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

To: Lane3 who wrote (52747)	7/8/2002 9:10:02 PM
From: E	Respond to of 82486

Message 17708383

To: Lane3 who wrote (52747)	7/9/2002 9:35:47 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

washingtonpost.com Pious Pledgers All By Richard Cohen Tuesday, July 9, 2002; Page A21 To plagiarize a plagiarist, I cite Pete Seeger, the venerable folk singer, who said his father once told him that plagiarism was essential to creativity. It is in that vein that I borrow the observation of someone -- I can't remember who -- who pointed out that right after a federal court ruled that the phrase "under God" amounted to a coercive attempt to establish religion, the entire Congress rose as one and, insisting otherwise, recited the pledge. Not a single member had the guts to dissent. Now, I admit right off that I really don't care about that phrase. It could stay or go and it would not mean a thing to me. It is a trivial and mostly innocuous governmental affirmation of religious belief, which I think of as I do the coins in my pocket. "In God We Trust," they say -- and, as the old joke goes, "all others pay cash." But Mike Newdow, an atheist, did care. And he did not want his 8-year-old daughter saying the pledge with that phrase in it. The words, as we all know, were added in 1954 to emphasize the difference between the United States and the Soviet Union. We believed in God and the communists did not. It was a simplistic formulation. Osama bin Laden believes in God. So do the Serbs who fought a vicious war in the Balkans with the enthusiastic support of the Orthodox Church. And so do the Hindus who retaliated against Muslim extremists in India by burning innocent Muslims in their homes. All over the world, some people are willing to kill other people in the name of God. Nonetheless, the words were inserted in the pledge. We didn't need it to fight the Nazis, but for some reason we did to fight the commies. I was 12 or 13 when the phrase became law and I recognized it for what it was: a governmental effort to establish religion. That religion, I knew, was not my own. It was the majority's religion -- the president's and Congress's and, of course, that of the teacher at the head of the classroom. She and they wanted me to say those words. I refused to say them then, and I still won't. I love my country and will gladly pledge my allegiance to it. I honor the flag and proudly fly it from the porch of my house. But those words about God are unnecessary. Still, I would never challenge the phrase in court. It is boilerplate, of no consequence. I do not feel threatened. So, it's okay with me if the 9th U.S. Circuit Court's ruling gets overturned on appeal, which it surely will. (Scalia must already be working on the decision.) Still, someone should pause and note the reaction of both the House and Senate to the ruling and how not a single member had the courage to suggest -- just to suggest -- that the court had a point. After a lifetime in journalism, I can tell you that some members of Congress are religious skeptics. Some are even agnostics or atheists. That's true of society in general and it is no less true of our national leaders. Yet, not one questioned the consensus. Not one stood up for that school kid in California -- not one. If these men and women, adults with immense influence, were cowed into acting like 8-year-olds in the classroom, then how can we expect real 8-year-olds to assert their constitutional right to delete the phrase or not recite the pledge at all? What kid can stand up to that kind of pressure? Certainly, no member of Congress could. Those of us who are more skeptical than religious are constantly being told how godless this country has become. Yet, the California decision was unanimously denounced (99-0 in the Senate) in the most vituperative terms. George Bush called it "ridiculous," Tom Daschle, truly the majority leader (the minority be damned), called it "nuts" and Robert Byrd, usually a man of comical grandiloquence, turned uncharacteristically terse. He said the judges were "stupid." America is a famously religious nation. That is a fact. Religion really needs no help from the government -- and that is a fact also. Those who need the government's protection are kids, like the one in California, who choose to assert their Americanism in a secular but no less ardent way. A court understood her plight -- and then Congress, virtually to a person, stood as one and effectively declared that she should, as the law allows, make a stand on principle by staying silent. They covered their hearts -- but they were really covering something else instead. © 2002 The Washington Post Company