Of course I’m a paranoid. Paying close attention to politics and history entrains paranoia. And this stinks.
Now, I will defer to expertise on this issue. But to this untrained and skeptical eye, this looks like the Supremes are serving the Pubbies a steaming hot button campaign issue just tailor-made for thier purposes.
Lost your job and your CEO walked away with enough money to buy Ghana? Yeah, but the Dems are against God. Think the whole Iraq mess is a symphony of mendacity and incompetence? Yeah, but the Dems are against God.
So - upon reviewing the In Box for the Supremes - can anyone tell me that it makes sense that this issue needs be dealt with toot sweet? Or is it plausible that they are moving this right along for the above mentioned nefarious purposes?
As to the issue, yeah, technically its not quite kosher to have reference to God in official government hoo-ha. But the fight over that triviality just aint worth it. Especially not in the light of the political ammunition it lavishes on the Troglodyte Right.
PS: Minty, geez, linking us straight to a website made up entirely of legal glurge. Whattzamatta you? You couldn’t just give us the skinny and offer the link to doubters?
Ugh, it is going to be decided next year, an election year. elucidator may be right, and even if it wasn’t on purpose, you can bet Bush is practically masturbating over this.
Has any high-profile Democrat actually come out in support of the Pledge decision? Or any other seperation of church and state issue? It seems like a non-issue for the campaign.
In 2000 Gore was bible-thumping more than Bush. I fully expect whoever runs in 2004 to do the exact same thing.
<crinkle fold-fold crinkle crinkle> Waaay too coincidental for me, but you reckon I’m going to take up this issue anytime soon? I’ve been branded an evildoer enough to make The Mullah blush.
It’s got all the right stuff for a campaign blockbuster: the flag, God and kids. Oppose the Tub-thumping Triumvirate, and you might just as well shave “Osama Rules” into the back of your head.
When deciding whether to grant certiorari, the Supremes tend to use a nebulous set of criteria that includes the importance of the issue, the ripeness of the issue, whether the facts of this case lend themselves to a decision on this issue, which attorneys are asking that cert. be granted, and whatever the hell else they think about it. But one of the most important issues they look at is whether the Circuits are split on this issue. The Supremes love uniformity, and abhor the idea that a person in California has different rights under the federal Constitution than a person in Illinois. Obviously, we have a split here.
But as mentioned by Max_Castle, the biggest reason that this probably isn’t campaign stumping for the Republicans is that Democrats have condemned this decision in terms at least as strong as the Republicans. From what I saw, the Democrats seemed to beat their podiums with even more earnest than their distinguished colleagues, and looked especially sincere when reciting the Pledge in front of the cameras.
Jesus Christ, Age, get a grip yourself. lissener was just commenting about how certain ordinary questions or situations can create an unpleasant moment. I happen to be unemployed these days so whenever someone asks me what I do for a living it creats a bit of an awkward moment, but I’m not suggesting that people stop asking me what I do.
Even this is dissembling. Just like prayer, the most that would/could be banned is state-led recitation of the Pledge. Individual children and anyoe else could and can recite it all they want. But of course, in upside down world, civil society must be led by the government. Liberty, you see, must be carefully ordered and organized by the local authorities.
Madison, the main single author of the 1st, seems to disagree, since he certainly claimed that the chaplains were a violation. I’m not sure how they’d feel about their OWN motto “E Pluribus Unum” being replaced by “In God We Trust” either. The whole point of the FF view was that instead of pretending that government had any right or claim to exercise a religious authority, it would be a very limited affair, concerning itself only with what limited powers and applications were necessary, and religion would remain in the capable hands of the public (and the states). That’s why the motto was about CIVIC unity, not claiming religious authority or mandate, and why clauses praising God and so on were explicitly rejected as being part of the Constitution.
The idea of “ceremonial deism” is, as I said, a joke. Deists had no specific ritualized “ceremonies” to their beliefs: they were usually privately thought out and idiosyncratic. The term not only makes no sense, but most of the things that are supposed to fall under it happened a century after the main Deists were plenty dead. It’s a lame attempt by Supremes to scramble out an excuse not to make an unpopular ruling.
The term isn’t supposed to reflect continuty with Deism as a philosophy. It just makes the assertion that the “God” referred to in governmental ceremonies is intended as a deistic one and not a theistic one…it doesn’t suggest a god that interferes with the universe, it doesn’t suggest a personal god…it doesn’t even really suggest a god at all.
