Introduction
Briefly
recapping the events of the Pledge of Allegiance controversy, in June of last
year (2002) the Ninth Circuit Court
of Appeals ruled that the phrase “under
God” made the pledge unconstitutional because the words amounted to an endorsement of religion.
Then, the same court rapidly put the ruling on hold in anticipation of
appeals. Courtesy of US Attorney General John
Ashcroft, the US Justice Department
subsequently filed one. In final
review it failed to adequately impress a full panel of Ninth Circuit Court and the ruling stood. Unless
the US Supreme Court overturns the ruling, it will seal the fate of the pledge in the nine
western states under Ninth Circuit jurisdiction, thus putting the pledge in jeopardy throughout the Nation. Since
then, three separate but very similar appeals seeking reversal of the ruling
were forwarded to the United States Supreme Court.
At the time the present commentary was initially posted, each of the appeals awaited a decision from the Supreme Court
as to whether their cases would be heard.
Again, one
of the appeals was the product of the US Justice Department and filed on
behalf of the US Congress. However, its
detailed content was largely the same as the Justice Department’s original
appeal. The Eagle
Forum Education and Legal Defense
Fund, founded by staunch theocratic advocate Phyllis Schlafly, filed the
second appeal. It was filed on
behalf of the California Elk Grove Unified School District from where the case originated. Not content just to protest the Ninth Circuit Court ruling, this
particular appeal also seeks reversal of rulings currently prohibiting prayer in the public schools. The fact that the Elk Grove School District recruited
the Legal Defense Fund probably speaks volumes about the legitimacy of Mr. Newdow's
situation specific concerns (article). The third appeal was filed by a coalition of
State Attorney Generals, but more pretentiously claiming to represent the entire United States
of America. It would seem rather
likely that crafty John Ashcroft had a hand in this one as well. The showcase rhetoric within, declares the Ninth
Circuit Court ruling to have flown in the face of 50 years of jurisprudence protecting
the 1954 alteration to the Pledge. Has
it been 50 years of jurisprudence in legitimate pursuance of the essential
mandates of the Constitution, or 50 years of contravention in the
service of biblical theocracy? With
this, there is the small matter of the Sixth Article prohibiting any kind of
religious test. Evidently, this issue
has only marginal relevancy in the eyes of the present appeals.
Well, of course not. Everybody
knows that only “the willing” need take the “under God” pledge.
The unwilling have the choice of sucking it up in silence or leaving the
classroom. I’m not a rocket
scientist, but that sure sounds like pass-or-fail coercion to me!
Speaking
of coercion, there is the curious matter of the Attorney Generals from all fifty
States signing up in support of the latter appeal. Considering the issues as they stand, one might question just
how many among the attorney generals really had faith in the legitimacy
of the appeal versus those who just didn’t have the constitutional sand to abstain
against it. Anyway,
it’s unfortunate that so much taxpayer-funded resources should be used to
support the appeals. This is particularly so when the same resources could be used to
encourage Congress to come to its senses and clean up the
pledge’s wording, thus restoring the Nation’s ideological and civil stand to
one of constitutional legitimacy.
Commentary
There is little ground to dispute that allegiance to this nation and its system of constitutional government is a fundamental obligation of citizenship in good standing. Therefore, it is appropriate that the public schools endeavor to indoctrinate the Nation’s students to that end throughout their mandatory school years. The issue of religious allegiance is, however, a separate and distinct matter altogether. In this United States of America, allegiance to any deity, religious ideology, or doctrine is a matter of personal choice. So much so that the government and consequently the public school system has no right to intervene upon it (article). This fact is substantiated in constitutional law by the Sixth Article, which forbids any religious test ever being made a requirement of public office or under the public trust. It is further punctuated by the First Amendment’s establishment and free exercise clauses forbid congress from enacting any law that respects an (any) establishment of religion or prohibits the free exercise thereof. For the First Amendment to stand solvent, all religious ideologies and their deities and doctrines, indeed all beliefs about religious matters, must remain equal in the eyes of the law. Equal in the sense that none are either endorsed or prohibited by government prescription or edict. This essential civil mandate is what endows us with the liberty to choose to worship or not to worship according to the dictates of our own preferences without coercion or recrimination either from government or from any institution or their followers.
Did religion play a role in the shaping of the nation and its government? It certainly did, but not exactly the role that the theocrats would have us believe. Sure, there were people in the early days leading up to the founding of the Nation who were in the business of peddling biblical religion of one sectarian persuasion or another. It was part of the baggage imported from the old world and definitely not all of it good (article). Remember the Salem Massacre and the numerous other religion motivated tragedies ? Anyway, they certainly busied themselves spreading their religious artifacts around and otherwise sizing power and public authority in every way they could. That is what the practitioners of biblical religion have always done, all for the greater glory and sovereign status of their pulpits and collection plates. For many of them, the theocratic motive was not a jot different from the biblical aristocracies of the old world. What the Americas did provide was a chance to establish the same cultural gridlock, but with them as the feudal lords of the religious and civil roost versus just being common serfs at the bottom of the old world religious food chain. Well, not coincidentally, there were also a lot of people at the beginning of the nation keeping and peddling slaves, and doing it under the sanctioning of biblical doctrine (Article). Even "so help me God" George Washington was a slave owner. Monotheism? Slavery? Fundamental beliefs? Hummmm.
