Posted on 07/01/2002 7:41:07 PM PDT by ArcLight
The response to the court's decision exposed the fundamentalism that weaves through American public life, where many, a la Chung, confuse the worship of God with patriotism. If only "Hardball" could book Francis Bellamy today. His version of the pledge did not contain a reference to God. Those two words were added in 1954, when Congress, reacting to a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, inserted those two words and turned the pledge into a public prayer of sorts. (The point was to contrast the godly United States of America with the godless Soviet Union.) So the pledge had worked just fine for 62 years without bringing the Big One into the picture. And according to a history of the pledge written by John Baer, Bellamy's granddaughter has maintained that Bellamy, who died in 1931, would have resented the alteration. He had, she noted, been forced out of his own church and in his later years, when he lived in Florida, stopped attending services because he was put off by segregation in churches. (Back in 1892, Bellamy had considered adding "equality" to the "liberty and justice for all" phrase, but he realized that would draw objections from people opposed to equality for women and African-Americans.)
Needs saying.
It isn't about the "worship of God." It's about acknowledging the source of our "unalienable rights." C.f. the "Declaration of Independence," if you haven't already banned it from discussion in your closed-minded little world.
So the pledge had worked just fine for 62 years without bringing the Big One into the picture.
Perhaps there were those who felt it was remiss, and ignored a glaring fact: that this nation was conceived upon the principles that God, the Creator, the Judge of the Universe, etc., had established certain "unalienable rights," and that a nation promulgated upon those rights ought to aknowledge their source when the appropriate occasion presents itself.
Bellamy's granddaughter has maintained that Bellamy, who died in 1931, would have resented the alteration.
As far as I know, Francis Bellamy was never elected President of the United States, with the power to veto an act of Congress. For that matter, I doubt that anyone bothered to ask Francis Scott Key if we might borrow his words for our national anthem.
That's the trouble with writing words for public consumption: They might be consumed by the public.
Anyway, if Francis Bellamy's granddaughter wants to, she might have her congress-critter introduce a bill to UNauthorize the words, or to strike the Pledge altogether.
That's still permissible under our Republican form of government, at least until the type of Dictatorship that Francis Bellamy's granddaughter appears to prefer is established in its place.
Until then, her words hold just as much weight as mine, and I say "nonsense."
Isn't that a distinction without a difference? If you
don't believe in a god, then it cannot be the source
of rights. If you believe there is a god but do not
worship such but think it is the source of rights...how weird is that?
So, put Dorothy on it. You
are from Kansas, right? ;)
That's kind of an ironic statement. Just the other day while I was commuting home from work, I was thinking about all the atheists I've known in my life. The majority of them I usually found very annoying because they acted very similarly to fundamentalist Christians. There was a line in a Dostoyevsky novel, something to the effect that "Atheists are closer to God than the middle of the road Christian." I wish I could remember the actual quote.
Here's the problem: The Founders could not have conceived of your quandry. Bear in mind that they were NOT all Christians (as the fundies will try to tell you). But in their era, there was simply no such thing as "atheism." It just didn't compute.
However, their concepts of "God" were probably as varied as the men themselves. That's the thing you need to focus upon.
The error that you and others make is that YOU think that "God" is predefined as invoked in the Founding Documents. He isn't; He couldn't be, because few of these men would have agreed upon that definition. So they simply took the common denominator: That there is a Creator, an intelligence that rules the universe, whose creatures we are.
So you have to proceed from that understanding, and you have to open your mind to the possibility.
The alternative is that you simply have to reject the Declaration of Independence, and the other Founding Documents that flow from it, and you have to just say (as you do with regard to your own existence, in fact) "none of this has any real meaning anyway, so I guess I'll just play along."
But in the meantime, it is patently ridiculous for you to attempt to rewrite what has been written. You may apply your own definitions to it, but you cannot erase it.
This nation was founded, NOT on simply abstract principles, but principles that flowed from mankind's thousands of years of communication with the Divine. It can't work any other way, and it is the height of arrogance and elitism to try to erase all that now.
It's the same as Big Brother's Ministry of Truth was engaged in doing daily, in 1984.
It's just not going to fly, and deep down, the great majority in this nation know this.
And now some think that is not an important contrast to make?
It is the same Today between the Godly United States and the Godless Al Qaeda.
Nations are underneath the supreme being, whatever concept one might have of it, that is scientific fact - atheists are free to equate "Under God" to mean " Under the rules of Darwin's evolution" but anyone with half a brain should not misinterpret this phrase in this context as "establishing religion."
The pledge is important to America partly because the USA is a country of immigrants, we come from all over, yet we are all under the nation. But none of us came here to give up our devotion to God in subservience to the state.
Ironically, the idiot fools who support removing "Under God" tout some "separation of Church and State" as their motive when that is in fact their agenda, to unify the church and state, though their "church" is a particularly dull-minded sect of atheism: a nation is either "under God" or it isn't, their belief is that we are all under the nation and *not* under God. Atheist Jihad, at its core.
In a ceremonial context like the Pledge saying "Under God" does zero towards "establishing religion" it is a mere turn of phrase that reminds us of what the Founding Fathers understood (see the Declaration of Independence), what was an important distinction in 1954, and what is still an important distinction Today: our nation is under God, it is not the other way around.
You cannot unring a bell, it is true.
You may apply your own
definitions to it, but you cannot erase it.
I think you are probably right. May
as well leave it in, at this point. The real
drawback, I think, is the degree to which
this use of the word God is representative
of the Judeo-Christian divinity. To the
extent it is perceived to be as such,
keeping a lid on would-be Muslim suicide
bombers in American society becomes
more difficult.
I agree, if the Pledge had made an overt attempt to do this, it could be construed an "establishment of religion."
But when I consider that the Framers were NOT all Christian, that some even scorned Christianity, but all of them were more than comfortable with the concept of "God", however much the details might differ from person to person, I just can't see how anyone can construe this.
Yes, I've read all the bible-thumpers' shrill declarations that "this is a Christian nation," but I just reject it. The many different colonist groups that came here might well have represented various Christian sects, but they were COLONISTS, not Americans. In fact, they considered themselves "Englishmen" up until Independence.
When it was time to mold a nation, though, the only article of faith the Framers had in common was that there was a Supreme Being. Some, like Benjamin Rush, saw Him as emphatically Judaeo-Christian. But others like Thomas Jefferson saw him as a Being that transcended what he considered to be "superstitious traditions." In the end it doesn't matter, because with such an "open-minded" view of Deity the stage was set for the creation of one of the few places on earth where religious pluralism would become the rule and not the fleeting exception.
When I hear the words "under God," it means something definite to me, but that meaning is NOT going to be the same for my Jewish fellow-citizen, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Christian Scientist, etc. But that's PERFECTLY okay. That's in the grand tradition of the very Founding of this nation.
I was speaking to the author of the article, tpaine, not you. Believe me, I wouldn't DREAM of addressing anything serious to you. It would go right over your head (as, in fact, it did this time).
Pearls before swine, my man.
Big deal. Like I said, little man, you're WAY over your head.
Better go settle yourself with a comic book somewhere, till your alpha-rhythms begin to calm.
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