Using "under God" & "In God we trust".

[postconditional]

I recently received a post from a friend of mine, urging me to boycott a product for failing to use the words "under God" in its reprint of the Pledge of Allegiance. This might seem like a worthy cause to some, but imagine if the Pledge read, "under Krishna" or even "under Allah". Would those same good people be as offended if someone omitted those words? One in every five Americans is not a Christian! The problem with the ethics of "what is good for the majority" is that it ignores the needs of the minority as if they never existed.

My gut instinct reminded me that there was more to this issue, but I could not put my finger on it until I suddenly remembered this morning that the words "under God" were never originally part of the Pledge of Allegiance in the first place!

The original Pledge of Allegiance.

The Pledge of Allegiance was originally written in 1892 by the socialist Francis Bellamy, a cousin of the famous radical writer Edward Bellamy. In the original Pledge of Allegiance, he wrote:

1892: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Please re-read that carefully. Note the different wording. The tradition of the Pledge of Allegiance is not as it has always been. It was not drafted by our founding fathers, and it did not include the words "under God".

The Pledge of Allegiance time line.

A brief time line follows:

1892: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Oct: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
1923-24: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
1954: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Fear changes the Pledge of Allegiance

In 1950's America, beneath the thin veneer of the idyllic family with two-point-six children living in peaceful suburbia, people lived in abject fear and terror of what was to come. We were all going to die horribly, but I'll come back to that point later.

Fear of the future and fear of change breeds conservative ways of thinking that seeks to oppose change by embracing perceived stere otypes of traditionalism, however fictional those so-called "traditional values" may be historically. (We may hear people call for return to "traditional family values", but those values were invented in the Industrial Revolution as a reaction to, and possible fear of, mass urbanization! Note that these newly invented "traditional values" created the very glass ceiling that women continue to fight to this day!) This fear of the future and resulting conservatism gives birth to religious fundamentalism.

"The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching."
- Assyrian Table, circa 2800 BC

Some extreme religious fundamentalists would rather blow up their opposition. Here in the states, our extremists want to convert us all to their way of thinking and life style. Remember, in their mindset, their (often mis-informed) interpretation of history and the "way life used to be" is the only thing that will save us from our coming doom.

"Billy Graham rose to fame as a Red-baiter who warned that Americans would perish in a nuclear holocaust unless they embraced Jesus Christ."

In the 1950's, we faced the communist threat, the red scare, a nation of atheists that supressed all religion, and the possibility that they'd wipe us all off the face of the Earth with atomic bombs. To combat this threat, we embraced the opposite ideals of Americanism, democracy, capitalism, and religion. In essence, we became an entire nation of religious fundamentalists over night.

"Secretary of State John Foster Dulles believed that the United States should oppose communism not because the Soviet Union was a totalitarian regime but because its leaders were atheists."

Americans committed all sorts of atrocities against their fellow Americans in the pursuit of traditional values. Most notable of these crimes were the (Wikipedia) McCarthy Trials and McCarthyism, which sought to censor, condemn, and black list "dangerous" ideas that did not conform to the fundamentalism of perceived traditional American values. Of lesser note was the (Wikipedia) Comic Book Code Authority which regulated, limited, and censored the comic book industry.

The comic book industry would go on to produce over two decades of un-thought provoking and uninspiring adolescent dribble that would fail to address real world problems on any meaningful scale. (Many people born during that time continue to view comic books, cartoons, anime, and manga as "children's entertainment".)

History would repeat itself later when Americans are exposed to a different external threat at the turn of the twenty first century.

The American armies of fear attack the Constitution of the United States
I'm just going to copy and paste here:

"Hand in hand with the Red Scare, to which it was inextricably linked, the new religiosity overran Washington. Politicians outbid one another to prove their piety. President Eisenhower inaugurated that Washington staple: the prayer breakfast. Congress created a prayer room in the Capitol. In 1955, with Ike's support, Congress added the words 'In God We Trust' on all paper money. In 1956 it made the same four words the nation's official motto, replacing 'E Pluribus Unum.' Legislators introduced Constitutional amendments to state that Americans obeyed 'the authority and law of Jesus Christ.'

