. This will work because it's the truth; in fact, it will work beyond your wildest dreams. Or in your case, nightmares.

[PhiKapMom]

WRONG! The Nixon judge is a Democrat that was forced down Nixon's throat by the liberal CA Senator Cranston and his buddy! The RATS controlled the Senate by such a margin that he had to take that judge! So we have two DemocRATS and one Republican who dissented.

Now you want to think about it not being a Republican campaign issue against the liberal DemocRATS who are stonewalling judges?

But the way you phrased your comment leads me to believe you are not in the corner of the Republicans are you?

[Deb]

And "The Swortd and the Shield" (pg. 291), cites Cranston as being one of many KGB contacts within the Democrat party. Like we couldn't have figured that one out.

[PhiKapMom]

Thanks for the info! Cranston being a KGB contact makes logical sense to me! I always figured he was not a patriotic American and would gladly put a socialist/communist country first!

[Brad’s Gramma]

I'm with you...110%.

[Brad’s Gramma]

Could we all agree on a pledge like this one?

Nope. We stand strong. Leave the Pledge alone. Sorry.

[FreedominJesusChrist]

Oh yeah? Well I am with Jim Robinson 250%.