The recent court decision on the pledge was a topic on my radio show today. We've talked about it before, and treaded the usual territory about the meaning of the establishment clause.
I asked a question to my co-host, Marc Abrams, however, that seemed to distill the issue down to its essence.
Since our founding documents say people "are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights," and that the government's role is to "secure these rights" - I asked if liberals would have a problem with students being taught that in our system of government, rights come from God.
He said yes, that would be a problem. Can't do it. He said it would be OK to teach what the Declaration of Independence says about rights coming from God, but that it establishes religion to teach that our Republic is actually based on this notion.
Such are the intellectual contortions necessary to not offend the ACLU these days. Nonsensical.
3 comments:
Sure, but what happens a hundred years hence and we have a large Islamic population, and they decide that students should be taught that rights come from Allah. You'd be rightfully bent out of shape. Religion belongs at home.
I think Allah is covered.... last I looked, Allah is the Muslim God.
I don't really believe in "God" but I feel more comfortable with having something in the pledge that denotes that government is not the end-all-be-all.
If it's not "under" something, it can be over everything.
Lately, when I recite the pledge, I say "under the gods". The Roman connotations seem appropriate to this stage of America's history.
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