God is Not in the Constitution (Barf)

We receive our rights from God. —George W. Bush, denouncing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because it includes "one nation under God," CNN, June 27

This decision is nuts, just nuts. —Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle, CNN, June 26

If this decision is not overturned, we will amend the Constitution. —Democratic senator Joseph Lieberman, Fox News, June 26

In 1943, during our war against Hitler, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision concerning the Pledge of Allegiance that created fierce controversy around the country—just like last week's Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.

The West Virginia Board of Education had expelled children of Jehovah's Witnesses for refusing to salute the flag and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. These deviants were to be sent to reformatories for criminally minded juveniles, and their parents were threatened with prosecutions for causing juvenile delinquency.

The majority of the Court, in a decision written by Robert Jackson—later chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials—defined the very essence of Americanism as they rebuked the West Virginia Board of Education and sent those kids back to school:

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox politics, nationalism, religion, or any other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." (Emphasis added.)

Since then, there has been a long line of federal court decisions affirming the right of students to refuse to stand for the pledge or salute the flag—for a wide spectrum of reasons of conscience.

As I described in Living the Bill of Rights (University of California Press, paper), a number of principals and school boards have nonetheless punished students for following the 1943 Supreme Court decision, and these "educators" have been overruled by the courts.

Now we have nearly the entire House and Senate, along with an array of fashionable law professors and such dubiously anointed "legal analysts" as Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker and CNN, scorning the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that the phrase "one nation under God" puts the Pledge of Allegiance in violation of the separation of church and state.

First, contrary to such instant experts as Connie Chung of CNN, the pledge has not been banned across the nation. The decision affects only the nine states within the Ninth Circuit's purview, if it is not overruled. Second, even within those nine states, a public school student can still recite the pledge, omitting God. Or he or she can recite the pledge, including God—but not as part of an officially mandated public school exercise.

What Judge Alfred Goodwin, a Nixon appointee, did in his Ninth Circuit decision was to follow the rule set by Justice Robert Jackson in 1943:

The fact that "boards of education are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount principles of our government as mere platitudes." (Emphasis added.)

In his decision in Newdow v. U.S. Congress, Judge Goodwin—like Jackson in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette—was affirming the fundamental constitutional command that the government cannot endorse any particular religion or all religions. Otherwise, like China, we would have certain preferred religious beliefs especially protected by the state.

From Judge Goodwin's decision about why including "one nation under God" is a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment:

"Particularly within the confined environment of the classroom, the policy is highly likely to convey an impermissible message of [government] endorsement to some, and disapproval to others, of their beliefs regarding the existence of a monotheistic God."

As he pointed out, the phrase "one nation under God" was added to the pledge by Congress in 1954 to advance religion for the sole purpose of differentiating the United States from atheist Communist nations. And, Judge Goodwin emphasized, "such a purpose" is forbidden by the establishment clause, which prohibits the government from advancing religion "at the expense of atheism."

Goodwin also pointed to the "age and impressionability" of the children at the Morse School in Elk Grove, California, the site of the lawsuit. But on Friday morning, there on television were the elementary school students of that very school, with their hands on their hearts, reciting the pledge, including "one nation under God"—and to hell with the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

"Impressionable," however, is not the word for the members of the House and Senate who thronged to excoriate the Ninth Circuit. And on the Capitol steps, in a proud bipartisan display of ignorance of the Constitution's separation of church and state, the House members, hands on hearts, recited the pledge and broke into a righteous "God Bless America."

The cause of all this belligerently conformist patriotism is Dr. Michael Newdow, an atheist and emergency room doctor who also has a law degree and acted as his own lawyer. He sued to preserve the constitutional rights of his eight-year-old daughter, a second-grade student in the Elk Grove Unified School District.

For exercising his constitutional right to confront his government in court, Dr. Newdow says, he is receiving "personal and scary" threats: "I could be dead tomorrow. . . . A lot of God-loving people think that killing other people who don't agree with them is OK."

Dr. Newdow may not receive a warm, protective response from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who insists that "this decision is directly contrary to two centuries of American tradition."

An even longer American tradition is that there is no mention of God in the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence, heralded by opponents of the Ninth Circuit decision for its references to God, does not have the force of law. And the Constitution says plainly, "No religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public trust under the United States." We all have the right to freedom of belief, or nonbelief, in God.

For the sake of argument let's accept your contention that the 2d treatise is based on a total rejection and hatred of religion, that it is a celebration of godlessness and material self-indulgence; that it captures the worldview of atheists who pride themselves on bowing to no authority but their own greedy selves. Perhaps you are wrong in your contention and it really speaks more to your own craven materialism than it does to religion. But for the sake of argument let's grant you your queer and twisted contention.

I made no contention that it is a "Godless" document that totally rejects and hates religion. It rejects traditional christian views of government. Meaning it totally rejects the idea that there are any God-instituted governmental institutions that have a "right to rule." It totally rejects that idea in favor of government being an agreement between the citizenry to defend life, liberty and property. It has no higher calling than that. You are, as usual, taking a reasonable argument and trying to turn it into something bizarre, twisted and completely unrelated to what I said. But what can we expect from you? You have shown that you lack the ability to understand something as basic as the difference between principled opposition to government prohibition of vice and a desire to legalize it simply so one can use it.