Regardless of these glaring discrepancies, the 1954 insertion of the phrase was defended in the courts by arguing that “God” is a universal name for some almighty supernatural being to which the entire human race is subject. Therefore, as the argument goes, the use of the term “God” does not tend to endorse any religion in particular. Hold on, don’t they really mean not tending to endorse any biblical persuasion in particular? Given the religious pedigree of the people who actually lobbied for the 1954 change, it was undeniably biblically motivated! If the phrase “under God” truly does not endorse the deity of an a-priori established religious tradition, then by default, the United States Government established a new deity called "God" and established itself as the official church of that deity!
As a matter of historical fact there is nothing universal or original about the deity God. As much as the proponents of the current pledge condescendingly desire to convince us otherwise, “God” is inextricably linked to the Bronze Age Middle Eastern tribal deity identified in old testament biblical lore as the god of Israel. You know the one, the god of Moses and the "Ten Commandments". With little variation among translations, the doctrine of the Ten Commandments reveals this God to be a jealous, selfish deity, intolerant of other gods. A god who promises draconian reprisal against anyone who would take faith in another or otherwise turn to embrace other doctrines and creeds. Considering the fact that the 1954 alteration to the pledge was the brainchild of biblical factions, it should be very evident that “God” is the root deity of biblical religion and therefore unequivocally its root establishment! That no other deity receives mention in the “under God” pledge, is not coincidental to that fact. The phraseology “under God” is an undeniable affirmation of biblical religion at the inevitable expense of all other beliefs about matters of religion.
Now, fifty years after the pledge was altered, what are the identifiable consequences? As a matter of daily ritual in the classroom, several successive generations have been forced to believe that they cannot participate in a collective oath of allegiance to their nation without supplicating under a religious idol in the same breath. The result has been an epidemic generational misunderstanding about the true import of constitutional law regarding matters of nationalism and religion. These generations of school children have been ideologically blunted from understanding and benefiting from the true genius of the Constitution's framers regarding the necessity of separation between government and religion. Estrangement from this legacy has created a epidemic state of indoctrinated denial about the abiding principles of our Nation's Supreme body of law (article). It has created a situation that theocracy and its politicians are now exploiting with rabid zeal. It has infected all strata of American politics to the highest office in the land where both rhetoric and official initiatives about “partnerships” between government and religion abound.
With every fact of concession they win, the proponents of biblical theocracy become increasingly bolder and more insistent. They demand that teacher initiated biblical prayer be sanctioned in the classroom. They demand that the Ten Commandments be endorsed in both the public schools and in the courts in stark conflict with the Bill of Rights. They demand that the pseudo science of biblical creationism and it's offspring be made curricula in the science classroom. Troubling indeed is the increasing willingness of our nation’s politicians and lawmakers to concede to their demands. With the enactment of the “Charitable Choice”, “Faith Based”, and “School Voucher” legislative initiatives, our system of social welfare entitlements is in clear danger of being taken over by the institutions of biblical theocracy. With every passing year increasingly larger amounts of government money is siphoned away in support of Churches, Synagogues, and their strictly religious agendas, all under the guise of “charity”. By default, the American wage earner is forced to live under the ever-mounting weight of religion tax. All this is happening under a government peddled stand of allegiance under God. The tactics of the theocrats are as simple as they are devastating. Every “fact” of concession wrung out of the State Legislatures, Congress, school boards, and courts only serve to justify still more facts of concession on the road to total annihilation of constitutional law and thus our sacred civil protections against the totalitarian agenda of biblicalism.
The descriptive specificity of this account requires some perspective. The Eastern Church as well as the various Protestant institutions were also present during the time of Nazism and Communism and thus not immune to accountability in the face of those evil empires. In spite of differences of interpretation and disputes over claims to ultimate authority, they have all held the same exclusionary ideal in common. Biblical doctrine is the unimpeachable divine word of the one true almighty deity, thus making biblical religion the rightful overlord to all nations and people. In the face of this commonly embraced religious dogma, why did anti-Jewish sentiments run so rampant in Nazi Germany as well as in the larger part of Christianity dominated Europe of those times?
The Judeo-Christian bible was formulated in the fourth century under the direction Emperor Constantine, As was the fate of all other religious persuasions, the laws of the Holy Roman Empire had made it a crime punishable by death to practice classical Judaism. The residual cultural effects of centuries of draconian censure against Judaism was therefore a strong intervening factor. Perhaps only complicated speculation, but it would also seem to stem from the insidious ideational impact of the Book of Revelations. For example, thanks to Gutenberg using wholesale printing of the bible to market his printing press, Germany was first among all nations to have it widely disseminated in their native tongue. Considering the resulting depth of acculturated root, it may not be coincidental nor only metaphorical that Nazi Germany along with its Jewish residents where first among all nations to visit the ground of Armageddon. The Book of Revelations as divine law?. Perhaps very much more like the quintessential bipolar act of ecclesiastical madness let loose to poison the consciousness of the world.
This is not affirmation or condemnation of either the Jewish or the Germanic people. Rather, it is a denunciation of a book that enjoys a status far beyond its credible worth to history and to the legacy of civilization. It is denunciation of a dangerously defective religious politic created under the totalitarian agenda of "saint" Constantine in the 4th Centaury (article). Not all the difficulty lies with the Book of Revelations by any means, but among other things with the container itself, which covetously binds the whole together into a single bloody monotheistic apparition. Master myth, master deity, master doctrine, chosen people, master race? Before the ugly mirror of some of history's darkest hours, haven't we heard all this sort of thing before? We might sometime give real credence to the well worn saying, "those who refuse to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them."