From Terry:
I've been reading a lot lately
about the whole "under God" thing with the Pledge of Allegiance and have
wondered how you go about combating those that you deal with who think that the
phrase should just be completely struck out. Even I have gotten to the point of
having to conceed that the phrase has no place in the Pledge but I don't want
to. Any advice you might have would be helpful.
Thanks
Terry,
The worst thing you can do is give up. There is a good thread on
this currently going on over at
freeconservatives.com. It is in the
"other news" section under politics. This thread has pretty much gone through
and debunked all the major reasons the anti-"under God"ites have come up with.
I am currently working on an article concerning this, but use this as your
primer. You'll have to be patient and weed through the liberal mantra and
repreated insanity of the same things being said over and over only to be
debunked over and over, but it is worth it.
Pretty much you are looking
at these as the major arguments:
1) The founding fathers were not
Christians.
Answer this by using many of the quotes I have here on this
site under the
quotations
section.
2) There are no refences to God or that God's Laws were involved
in the founding in the Constitution which sets forth our laws.
Answer
this by noting that the Declaration of Independence uses these phrases "
the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God entitle them" (note that God is capitalized and thus indicates the
proper form), "all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", and "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world". Coupling this with
the final sentence of the Constitution which clearly recognizes the Declaration
of Independence as the "founding" for the nation and that many of the same
persons were involved with both documents, they can not be simply
separated.
3) The Treaty of Tripoli says that we are not a nation founded
under the Christian faith.
Yes and no. The article that they will refer
to is #11 and it does indeed say that American is not a "Christian" nation.
However the following things must be remembered:
a) The meaning of this phrase is not that the
nation is not founded under the laws of Christianity, but rather that the United
States is not a "Christian State" ruled by the Christian church. This was one
of the reasons that the Barbary States were pirating our ships; i.e. because
they beleived that we were a Christian State ruled by the Christian church and
they were followers of Islam.
b) Other treaties signed around the same time
(both before and after) by the United States refered to such things as the grace
of God and the Judeo-Christian faith as binding between the participants. This
points out the difference in what is actually political pandering in treaty
writing and actual reality.
c) The treaty ceased to exist when it was later
renegotiated with the US in a stronger possiton than when the Treaty of Tripoli
was signed. This new version has no such mention of the United States not being
a "Christian" nation.
d) If all this fails to convince people otherwise
simply point out that while treaties are certainly considered law, there is fine
point to remember that law can often contradict fact. If Congress passed a
treaty with France that said the Earth was flat, does it make it so? No it
doesn't.
4) The phrase "under God" violates that separatation of
church and state and imposes a religion up me.
Answer this with, there is
no such thing. The phrase appears in a letter by Thomas Jefferson loosely
related at best to the meaning of the first Amendment. It also does not impose
a religion. Simply stating an historical fact imposes nothing. The 1st
Amendment says that Congress shall not make a law respecting the "establishment"
of a religion. "Establish" means to make law or make it required to be
practiced. Saying that agreeing to a historical fact such as the United States
being founded "under God" is the last great hope for those that want to see it
removed. If stating an historic fact means that you are forced to agree with it
as your method of beleif, then stating that Hitler's Germany was founded under
the NAZI system of beliefs would make you a NAZI. Now that is just
silly.
Hope that helps. Look for my upcoming papaer on this that will
expound on these points.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey J.
Jackson
www.thelandofthefree.net