rumitoid

In 1954, when the bill to enter "under God" in the Pledge was passed, President Eisenhower said this: “From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty…. In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource, in peace or in war.” The question that needs to be asked is, why not stand for that?

The original Pledge, written by Francis Bellamy in 1892, was this: “I pledge allegiance to my f**g and to the Republic for which it stands—one Nation indivisible—with liberty and justice for all.” The other question to ask then, did the added phrase "under God" violate the 1st Amendment?

I know this can be a hot-button issue. Those two paragraphs may have dug trenches and placed machine gun nests on opposite sides of the questions by party instantaneously, barbed wire and mines covering both positions against any assault. Can there be All Quiet On The OPP Front for an open discussion?

Another question for your consideration is this: why repeat the Pledge every weekday in school? Or maybe ask, why not?

Here are two arguments for either side of the Issue.

Pro Pledge: Newdow v. Rio Linda Union School District, in a majority opinion written by Carlos T. Bea, JD, judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, filed Mar. 11, 2010 and available at uscourts.gov, stated:
"Government action respects an establishment of religion only if the government coerces students to engage in a religious exercise. Coercion to engage in a patriotic activity, like the Pledge of Allegiance, does not run afoul of the Establishment Clause. The Supreme Court recognized this distinction in the earliest of the school prayer cases, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962)...
The Court drew an explicit distinction between patriotic mentions of God on the one hand, and prayer, an 'unquestioned religious exercise,' on the other."

Anti-Pledge: Stephen R. Reinhardt, LLB, judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, stated in his dissenting opinion in Newdow v. Rio Linda Union School District (894 KB) , filed Mar. 11, 2010 and available at uscourts.gov:
"Under the plain meaning of the words of the amendment to the Pledge, its context, the legislative history of its enactment, and all of the surrounding circumstances, there can be no doubt that the purpose of adding the words 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance was predominantly, if not exclusively, religious and that the daily recitation in public schools of the Pledge in its amended form violates the Lemon test, and thus the Establishment Clause."

You decide. (But the actual legal debate seems mostly to focus on the point if the Pledge's use of "under God" is religious or simply patriotic in nature. Does that matter?)