The hosts at The Truth Laid Bear and Dreaded Purple Master have both blogged on the ruling in Newdow v. Congress today, and both are hanging a lot on the idea that children in schools where the Pledge of Allegiance is recited, are pressured into reciting it.
Of course Michael Newdow himself didn't raise the issue of coercion -- he was objecting to the two words, "under God", because he doesn't want the G-word tainting anything related in any way to the government. Had coercion been an issue at all in the lawsuit, and if there had been any merit to such a complaint, the 9th Circus could simply have found, under a 1943 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, that California and the school district had acted unconstitutionally -- without even touching on the words.
I argued to Bear that coercion was not an issue, but his answer is that pressure surely must have existed. However I'm confident that our courts have long understood the difference between official coercion and peer pressure. Sorry, friends, there just isn't any "there" there. Coercion, pressure, whatever you call it, you're hanging your argument on a definition of compulsion that no responsible court would uphold.
Which is not to say that the 9th wouldn't have gone for it...
UPDATE: I forget now whether it was Bear or Dan who used the phrase in arguing his position -- maybe both have used it -- but there was something about how, if we are to have a "truly secular society", God must be removed from the Pledge.
Well, as currently interpreted, the Constitution does mandate a secular government but not a secular society. So like the words "under God" themselves, the question of a secular society is rightly a political one. Supporters of this notion will have to convince the American people that a secular society is a good thing. Just as soon as they themselves figure out how it differs from a secular government.
A couple years back I read a book by alternate-history author Harry Turtledove called How Few Remain. It was based on the idea that the South managed to win the Civil War, and the book told of a second war in the 1880s.
In his depiction of this alternate history, Turtledove had Abraham Lincoln still alive, but disgraced by defeat. In the remnant USA, the Republican Party is a dead letter and the chief opposition to the Democrats is a Socialist party. Lincoln is portrayed as himself having what would have to be regarded as Socialist views. I found this hard to credit, but in his notes on the book Turtledove claimed there was documentation for Lincoln holding a critical view of capitalism.
As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.
Of this, Snopes' David P. Mikkelson writes:
These words did not originate with Abraham Lincoln, however -- they appear in none of his collected writings or speeches, and they did not surface until more than twenty years after his death (and were immediately denounced as a "bold, unflushing forgery" by John Nicolay, Lincoln's private secretary). This spurious Lincoln warning gained currency during the 1896 presidential election season (when economic policy, particularly the USA's adherence to the gold standard, was the major campaign issue), and ever since then it has been cited and quoted by innumerable journalists, clergymen, congressmen, and compilers of encyclopedias. ... Why have these "money powers" words been put in the mouth of Abraham Lincoln? In a general sense, the reason is because dead people -- especially revered leaders -- make great commentators on modern-day politics: They can't be questioned about the legitimacy of their comments, interrogated about what they meant, or asked to elaborate about the subject at hand; they can only be refuted through imprudent suggestions that Our Revered Leader was wrong!
There are some known comments by Lincoln, such as that, "Labor is prior to, and . . . superior to capital", that are said to give "a color of Marxism" to his thinking, but Lincoln scholar Merrill Peterson replies,
Nevertheless, he was no prophet. Imprisoned in the democratic-capitalist ideology of nineteenth-century America, he believed the free laborer toiled up from poverty to become a capitalist in his own right. Individual opportunity, not class struggle, was his message.
Events, of course, have demonstrated that opportunity does indeed beat class struggle. So maybe ol' Abe was a prophet after all.
This notion that neither liberalism nor conservatism nor libertarianism nor communitarianism properly captures the Framers' worldview -- or, in my view, the right worldview, which I think is in some but not all ways similar to the Framers' -- is an important insight that is often forgotten, because each side in the debate so wants to appropriate the Framers for themselves.
[...]
I am mostly a libertarian, and it's tempting for me to pooh-pooh statist proposals, which are often both illiberal and ineffective. But July 4 celebrates an event that was not made through pure individual liberty, that could not have been made through pure individual liberty, and that could not have been sustained through pure individual liberty. It was a revolution against government power, made possible and successful by the power of other governments...