How odd that it is the religious believers in your god-hating governmental scheme who are the guarantors of your indulgence and freedom under it.

That's funny, the majority of religious people I know place little value on the first 5 amendments. They have little love for free speech, religion, assembly, right to keep and bear arms without restriction, right to be secure in one's home and they tend to feel that a full trial by jury is a Godless sympathy with the "criminal."

The lesson history teaches about atheist societies is that they mare mass-murdering meat grinders and soffocating nanny states unparalleled in their horror by any other governments that have ever existed.

There are no atheistic societies. An atheistic society would require a population that is overwhelmingly dominated by atheists. Even the Soviet Union and NAZI Germany were religious nations. The majority of Russians and Germans were Christians and the majority of non-Russians in the USSR were Muslims. Evil is evil. This country was no better than the Soviet Union from 1789-1865. Slavery as an institution was no different from the Gulag archapelago and the Soviet work camps outside the Gulag.

Two-hundred million were beaten, shot, starved, gassed, hanged, eviscerated, and burned in the 20th Century alone in the name of atheism.

Bull$hit. They were executed in the name of a "higher ideal." The classless society, the pure aryan Europe/World, turning Cambodia to an agrarian utopia, etc. Even the US, a "Christian nation," had concentration camps during WWII.

You couldn't govern an ant farm with your philosophy, let alone thrive in a society made up only of sneering atheists such as yourself. In a society filled with such serpents you would be eating each other tail first as rapidly as you could gobble down the scales.

Because I am different than you, I'm an Atheist now? Well then we atheists out number you greatly. We number 75% of the population. Every Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, Sihk, Deist (which I am) and Wiccan is an atheist. You represent the face of the Christianity that I rejected for a doctrine of a God that is actually a rational being.

The only theocratic societies that have existed have stagnated. They hate technology and any sort of science that doesn't have some religious statement after every sentence in a lab write up. The computer you are using would never have been created in the theocracy you lust for. The Physics of it would be millennia too advanced for the type of peabrain idiotic religionists that tried to destroy Galileo and Copernicus for their theories. That mentality is the end result of religion. It is impossible to have freedom of inquiry and religion coexist. Freedom of inquiry always makes the religious nutcases fearful that their precious little belief system might be questioned let alone challenged...

But only after you had murdered all the religious believers.

If I murder anyone it will be in self-defense or in defense of another's life. If peaceful Christians who have done me no harm are being rounded up I'll get my gun and murder the people doing the rounding up. No one has the right to initiate force.

You freeload on our benevolence.

If that be the case you freeload on the scientific advancements such as vaccinations, medicine, consumer electronics, telecom infrastructure, modern military armaments, energy infrastructure and more that non-Christians made availible and have continued to maintain to this very day. Modern computers are not the work of Christians. There are more pagans in IT than Christians.

The big lie/HATE...fraud-hoax-FREEZE/squeeze---

Originally the word liberal meant social conservatives who advocated growth and progress---THIS IS SCIENCE...mostly technological(knowledge being absolute/unchanging)based on law--reality--UNDER GOD...the nature of GOD/man/govt. does not change. These were the Classical liberals...founding fathers-PRINCIPLES---stable/SANE scientific reality/society---industrial progress...moral/social character-values GROWTH!

Then came the post-modern age of switch-flip-spin-DEFORMITY-cancer...Atheist secular materialists through ATHEISM/evolution CHANGED-REMOVED the foundations...demolished the wall(separation of state/religion)--trampled the TRUTH-GOD...built a satanic temple over them---made these absolutes subordinate--relative and calling all the residuals---technology/science === evolution to substantiate/justify their efforts--claims...social engineering--PC--atheism...anti-God/Truth RELIGION--crusade/WAR--INTOLERANCE/TYRANNY against God--man--society!!

Liberals/Evolution BELIEVE they are the conservatives--guardians too...

the shield between state and religion(evolution/atheism) is gone---this is chernobyl---radiation poisoning---NUCLEAR SOCIAL ANTARTICA/AMERICA!!

Hypnotism--witchcraft ideology--politics--religion--BRAINWASHING--superstition--BIAS---EVOLUTION/ATHEISM is a Hate CRIME

ps...Atheism/evolutionism is the essence of liberalism/socialism---THIS IS UNNATURAL SCIENCE---State secular MONOPOLY religion forbidding the freedom of speech/religion of everything except atheism!

You totally ignore history and the actions of the Founders to come up with your own interpretation of the Constitution which you then use to declare un-constitutional an activity that even Thomas Jefferson thought was very Constitutional.

Well perhaps here you have an opportunity to educate me. Kindly cite me the supporting evidence for your assertion that Thomas Jefferson saw the the regulation of educational activity as a legitimate function of the Federal government.

As for ignoring history -- I think the point of not being a liberal is that we don't assume that a power legitimately belongs to the government merely because it has been usurped in the past.

I would agree that history indicates that there is no practical limit to the power of the US Government beyond whatever public polling and the "democratic" process will allow at any given time. But then, I thought the purpose of FR was to work towards restoring constitutional republican government to America. Democratic usurpation of undelegated power -- government by plebiscite -- is not constitutional and I don't think you've done a very good job of proving oterhwise.

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