In 1966, the last thing my mother expected to get was a phone call from the principal of my elementary school delicately asking why I wouldn’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
It was my second week of Kindergarten. I had spent the first week sitting invisibly in the back of the wrong classroom, blissfully unaware that my absence in the correct classroom had already precipitated a series of phone calls from the same principal just a few days before. Now that little misunderstanding had been cleared up, and I was ready to start Kindergarten Phase II in the correct class, with the correct teacher, and wearing the correct name tag.
It was a different time. The school did not have to call my mother’s cell phone, or page her out of an important meeting. There was no answering machine with which to leave a message if she was unable to answer the phone. In 1966, my mother was home taking care of my baby sister.
To complete this picture, there is something else you need to know. This particular 1966 took place in California, in a sleepy suburb in the San Francisco Bay area. My father was a few years out of UC Berkeley and raising his family on the barely middle-class income of a mild-mannered reporter for a large metropolitan … actually, for a thoroughly middle-class newspaper in a sleepy suburban working town in 1966.
UC Berkeley had not yet exploded onto the national scene as a bastion of liberal, radical, free-thinking privileged beatniks who wanted to pull out of a losing war in Asia a few years before we actually did. Still, it was a politically delicate time, and the principal of my school used appropriate sensitivity when he called my mother to ask if my family hated America.
No, not really. But in the shadow of Berkeley in 1966 it was not unreasonable to wonder if there were serious political reasons why a five year old boy, when asked to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance, suddenly burst into tears and had to be escorted to the school nurse.
I have been thinking about this lately following the more recent news out of California of the ruling by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional because of the words “under God“. The basis of the decision was a case brought by one Michael Newdow, a Sacramento physician who also happens to hold a law degree, who claimed that his second-grade daughter was hurt by having to “watch and listen as her state-employed teacher in her state-run school leads her classmates in a ritual proclaiming that there is a god.”
The appeals court ruling relied upon interpretations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment which requires that “Congress … make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
“When Congress inserted ‘under God‘ into the pledge in 1954″ reads the finding, “its sole purpose was to advance religion.” The ruling goes on to quote a 1954 congressional report which asserted that “including God in the Pledge of Allegiance … would acknowledge the dependence of our people and our government upon the moral directions of the Creator.”
Twelve years later, while I sat sobbing in front of the assembled school office staff — my Mom, and, for all I know, the school psychologist, all gazing at me in earnest concern — I was unaware of the political gerrymandering that had inserted this controversial phrase into our daily routine of social indoctrination. In my second week of kindergarten, the first week of which had been spent in the wrong classroom under an assumed name, the reason I burst into tears upon being asked to join in the Pledge of Allegiance was for this simple reason: I didn’t know the words. My first week had been spent in the “slow” kindergarten.
That awkward scene aside, I did develop a distinct discomfiture with the phrase “under god”. My unease only increased when I joined the Cub Scouts in third grade and found myself reciting the pledge in meetings as well as in school. At seven years old I had probably not yet heard the term “atheist”, but I knew that I was having a lot of trouble buying this whole God thing.
Because I saw this as a purely personal struggle, however, I came up with a uniquely personal solution: when the moment came to utter the phrase “under God“, I quietly substituted the name of one of my favorite cartoon characters: Underdog. (As in “one nation, Underdog, with Liberty and Justice for all“). To this day, the sight of the brave little pooch with his red costume and blue cape, flying off to save Polly Purebred, brings a patriotic tear to my eye.
Judge Alfred Goodwin, writing for the three-judge panel, found that “a profession that we are a nation ‘under God‘ is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation ‘under Jesus,’ a nation ‘under Vishnu,’ a nation ‘under Zeus,’ or a nation ‘under no god,’ because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion.”
Our political leaders, men and women who have dedicated their professional lives to standing up for liberty and democratic choice, immediately stepped forward with their well-reasoned reactions:
“President” Bush called the ruling “ridiculous,” and promised to appoint “common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God.” Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott called it “a stupid ruling”. Striking a more conciliatory tone, Majority Leader Tom Daschle called the ruling “just nuts”, leaving the real name calling to Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) who, apparently not wanting to be outdone by Trent Lott, declared “I hope the Senate will waste no time in throwing this back in the face of this stupid judge. Stupid. That’s what he is, stupid.”
It’s nice to know that all those Ivy League educations haven’t gone to waste.
Dissenting Judge Ferdinand Fernandez, appointed by President Bush-the-elected, wrote “under (this) theory of our Constitution … we will soon find ourselves prohibited from using our album of patriotic songs in many public settings. ‘God Bless America‘ and ‘America the Beautiful‘ will be gone for sure.” Fernandez went on to say that the same logic would apply to using “In God We Trust” on the nation’s currency.
Let’s all just take a deep breath for a moment, shall we?
A seven year old being forced to stand up in front of her entire class every morning and choose whether or not to participate in a ritual of social engineering is certainly not the same thing as being in a public rally and listening to a bunch of folks singing “God Bless America“. As an adult, I can easily choose to sing, not to sing, or sing “The Hokey Pokey” if I jolly well want to.
As for our money being emblazoned with “In God We Trust“… Well, that is wrong in so many ways that the idea of even using it to defend the insertion of “under god” into the Pledge of Allegiance is beyond absurd. “In Alan Greenspan We Trust” is more honest, and “In the Unregulated Market System of Free and Open Competition We Trust” is at least as mythic.
We are not “one nation, under god“. We are one nation and many people of many faiths, united by a core of democratic principles and a dynamic and reflective body of laws called the Constitution. And as nihilistic as I may appear to be sometimes, I place my trust in that more than anything else we have created.
It cannot be easy being a politician, always beholden to your lobbyists and, occasionally, the voters. Who seeking reelection would dare be tarnished as being “against god”? I would assume that would explain why, upon hearing of the ruling from California, the Senate stopped debating a defense bill and voted to unanimously pass a resolution denouncing the court decision as evil, while 99 of the 100 House members (the one holdout being Jesse Helms, who could not participate because he is, in fact, dead) gathered on the front steps of the Capitol to stridently recite the Pledge of Allegiance — the same place they sang “God Bless America” on September 11.
And had I been there, I rather like the idea that I might have been able to slip into the crowd and, so quietly that no one else could hear me over the din, sing my own little tribute to the enduring American spirit:
When criminals in this world appear
and break the laws that they should fear
and frighten all who see or hear
the call goes up both far and near
for Underdog! Underdog!
Speed of lightning, roar of thunder
fighting all who rob or plunder
Underdog. Underdog!
When in this world the headlines read
of those whose hearts are filled with greed
who rob and steal from those who need
to right this wrong with blinding speed
goes Underdog! Underdog!
(lyrics to Underdog © by whomever it is that owns them)