None of this is news to thoughtful libertarians. There is a difference, after all, between libertarianism and anarchism. But it's worth reminding ourselves on occasion about the odd, almost but not quite contradictory, mix of philosophies that is needed to make liberty flourish in a dangerous world.
This guy leaves me thinking "I wish I could've come up with that" more often than just about anybody.
It's a "sport-utility vehicle," but WTF does that phrase really mean about the physical characteristics of the vehicle?
What people generally agree on about SUVs is that they have 4WD capability, are big and use too much gas, and when you're tailgating one you can't see enough of the road ahead around it.
But not all vehicles known as SUVs have four-wheel-drive capability. The Chevrolet Suburban is generally accepted to be an SUV but not every model has 4WD. And Chevy has offered the Suburban since the dawn of time, calling it a truck. In fact anything from Chevy or GM that might be considered an SUV bears the word TRUCK right on its backside.
Some people would say my 1991 Jeep Cherokee is an SUV. It does have 4WD but not all Cherokees do. But it's also not very big and gets pretty decent gas mileage. Anyone tailgating me can see all too well what's on the road ahead -- a fact that causes me no end of disgruntlement.
Okay, let's refine the define. An SUV has the size of a truck but the shape of a station wagon. Wait -- what does that make the Ford Explorer SportTrac, or the Chevy Avalanche, neither of which are wagon-shaped? Those must be SUTs -- sport-utility trucks. Okay, that works. This definition leaves my Cherokee out, but I call it a car anyway -- a car with ground clearance and 4WD, a slightly mutated station wagon. I wouldn't take it over the Rubicon trail, but I wouldn't take anything over the Rubicon trail, except maybe a chartered jet.
Now comes an impolite question: what is it about having the size of a truck but the shape of a wagon, that makes something a sport-utility vehicle? Heck, 99% of the things we call SUVs never take on anything more challenging than the speed bumps at the shopping center. They may be capable of "all-terrain", but they're really just "mall-terrain".
Back to the 'Burb. It's always been just a truck. So was the original, full-size Blazer -- along with both their GMC counterparts. Ford's Bronco may have started out in 1966 as a vehicle for sport and utility (being smaller than Ford's pickup trucks), but "SUV" hadn't yet been coined in 1978 when Ford redesigned it, basing it on the frame of the F-150 pickup truck. Until it was discontinued after 1996, the Bronco differed from the F-series only in always having 4WD, which meant always a higher ground clearance than the average pickup, having a shorter wheelbase than even the short-bed pickup, having a unified body from grille to tailgate, and having a removable top over what on a pickup would be the bed. Hmm, listed that way it does look like a lot of difference. But compare a 2002 F-series pickup with a 2002 Ford Expedition and you find lots more differences.
So let's refine our definition further: an SUV is a vehicle that has the size of a truck and the shape of a wagon, but isn't a truck. I mean, not really a truck. The Explorer and Expedition may be made by the truck division, but they're not trucks. The Excursion, however, is Ford's true counterpart to the Suburban, and qualifies as a truck. I mean, wagon shape or not, it looks like a truck. Except when it looks like a bus, which to my eye it sometimes does. Does that make it a van? Since the Suburban remains a truck, so too does its GMC sibling the Yukon XL.
Sadly, trying to distinguish the SUV from the truck leads to having to define a truck. Well hell, I'm a guy. I know one when I see one. Dodge's Durango has the same front grille as the Ram pickup, but it's not a truck. They actually market the critter as a "compact SUV". Anything made by a European or Japanese automaker that can fit in a typical garage, unless it has a pickup bed, is by definition not a truck. GM's Tahoe/Envoy/Yukon offerings are not trucks. Nor is the miniature Blazer.
(Which reminds me of a laugh I once got from a magazine ad for the Blazer. The picture was of an ocean liner, and in place of the lifeboats were Chevy Blazers. The caption was the Blazer's marketing tagline: "A little security in an insecure world." All well and good, but also in the picture was the Chevy Truck tagline: "Like a Rock." No thanks, Mr. Purser, I'll take my chances with the flotation vest. I saw that ad only once. Wonder why they pulled it?)