As Eugene Rostow put it, it’s something "so conventional and uncontroversial as to be constitutional.”, or, as Justice Brennan put it in the Lynch dissent:
For another case that was specifically on the topic of the establishment clause and the Pledge, this one a 7th circuit decision, check Sherman v. Community Consolidated School District 21 of Wheeling Township.
“Madison, the main single author of the 1st, seems to disagree, since he certainly claimed that the chaplains were a violation.”
IIRC he changed his mind about this. In any case the same First Congress which proposed the Bill of Rights also established the chaplaincy system.
As for ceremonial deism I don't think it means the ceremonies of deism but symbolic references to God which through repetition have lost their religious significance. Such symbolic references have always been a part of political life in the US.
This is nonsense, and you know it, and the court knew it when it made that argument. Diesm IS a theism, not an alternative to theism.
And it clearly WASN’T meaningless to the people who enacted the laws putting it there: in fact it was put in there in a frenzy of wanting to fight them godless commies, and it certainly is not a deist god if a country is “under” it (since deists didn’t believe that the Creator necessarily had any particular interest or involvement with creation in the first place). The whole point was that we were under god, and they were not: hardly a valueless “deist” sentiment. One can call it conventional and uncontroversial at all they want as a kiss off, but nine times when the court does this, it’s simply because it can’t think of any coherent legal reason to support it’s views. It wasn’t “conventional” at the time, since it wasn’t longstanding as a practice, and it certainly was not “uncontroversial” if there was a case brought in AND one that the court actually agreed to hear.
I can agree that the matter is relatively trivial, and would have more negative political fallout than would be worth it (though… did that stop them on school prayer?) But for goodness sakes, I’m not going to buy the specious and ad hoc reasoning used to justify lazily trying to avoid controversy.
Worse, it’s just as insulting to religion to turn God into a meaningless term. It’s not the government’s job to decide how meaningful a religious term is, it’s the government’s job to leave the job of religious beliefs and terminology up to the people. Plenty of religious people object to “ceremonial deism” precisely because it’s the state draining their beliefs of all meaning into a ritualistic pledge to the state. This is simply not the business the state should be in.
On another note, Scalia recusing himself is probably not a good sign for it getting upheld. Almost certainly, he knows that it will get overturned even without him, and so feels its safe to also play it safe from criticism by staying involved, as he would need to if his vote was going to be pivotal.
I heard “some guy” on TV suggesting that SCOTUS would rule that the Pledge is a poem and not a prayer, so it is okay to include the words “under God.” I cannot cite this, please don’t hurt me. I believe they will remain, no matter the reasoning. I just don’t think the SCOTUS will go “against God.”
I learned the Pledge of Allegiance before the words “under God” were added and it took me a while before I learned to insert them. In fact, I had a hard time remembering where they went. Now, if I were required to recite the Pledge, I would use those words automatically, and they would be as meaningless as the rest of it. If they were removed, it would take me a while to forget them, and they would still be meaningless, as would the rest of the pledge.
So far as I know, a tie vote in the US Supreme Court means that the legal principles of the lower court are affirmed and apply to the entire country, not just the circuit from which the case came.
But there won’t be a tie here. In fact, I strongly suspect it will be a 8-0 vote reversing the court of appeals, with maybe a concurrence or two staking out the ends of the ideological spectrum. As much as I dislike “under God” and “In God We Trust,” there’s ample precedent establishing that simple traditional/historical acknowledgments of God are acceptable under the First Amendment.
And I certainly believe there has to be some place where we draw a line that permits the government to acknowledge religion. Should public schools be forbidden to requires students to read books with religious themes? If so, there goes the great bulk of literature. Do we prohibit public officials from speaking about religious subjects, or saying “God bless America”? If that’s the case, we’ve got a whole lot of unconstitutional Establishment going on in this country.
I personally would draw the line to prohibit the government from officially endorsing theism over atheism, which I believe is the intended and actual effect of adding “under God” to the Pledge. But it is not entirely unreasonable to draw a line that permits “under God” and “In God We Trust.” If that’s as bad as it gets, we’ve got it pretty good.
First of all, Deism isn’t theism. In deism, there’s no idea of a personal god. And, yeah, the phrase was meaningful, but it didn’t have a religious meaning. The Congress wasn’t making a statement about the nature of the divine…it was just saying “we rock! In your face, Godless Commies!”
And also, the question isn’t what the people who put the words in the pledge intended them to mean…it’s what they mean now. The reference to God in the pledge isn’t a religious statement, and 99.9% of the people saying the pledge don’t even think about any of the words or what they mean.