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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (52266)	7/4/2002 1:24:08 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 82486

Supporting the Pledge at all costs Published June 30, 2002 The Greatest Generation scraped by in the Depression and saved democracy in World War II. When they recited the Pledge of Allegiance, they didn't say "under God." The words weren't yet part of the ritual. Were they poorer Americans for it? Lesser patriots? I guess we're supposed to think so, given the near-unanimous revulsion that showered the federal appeals court decision declaring the pledge unconstitutional for violating the separation of church and state. Politicians of all stripes elbowed each other out of the way to be the first to excoriate Wednesday's judicial order. The winner might have been Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., whose "just nuts" vied with President Bush's "ridiculous" for best reaction time. Nearly every senator showed up Thursday for a morning prayer, then voted 99-0 reaffirming support for the pledge and "In God We Trust" as the national motto. The House showed its outrage, 416-3. These are the kinds of vote totals we used to deride when Stalin got them. Our country's supposed to be the one in favor of differences of opinion. Neither party neglected the opportunity to score quick political points. Bush volunteered that "there is a universal God, in my opinion," and declared the country needs "commonsense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God." Never mind that Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, who wrote the order, is a 79-year-old Republican appointed by Richard Nixon. Democrats, meantime, rushed to avoid any resemblance to former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, whose veto of a bill requiring the pledge be recited in public schools proved fatal to his 1988 presidential bid against Bush Sr. The lasting lesson: any shirking of support for the pledge is political poison. Goodwin, seeming to wilt in the heat he caused, stayed his order without comment on Thursday. The stay was unnecessary; under court rules his order already was on hold for 45 days to allow for appeals. Excuse me, but isn't a court supposed to be independent of public opinion? Myself, I've never been fully comfortable with the "under God" phrase. I think it does imply a national endorsement of religion, and I think the pledge would be better without it. Congress and President Eisenhower inserted it in 1954, the McCarthy era fixated on loyalty oaths and the fight against "godless Communism." This is not a legacy of our proudest hour. But as a matter of proportion, I see the phrase as innocuous as saying "God bless you" when someone sneezes. Of all the things in need of repair in this world, I wouldn't name the Pledge of Allegiance. Yet, the thunderous denunciations of the judge and of Michael Newdow, the atheist late of Fort Lauderdale who brought the case, bother me. Since Sept. 11, we've seen an explosive resurgence of patriotism, both good and bad -- from Ralph Lauren advertising in red, white and blue hues, to Brit rock stars appearing at Madison Square Garden wrapped in Old Glory, to Attorney General John Ashcroft telling senators that any questioning of his national-security proposals amounts to aiding the enemy. Earlier this year, a half-dozen states pushed to make reciting the pledge mandatory in public schools. It's already the law in about half the states, including Florida. I don't want to see our love of country morph into a one-size-fits-all set of beliefs that defines whether or not you're a good American. I don't want to be told by the president or attorney general or senator that we all ought to believe in God. After suffering at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists, who crashed planes in the World Trade Center and Pentagon, after watching the damage done by Muslim and Jewish hard-liners to the Mideast peace process, after the Catholic-Protestant strife in Belfast, after the Hindu-Muslim bloodshed and nuclear-saber rattling in the Kashmir, you'd think we'd be a little more cautious about mixing God and state.