Even the one vehicle in our driveway that qualifies as an SUV -- not only because it is of the right size and shape but also because, being an Isuzu, it's obviously not a truck -- doesn't get called an SUV around our house.
We call it "the Rodeo," usually. Fact is in casual usage the term "SUV" is simply too awkward. Other than that, my wife calls it a "buggy".
Do you have a vehicle you would consider an SUV? What do you call it, other than by its make name, or a nickname? Bronco owners do tend to give their trucks nicknames, and one Bronco owner I know was having trouble with this until one day he went into a puddle without checking it out first. After the tow truck dragged it out, and after the water damage was repaired, he announced he had chosen a name: Depth Finder.
Y'know what, I'm gonna forget about defining the SUV. The label might possibly be made to communicate effectively the distinction between what it is and what it isn't, but it fails the usefulness test simply because it is less say-able than such one-syllable alternatives as "car", "truck", "bus" and "van". Then again, most of those are shortened versions of longer words. How might we shorten "SUV" to make it more say-able?
It may strike some visitors as odd that this Christian who blogs doesn’t act like a Christian blogger by, for example, arguing for the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance on religious grounds (if that’s what Christian bloggers do, I dunno, I don’t go looking for them so I haven’t found out).
I also haven’t addressed the church-and-state issue in the school vouchers ruling, and the reason, quite simply, is that I never believed there really was one. This issue has been around for a long time, and I never saw a constitutional principle offered that convincingly placed a properly established and administered voucher scheme outside the constitutional pale. To me even that “wall of separation” jazz was unconvincing. But the main reason I haven’t talked about even that much is, it’s so much easier and makes so much more sense simply to defer to Eugene Volokh, who once again earns the title of Synthesist with this exposition on the church-and-state issues relating to vouchers.
I especially like this part:
So what then is the proper definition of separation of church and state? I think that the state separates itself properly from religion when it treats everyone equally without regard to religion. By not caring whether a person or an institution is religious, the state stays out of people’s religious lives, and separates itself from theological debates. Such equal treatment is not establishment. To “establish” a church is to give it some special privileges, to place it above other churches or other institutions (and recall that the Constitution prohibits “establishment”—“separation” is just some people’s interpretation of the constitutional term), and if church schools are treated just like other private schools, there’s no establishment there.
And y’know, if this approach were ever to become the undisputed law of the land as far as government practice, I just might go ahead and join those who would like to see the words “under God” repealed from the Pledge. But for now, so long as the government treats religious institutions unequally with respect to secular ones, I prefer to stand pat on the harmless and ultimately meaningless things, especially since, harmless though they may be, they give the anti-religious nuts fits.
Since the advent of the Newdow ruling, I’ve had visiting commentators to this blog seeking deliberately to provoke a religion-based argument simply because I prefer the Pledge of Allegiance as it now reads. To a post below about Newdow, someone posted comments having no relevance whatsoever to my remarks, but speaking exclusively about her own belief system and insulting Christians as thugs. I replied as I tend to do. In similar circumstances I will again, although I have now deleted both the offending comment and my reply. This is my blog—my property. If you find something here worthy of comment, feel free. I wouldn’t have enabled comments if I didn’t want them.
However, I don’t care for non sequitur comments, nor for picking fights. I also tend to respond badly to lectures on tolerance from people who do themselves exhibit intolerance but excuse it because the people they hate are in the majority.
Insult me if you like—but for guidance in this respect, read about the card game incident in Owen Wister’s The Virginian. In any event I would much rather be insulted sincerely than flattered falsely; if you harbor a seething animosity for opposing points of view, don’t even try to conceal it with nauseating obsequiousness because the harder you try to sell it, the less likely I’m gonna buy it.
And ultimately, if the comments feature proves to create more friction than I want on this blog, I’ll simply get rid of it—and then the cranks and trolls can resort to e-mail if they wish.
