Are we really one nation under God ?

THE BIG NEWS of the past week was that a federal appeals court declared the Pledge of Allegiance an unconstitutional purveyor of monotheism. Monotheism! As Archie Bunker might have said, “Ain’t they got a pill for that yet?”

Yes, the “under God” phrase in the pledge violates the First Amendment prohibition against “an establishment of religion.” So ruled the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in (where else?) California.

The pledge, in its present form, is likely to convey to impressionable schoolchildren “an impermissible message of endorsement to some and disapproval to others of their beliefs regarding the existence of a monotheistic God,” wrote Judge Alfred T. Goodwin in the majority (2-1) opinion.

The ruling came on a suit filed by Michael Newdow, an emergency room doctor with law degree, in federal court in Sacramento. Newdow, an atheist, argued that his daughter’s First Amendment rights were violated by recitation of the pledge in her second-grade class. Though not forced to recite the pledge herself, the child must “watch and listen as her state-employed teacher in her state-run school leads her classmates in a ritual proclaiming that there is a God and that ours is ‘one nation under God,’” argued Newdow, who acted as his own attorney.

The ruling, if allowed to stand, may be legally binding in the states covered by the 9th Circuit: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. The U.S. Justice Department is expected to appeal the ruling, and the issue may come to the Supreme Court. But whatever the critics may say about the ruling, it has forged - however temporarily - a new era of bipartisanship in Washington.

President George Bush considers the ruling “ridiculous,” according to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Democrat Tom “40-yard” Daschle, the Senate majority leader, called it “just nuts.” The entire Senate denounced it by a vote of 99-0. You can’t get much more bipartisan than that.

“I hope the Senate will waste no time in throwing this decision back in the faces of these stupid judges,” said Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia.

Various versions of the Pledge of Allegiance had been recited in schools and at political and social gatherings by the time Congress adopted the current version (but for the “under God” phrase) in 1942. Congress added the words “under God” in 1954 to distinguish the United States and its flag from the cause of atheistic communism, the court concluded.

The change was made at the urging of President Dwight Eisenhower, a man whose religious views appear to have been as vague and ecumenical as the mind of man can imagine. As Ike declared at the time, “Millions of schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.”

But Eisenhower said something else worth pondering in that regard. The words would remind us, he said, that “despite our great strength, we must remain humble.” Is that the effect they have had? Has our ritual of declaring our dependence on “the Almighty” kept us humble? Does either the politics or the popular culture of this nation suggest we are a people respectful of what our Declaration of Independence calls “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”?

One answer, and a rather persuasive one, may be found in Don Feder’s 1993 book, “A Jewish Conservative Looks at Pagan America.” Consider the following passage and see if it is not even more true today than when it was written 10 years ago:

“When celebrities flaunt their illicit relationships, when social organizations like the Boy Scouts are censured and penalized for refusing to bend the knee to immorality, when government tells us that presenting a condom to a 13-year-old or giving a needle to an addict is an act devoid of moral content, when the governor of a major industrial state declares that post-viability abortions (i.e., infanticide) is the price we have to pay for freedom, when politicians openly court the votes of degenerates, when a court rules that a sex killer has a constitutional right to his collection of violent pornography - we are on the verge of a moral collapse.”

The 9th Circuit’s stretching of the establishment clause probably will not stand. Perhaps some day a federal court will rule that Congress, by declaring this to be a “nation under God,” has violated its own laws on truth in advertising.

Pretty good column by Kenny, but I think that the importance of this decision has been greatly overstated and has generated a lot of posturing by public figures, IMO.

It is worth discussion on a forum like this, but will really make little if any difference in our lives, or the fate of our country, again IMHO.

...but will really make little if any difference in our lives...

In the big picture you are correct, the ruling is inconsequential, in the short run though the media and extreme factions on both sides, will twist it every which way to further divide those who for lack of a better word declare themselves conservative.

"Though not forced to recite the pledge herself, the child must “watch and listen as her state-employed teacher in her state-run school leads her classmates in a ritual proclaiming that there is a God and that ours is ‘one nation under God,’” argued Newdow, who acted as his own attorney."

I say we pick up this ruling and run with it. What other things is that state-employed teacher saying? Is that state-employed leading her pupils in the eco-religion proclaiming global warming? Is she putting the State's authority behind an amoral sex education? Is the teacher promoting the morality of a mixed (ie fascist) or socialist economy? Is she promoting the morality of taxation? Is she teaching how evil America is, founded by a bunch of woman-oppressing, racist slaveowners?

The point is, whatever the state-funded teachers says in her state-funded buildings in the state-funded government schools is by definition a state-funded orthodoxy. The entire public school system is by definition and inescapably an establishment of religion.

I say go with this ruling, expand it to the logical end and use it to abolish government schools and re-establish freedom of education and parenting.

Any smart (and wealthy) lawyers out there?

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