In the (turbulent) wake of the Ninth Circuit Pledge of Allegiance ruling, all I could think of was the study conducted several years ago by the Constitution Center, which concluded that Americans revered the Constitution, but had no idea what it meant.
In the (turbulent) wake of the Ninth Circuit Pledge of Allegiance ruling, all I could think of was the study conducted several years ago by the Constitution Center, which concluded that Americans revered the Constitution, but had no idea what it meant.
This is not necessarily a defense of the ruling. Reasonable people who have actually read the First Amendment can differ over its application in this case. The Establishment Clause forbids government from sponsoring or endorsing religious observances or affirmations. If the “under God” recitation is a genuinely religious exercise, the government can’t make schoolchildren say it. If, on the other hand, it is a ceremonial, civic recitation without meaningful religious significance, it is constitutionally permissible. The Ninth Circuit thought it was religious; the Seventh Circuit, back in 1992, thought it wasn’t. Most of us—even dedicated civil libertarians—tend to think that the constitutional infringement, if it exists, is too minimal to worry about.
What we do worry about is the intellectual dishonesty, political pandering and sheer ignorance that characterized so much of the public reaction to the ruling.
· John Ashcroft was quoted to the effect that schoolchildren had been “saying this Pledge for two centuries.” I knew he was contemptuous of the Constitution, but obviously history isn’t his strong suit either. The Pledge was written in the late 1800’s by the socialist brother of utopian author Edward Bellamy, and “under God” was inserted in the 1950s, during the McCarthy era, as a response to Godless Communism.
· A recent editorial cartoon showed someone sawing the Free Exercise Clause from a stone tablet containing the First Amendment religion clauses. Presumably, the cartoonist considers it Free Exercise when the government makes you say what the majority wants you to say. It would seem obvious that people who are coerced by the government to do something have not freely chosen to do it. (And then there’s that pesky history again, reminding us that the purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect individuals from the passions of the majority.)
· Politicians and elected officials, many of them lawyers who certainly know better, fell over each other denouncing the Ninth Circuit ruling as “bizarre” and “shocking,” as though it was so divorced from First Amendment precedent as to be inconceivable. In a recent column discussing the case, noted religion scholar Martin Marty reminded us what Edward Gibbon wrote of Rome, “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.” As Marty noted, our politicians “hurried to chambers of Congress and Capitol steps to be photographed ‘parading their piety before men’ (Matthew 6).” One need not agree with the Ninth Circuit (Marty didn’t) to find the spectacle distasteful.
Is the Pledge of Allegiance in its current form a threat to our liberties? No. But widespread ignorance of—and worse, disdain for—basic Constitutional principles surely is.