The campaign to add "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance was part of this movement... In the early '50s the Knights themselves adopted the God-infused pledge for use in their own meetings, and members bombarded Congress with calls for the United States to do the same. Other fraternal, religious, and veterans clubs backed the idea. In April 1953, Rep. Louis Rabaut, D-Mich., formally proposed the alteration of the pledge in a bill he introduced to Congress.

The 'under God' movement didn't take off, however, until the next year, when it was endorsed by the Rev. George M. Docherty, the pastor of the Presbyterian church in Washington that Eisenhower attended.

Holy Bibles, Batman!

Historical consequences: The self-fulfilling prophecy of fear.

By 1959, American seemed perfect. Even Elvis had cleaned up his act and had served in the military. We were one big happy Christian nation that ignored and censored its own social problems. The result? The 1960's. What happened when religious fervor stormed Capital Hill? Back-lash! We've been fighting to keep the church out of our state and out of the indoctrination of impressionable youth into extremist forms of religion and intolerance since then, and they've been fighting us back ever since. Among the good guys are Americans United (for the separation of church at state), formerly a Methodist organization that recognizes the potential evils of a religious state run Amerika!

The fight to reclaim the Pledge of Allegiance today

Here's another copy and paste:

"The record of the 1954 act shows that, far from a 'de minimis' reference or a mere 'backdrop' devoid of meaning, the words 'under God' were inserted in the pledge for the express purpose of endorsing religion-which the U.S. Supreme Court itself ruled in 1971 was unconstitutional."

I believe that this ruling provided the basis for the unconstitutionality of school led prayer. More plagerism:

"On June 26, 2002, a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in Newdow vs. U.S. Congress that the phrase 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution."

So what happened?

"The 2-1 ruling sparked immediate reaction from many corners. President Bush, then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and other leading politicians criticized the court's ruling. The Senate voted 99-0 and the House of Representatives voted 416-3 to reaffirm the words 'under God' in the Pledge. The American Center for Law and Justice criticized the Ninth Circuit's ruling as flawed while the American Civil Liberties Union praised the decision as 'consistent with recent Supreme Court rulings invalidating prayer at school events.'

On February 28, 2003, the court amended its earlier ruling and announced that neither the panel nor the full Ninth Circuit would rehear the case. The amended opinion affirmed the earlier ruling that the school district's policy of teacher-led recitation of the Pledge with the inclusion of the words 'under God' was unconstitutional, but it pulled back from its earlier conclusion that the 1954 Act adding the words 'under God' to the Pledge was unconstitutional. The ruling was subsequently stayed, allowing schools in Western states to continue public recitations of the Pledge."

In other words, a American Court of Law got brow beaten into a retraction. The words 'under God' are unconstitutional. They really are. For less than a year, the words 'under God' were legally unconstitutional until a bunch of phoney balogny politicians fearful of losing their jobs lashed out.

Don't think it wouldn't happen if the majority of politicians supported the court's ruling?

"In the 1988 presidential race, as many readers will recall, George Bush bludgeoned Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis for vetoing a mandatory-pledge bill when he was governor of Massachusetts, even though the state Supreme Court had ruled the bill unconstitutional. Surely one reason for the current cravenness of Democratic leaders is a fear of undergoing Dukakis' fate in 2002 or 2004 at the hands of another Bush."

The results of this essay

When the brain encounters new information that contradicts expectations, the result is called cognitive dissonance. When the brain summarily rejects the new information, even though the information may be well research ed with supporting ideas from people knowledgeable in their field, then this process is called deletion.

There will be those who will read this who will still insist that our Pledge of Allegiance should continue carrying the words "under God", though they will may unable to refute the history or the research above or may be unwilling to truly examine the issue. I can already hear a resounding, "Yeah, whatever", from them as they continue on and call for more boycottts.

Blind faith and compliance to other's inarguable interpretations of what God wants (because they said that God wants it, and you can not argue with God) devoid of knowledge, fact, or historical accuracy, will do that to you. You will filter out what you perceive, making you less aware, and you will question and analyze less as a result, and you will think less of the consequences of your actions. If left unchecked, it will turn you into a mindless fanatical zombie, one that could easily hurt others without meaning to through the use of intolerance.

Remember, one in five Americans are not Christian. Be a good Christian, and afford them hospitality despite their different views.