He succeeded. Score one for the malcontent. He had to know the rest of the country wouldn’t let this pass unchallenged. He claimed otherwise in interviews but he couldn’t be that dense. Okay, maybe he could, but in any case the outrage was foreseeable. If anyone had asked me a week ago how Americans would react if such a ruling were handed down, I would have gotten it right. Nor am I a clairvoyant—anybody could have predicted it.
N.Z. Bear has been arguing that removing the words “under God” is the right thing to do, even while admitting he doesn’t have enough background in the law to say whether the ruling should stand (he says it probably won’t, and of course I agree with that much). For siding against the words, he’s gotten what I think is a bad rap from one or two other bloggers. Bear does speak of the Pledge of Allegiance as tantamount to an oath, which is incorrect (I’ll get to that in a moment), and perhaps there are one or two other misconceptions in there, but it’s a mistake to let the anger of the shock of the ruling color our thinking on the substance of the issue.
I sent Bear an e-mail arguing that if the goal is in fact to remove the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, Newdow v. Congress was not only doomed, but even counterproductive. Even in the best of times—no war, and no 9th Circus ruling—it would be hard to generate public support for tinkering with the Pledge in the way that it ought to be done, if it’s to be done at all: repeal of the 1954 law adding the words in question. Granted, Michael Newdow filed his lawsuit before that event which we continue to refer to as “9/11” (and probably will for years to come), but seeking a judicial decree to impose his desire over the foreseeable objections of millions of people, is not the way to persuade them that what you want is the right thing.
Let’s face it: either Newdow is a dunce for not anticipating the reaction that occurred, or he wanted to get his jollies by pissing enough people off sufficiently to get nasty messages on his telephone answering machine so he could tell everybody what a bunch of Neanderthals mainstream Americans really are.
I have neither had a reply from Bear, nor seen a response on his blog—he’s busy moving the blog to a new server. But I do believe that if those of us who like the Pledge the way it is were to have conspired to inflame public opinion in our favor, we could scarcely have done as well to that end as Mr. Newdow and the 9th Circus have done. Undoubtedly Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Wackyland) will speak out on the Pacifica Radio Network alleging that is exactly what happened.
Now, about the Pledge being an oath. A true oath (as I understand it) is a binding promise, usually with tangible sanctions for abrogation. The exceptions are normally vague or platitude-ridden oaths (the President’s inaugural oath comes to mind) where non-compliance can’t be well enough defined for sanctions to be of any use. I would hold that such oaths aren’t real oaths but mere pledges or affirmations—feel-good promises that the truly unscrupulous need not fear the consequences of breaking.
The Pledge of Allegiance doesn’t even purport to be an oath. It solicits no promises, specific or vague, from the taker, as do even the watered-down oaths mentioned above. It carries no sanction to the taker for non-compliance. Perhaps even more to the point, a true oath would not need to be administered every morning of the school week. And of course, a true oath could potentially be required, whereas the Pledge, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling in 1943, absolutely cannot.
What the Pledge of Allegiance is, is a declaration. By reciting the Pledge, I am not promising anything, simply declaring, “I am loyal to my country.”
UPDATE 7/1 1:30 p.m. EDT: Bear’s new blog is up, and the link in the item above points to it—looks great.
A lethal encounter in the desert. With a bullet in his back, Caleb fights for his life against the elements, a determined killer, and his own fading strength.
In this, the first of the exercises mentioned here, the challenge is to write a 600-word story from the first-person point of view, but severely limiting the use of the first-person pronoun. The “I” nevertheless has to be important to the story.
Having recently seen I, Robot, I’ve been inspired to write something based on what I see as a more likely evolution of existing technology—one in which robots as conceived by Asimov don’t quite exist.
An attempt to write about my Clearwater characters closer to the present day than in “Play Rough, Fight Dirty.” Much of Wiley’s backstory from this effort translates into “PRFD,” but some is a little different, and I’m not sure whether I want to finish this story.
Prior to the release of Serenity, the studio-hosted Browncoats website hosted a number of contests, including one calling for fans’ versions of the vows said by Zoë and Wash when they were married. I couldn’t settle for merely writing vows—I had to write the whole scene.
