Month: June 2002

As one might have predicted, politicians (of both parties) are going nuts over the Pledge of Allegience ruling.

President Bush considers the ruling “ridiculous.”

“The Supreme Court itself begins each of its sessions with the phrase `God save the United States and this honorable court,'” Fleischer said. “The Declaration of Independence refers to God or to the creator four different times. Congress begins each session of the Congress each day with a prayer, and of course our currency says, `In God We Trust.’ The view of the White House is that this was a wrong decision and the Department Justice is now evaluating how to seek redress.”

So, because tradition says it’s okay, it’s okay? Yeah, that’s a really good basis for a Constitutional ruling.

The ruling was also attacked on Capitol Hill, with Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., calling it “just nuts.”
After the ruling, House members gathered on the front steps of the Capitol to recite the Pledge of Allegiance en masse — the same place they defiantly sang “God Bless America” the night of the Sept. 11 attacks.
And senators, who were debating a defense bill, angrily stopped to unanimously pass a resolution denouncing the decision.

Informal gatherings of Representatives and resolutions of the Senate are not the basis for Constitutional law, either.

It seems likely that the case will end up at the Supreme Court. Court-watchers predict the ruling will be overturned. And perhaps that will be okay, if it’s based on a reasonable balance of the Constitution in the context our current culture.

Hopefully it will be based on more than outraged outcries of, “What next?! No more ‘In God We Trust’?!”

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh has some interesting analysis of why the court’s ruling was a reasonable reading of precedent, why “ceremonial Deism” (love that term) may still be okay, and how the Supremes are likely (but not certain) to strike down the ruling. He also talks about how “offensiveness” (either way, in this case) is not good law.

One thing I’m finding amusing in this are the number of folks who pre-date the inclusion who don’t think it’s a big deal taking “under God” back out again.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance is an unconstitutional governmental endorsement of religion, and cannot be recited in public schools.

The phrase “under God” was inserted in 1954 by an act of Congress.

“A profession that we are a nation ‘under God’ is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation ‘under Jesus,’ a nation ‘under Vishnu,’ a nation ‘under Zeus,’ or a nation ‘under no god,’ because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion,” Judge Alfred T. Goodwin wrote for the three-judge panel.
In the nation’s first ruling of its kind, the court said that when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the 1954 legislation, he wrote that “millions of our 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.”

I see their point. I really do. I even, intellectually agree with it. But …

I grew up with the PoA in school. It wasn’t until the foofoorah post-9/11 that I realized it was not part of the universal daily ritual of starting school any more. And while I understand the reasoning behind that, and even more the reasoning behind this decision, there is still that powerful sense of common ritual, that extends even beyond what the ritual words actually say.

Everyone had to be quiet. Everyone had to stand up. Everyone, for a few moments, was in unison. And, yeah, that kind of thing can be insidious. But it is also a powerful socialization tool. For those few moments, we were all one classroom. We weren’t brains or dummies or girls or boys or brown-noses or screw-offs. We were all doing one thing.

And that was both kinda neat and, as the court notes, and to the same degree, dangerous.