The Feld-Blog

Ok get serious people. “Congress shall make no law in respect of religion.” First of all, this first amendment clause should be understood in context. When originally adopted, it was meant to prevent congress from declaring a national religion or legalizing national religious practices so that states would be free to declare their own. In this light, at the beginning, separation of church and state did not mean that government at all levels should not deal with religion, but that the federal government could not preempt the states in religious matters.

Now and once again, the courts are hearing complaints about “under god” in the pledge of allegiance. Never mind that there are dozens of other infinitely more brutal attacks on the separation of church and state, introducing cases like this into court helps no one and sparks a lose-lose political battle. The phrase was meaningless at its inception. It was added to the pledge in the 50s, in the midst of our first against communism to demonstrate that we were not the godless commies we hated so terribly. It would be easy to return to the original pledge, which is what I think the plaintiff in this case wants, but wouldn’t it be just as easy to recognize it as the meaningless propaganda it is and get to work on more important business.

As Jon Stewart mentioned, now we are at war with religious fanatics, so perhaps eventually congress will change it again and take care of these people’s current qualms. Until then, lets not worry so much about this meaningless stuff. The judicial system is tied up enough as it is. They have many more important things clogging their dockets.