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GraceKrasnermanFirstEssay 5 - 04 Jun 2016 - Main.EbenMoglen
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| | | Politics and personal feelings sent the twenty-year-old immigrant boy to jail. The reason the phrase “Under God” is included in the Pledge of Allegiance is, unsurprisingly, also politics. President Dwight D. Eisenhower inserted those words in an act in 1954 to rally patriotism during the Cold War. More specifically, Eisenhower enacted the law as an effort to unite Americans against the evil atheist threat of Communism: upon signing the bill, he issued a statement asserting that the addition of this phrase “reaffirm[s] the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource."1 Now, the Pledge and other patriotic declarations are meant to unite Americans against the threat of terrorism. Fear is a wonderful political tool.
The Supreme Court used the issue of the Newdow’s legal standing to avoid making an explicit decision of the constitutionality of the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge. Three justices, however, wrote concurrences in which they argued the phrase was part of the nation’s history, resting their opinions on the notion of ceremonial deism. They argued that the insertion of the phrase “Under God” is not religious, but rather ceremonial, and that this drill is so prevalent and commonplace that it has lost its religious connotation. However, this issue illustrates how individual liberties and constitutional protections are not objective guarantees, and are instead subject to the judges’ and other governmental interests’ political stances, and even to their personal feelings. | |
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< | 1 Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill To Include the Words "Under God" in the Pledge to the Flag.," June 14, 1954. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
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> | 1 Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill To Include the Words "Under God" in the Pledge to the Flag.," June 14, 1954. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
Why isn't this a link above? Writing for the web means making things easy for readers.
The draft as rewritten
has now three subjects, conflated: something drawn from Larry
Joseph, as metaphor, an argument about the presence of God in the
"pledge of allegiance," and a theme about a supposed failure of the
rule of law where judges have political stances and personal
feelings. The last is the real subject, I think, despite the space
given to the others; the route to improvement is focus.
Judges are human. One possibility is that rules could be
administered by machine if they were designed right. Another is
that justice is a human activity, for which frail human beings doing
their best are required, in which the judge's own effort to attain
justice, ripened by long experience, is our best hope for the
achievement of what otherwise would elude us, no matter how
mechanically we succeeded to rendering it.
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