"In God We Trust"? The Associated Press reports today that:

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower judge's dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the slogan written on the Davidson County Government Center in Lexington, N.C.

It uses as authority for its absurd and bigoted ruling that:

"In God We Trust" has appeared on the nation's coins since 1865 and was made the national motto by Congress in 1956. The motto also is inscribed above the speaker's chair in the U.S. House of Representatives and above the main door of the U.S. Senate chamber.

"In this situation, the reasonable observer must be deemed aware of the patriotic uses, both historical and present, of the phrase 'In God We Trust,'" Judge Robert King wrote. The court said the inscription would be unconstitutional if it served a religious purpose.

That is both idiotic and dishonest. If Congress adopted as our national motto "There Is No God", would that be merely patriotic? or a powerful interference with religion by putting a stigma upon believers?
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In the year 2050, the U.S. is expected to have 420 million people, but India will have become the world's most populous country with nearly 4 times as many people as we. What if by then India has overtaken us technologically and militarily, a war erupts between our two countries, and India crushes the U.S., takes over our territory, and establishes Hinduism as the combined nation's official religion — tho it permits non-Hindus to follow their nonofficial religions without too much interference? Will Americans be content to have their religious views held in official contempt? Or will they want a separation of temple and state so they feel equal to other Indians?
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In 1789, the Founding Fathers wrote the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights and sent it for ratification by the states. Approved in December 1791, it reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Note that the wording is "establishment of religion", not "establishment of a particular religion". It forbids government to take sides in any controversy over religion or irreligion whatsoever.
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The national motto the Founders selected, as entrenched in the Great Seal of the United States approved by Congress on June 10, 1782, is in Latin, "E Pluribus Unum" ("Out of Many, One"). That brilliantly encapsulates what they were trying to do, create one nation and one people out of many states and groups, including many religious denominations, deists, agnostics, and atheists.
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Deism is "belief in a God who created the world but has since remained indifferent to it." (Random House Unabridged Dictionary) That is, they believe that there is a God but He merely established the laws of the Universe and does not interfere with their workings as to intervene in human affairs or respond to prayer. Many of the Founding Fathers were deists, and it would have struck them as absurd to "trust" in a God who pays no attention to human affairs.
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The fact that Congress approved "In God We Trust" as the national motto in 1865, after we had lived perfectly well without it for 89 years, shows not that it is constitutional but only that Congress defied the Constitution and the courts did nothing. That odious motto wasn't added to paper money until 1957 — after 181 years without it) — starting with the one-dollar bill and gradually extending to all other bills. Again, the legislature defied the Constitution.
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It is precisely because the Framers of the Constitution knew that it is in the nature of man to trample the rights of others that cautious men insisted (a) on a written constitution (that requires a supermajority to amend) and (b) that a Bill of Rights be added to the Constitution to safeguard the rights of the minority.
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The original thinking of many of the Framers was that it is enuf to build in checks and balances on the powers of government to keep everyone's rights safe. Wiser heads prevailed. They knew that unless supermajorities were required for certain types of actions, the passions and posturings of the moment could produce dictatorial misrule by the majority. They tried to prevent such abuse but failed.
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The Constitution and Bill of Rights are only words on paper, and any government can defy those words at any time. If Congress, the President, and Supreme Court are all inclined to defy the Constitution and Bill of Rights, by a simple majority or by turning a blind eye to violations, they can effectively render the Constitution null and void. They've done that on lots of things.
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When did Congress last declare war? World War II, December 8, 1941. In Article I, Section 8, the Constitution gave Congress the sole power to declare war. Implicit in this was denial of the right to wage war without a declaration of war by Congress, but since the Constitution does not explicitly require a formal declaration of war, the Executive Branch has again and again made war against people near and far without restraint. What is the big deal about declaring war? If Congress is behind a given war, why doesn't it simply declare war, as the Framers intended?
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The Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights says that:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Isn't that cute? So quaint, so needless and irrelevant, so void as a matter of practical effect. Does the Fourth Amendment permit everyone who wants to board an airplane or enter a government building to be searched by government agents? Plainly it does not. But who cares what the Constitution says? It was written a very long time ago, in a very different age with very different problems. That it doesn't permit what we do every day means nothing. We will pretend to be obeying the Constitution even as we shred it.
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I resent the implication that I am not a patriot if I am not religious and do not trust — whatever that's supposed to mean — in "God".
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I am the 11th generation of people who have lived on this continent, since well before the creation of this Republic. My people were here, at latest, in 1642. One of my ancestors served as a private in the Continental Army that, with the indispensable help of our first and best friend France, threw the British out of our country. I am eligible for both the Sons of the Revolution and the Holland Society (a patriotic society of "descendant[s] in the direct male line of an ancestor who lived in New Netherland before or during 1675"), and I am acutely aware of the unique contributions of the United States, and especially its Constitution, to world history and civilization. I co-founded a political organization, the Expansionist Party of the United States, to extend the benefits of that Constitution widely by bringing new areas into the Union. But I adamantly reject the suggestion that because I am nonreligious, even antireligious, I am somehow less than "American".
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How insecure — and insincere — are believers that they find it necessary to shout from the rooftops that they believe and trust in God? Jesus warned us about such people, in Matthew 6:5-6:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites [are]: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

I accuse the rightwingers who demand that the United States inflict religion — their religion, of course, not anybody else's — upon everybody, of hypocrisy and impiety. Their religion is a show, not real. If they are unable to be devout unless everyone around them constantly reassures them of the rightness of their views, they are not believers at all, and should just admit that religion is a load of crap, a crutch for the perpetually weak of mind and character.
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When they can answer three questions to the satisfaction of all doubters, then they will have the right to insist that their religion be given specially exalted status by government:
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(1) Why do terrible, horrible things happen to good people?
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(2) If Adam and Eve were the only human beings at The Beginning, and people reproduce sexually, then isn't it inescapable that the human race is the product of incest? And
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(3) What kind of monster would create a system in which to live, one must kill? Why do we have to kill animals or plants just to survive? Why can't we eat rocks or sand and flourish, as plants effectively do?
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I do not accept the idea that the human race is bad, so all people, even the just and innocent, deserve to be punished. Nor do I accept the idea that kill-or-die is a really good way to model the universe. So I do not trust in God, not to the tiniest degree. But I am at least as good an American as the most ostentatious hypocrite or privately pious believer in the Nation.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,622.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:33 PM