Michael Gaynor
September 15, 2005
Michael Newdow: Devil's advocate triumphant
By Michael Gaynor

Michael Newdow claims to be an atheist.

His mission on earth appears to be to drive references to God, if not God, out of public life.

He wants "under God" out of "The Pledge of Allegiance" and "In God We trust" off America's currency.

Having bought a ticket, he thought he was entitled to have prayer barred from President Bush's second inauguration.

But he failed that time. Even United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who wanted to remove a small Ten Commandments monument from the Texas capitol grounds as well as to bar Ten Commandments display in courthouse (except, perhaps, the United States Supreme Court building itself), declined Newdow's invitation to "protect him" from prayer at the inauguration.

And Newdow failed in the United States Supreme Court, for lack of standing, not on the merits, the first time he tried to remove "under God" from "The Pledge of Allegiance."

Like Satan, however, he is persistent.

I don't know whether Newdow is an atheist, or a Satanist posing as an atheist.

But I do know that God can bring good out of evil.

And I pray that God is giving Americans a chance to revisit and reverse the United States Supreme Court's decision to leave the constitutional path created by the Founders and Framers and instead to embrace secular extremism by mandating governmental neutrality between religion and irreligion and barring governmental support for religion generally.

America was founded by Christians, not atheists.

And James Madison, whom the secular extremists regularly invoke, defined religion as "the duty owed the Creater" instead of defining atheism as religion, as the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently did.

Newdow is right that the presence of the words "under God" in "The Pledge of Allegiance" is not neutrality between religion and irreligion. Nor is the status of Thanksgiving and Christmas as federal holidays.

But the Founders and Framers did not expect, much less require, such neutrality. They humbly recognized God. And they did so in America's foiunding document, the Declaration of Independence, and both of America's governing documents, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

The claim that the Constitution is a godless document is a contemptible, and easily disprovable, secular extremist lie.

Mr. Newdow is right that The Pledge of Allegiance is a prayer. Those who recite it declare not only their loyalty to America, but America's subordinate to God status. And that's the way it's supposed to be.

In 1954, after a campaign led by the Knights of Columbus, Congress unanimously voted to add the words "under God" to "The Pledge of Allegiance," effectively making it both a patriotic oath and a public prayer.

President Eisenhower joyously signed the bill into law and proudly proclaimed: "From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our Nation and our people to the Almighty."

They would be proclaiming what Americans had believed from the beginning.

And anyone whose private right of conscience precluded him or her from reciting the words "under God" has a constitutional right not to say them.

But NOT a constitutional right to stop those who want to say them from doing so.

A small tail is not supposed to wag a big dog. And a tiny atheist minority is not supposed to restrict the God-given liberty right of the vast majority of believing Americans.

But the secular extremists have captured a majority on the United States Supreme Court and put ends to voluntary nondenominational prayer in public schools and Ten Commandments displays in Kentucky courthouses,

These are verifiable facts:

The word "God" appears in the first sentence of America's Decdlaration of Independence: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

A synonym for God — "Creator" — and God-given rights appear in the second sentence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

And the last paragraph not only refers to God as "the Supreme Judge of the world," but humbly appeals to Him and ardently asserts 'firm reliance on divine Providence": "We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

The Articles of Confederation refer to God as "the Great Governor of the Universe."

Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore have called the United States Constitution a "godless Constitution" and they and other secular extremists crow that the word God appears in the Declaration of Independence, but not in the Constitution, which is the Supreme Land of the Law by its own terms..

Technically, that's true.

But it is a distinction without a difference.

The Constitution certainly is not "Godless."

The Preamble to the Constitution states: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Notice the word blessings?

From whom do you think the Framers were hoping to secure "blessings of liberty" from themselves and their posterity?

From no one?

From Satan?

NO!

From God, the Creator, the Supreme Judge of the world, of course.

America was founded in the Judeo-Christian tradition, under which subordinate status to God is obvious.

Not by atheists or agnostists. Or Satanists. Who hate those words "under God."

Article I, Section 7 of the United States Constitution states in part:

"Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law."

Notice the parenthetical?

(Sundays excepted).

Why Sundays?

Because the men who drafted the Constitution were Christians and Sunday is the Lord's Day according to most Christians.

Jews and some Christians observe the period from Friday evening to Saturday evening as a day of rest and worship.

But the Constitution was specific: it excepted Sundays, not the President's Sabbath of choice (or provide for an exception only if the President is a Sabbath observer).

Before the Constitution was signed, beginning with George Washington, by its drafters, it stated:

"Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the states present the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven and of the independence of the United States of America the twelfth."

Who was the Lord?

Jesus Christ, of course.

The British lords who had ruled America had been chased away.

The truth that the secular extremists try mightily to obfuscate is that America's Declaration of Independence invoked God in a general way and America's Constitution went further, by honoring Jesus while barring any religious test for public office.

Because the Framers did not expect respect for the private right of conscience to be expanded to eliminate America's right as a nation to acknowledge God and to support religion generally without establishing a national church.

On September 12, 2005, a federal district court judge, Lawrence Karlton, ruled that "The Pledge of Allegiance," because it references one nation "under God," is unconstitutionally violative of school children's right to be "free from a coercive requirement to affirm God."

He denies that the vast majority of school children have a right to affirm God by reciting "The Pledge of Allegiance," and will restrain recitation of the pledge at the Elk Grove Unified, Rio Linda and Elverta Joint Elementary school districts in California, where the plaintiffs' children in the case attend.

This case will be appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals by pro-family attorneys. Where the battle between the secular moderation of the Founders and framers and secular extremism next will be fought.

© Michael Gaynor

 

The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
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Michael Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member... (more)

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