More on the subject of the Pledge of Allegiance

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From The Washington Post:

A Preamble Instead of a Pledge
By Linda R. Monk
Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page B07

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument this week on one of the more explosive questions before it: Whether public school teachers can lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance to a nation "under God."

In the Newdow case the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that public school teachers within that circuit (comprising nine Western states) violate the First Amendment when they lead students -- even those who are willing -- in the pledge. The reason? The court said that teachers are endorsing religion, contrary to the Establishment Clause, when they lead the class in reciting the pledge's words: "one nation, under God." In a public school setting, the lower court held, nonbelieving children can be coerced by teachers' actions in a way that adults are not.

The best solution to this problem -- one that respects both the community's desire to instill patriotism and the conscience of religious dissenters -- is to end recitation not just of the words "under God" but of the entire Pledge of Allegiance. In its place would go a much better statement of our national values: the Preamble to the Constitution.

The preamble was written in 1787 by the nation's founders. The pledge was written in 1892 by a socialist minister to honor Christopher Columbus in a children's magazine. "Under God" wasn't even in it -- the phrase was added in 1954, after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus.

Why the preamble? Because it affirms the sovereignty of "we the people," who strive for a "more perfect union" and thus "do ordain and establish this Constitution." That last part is trickier than it seems. It unites citizens in an ongoing responsibility to uphold constitutional values, not just mouth loyalty oaths.

In the current debate about "under God," it's important to remember that the Pledge of Allegiance itself has a mottled history in this country. That's not surprising in a nation where people take oaths seriously. When World War II was brewing in Europe, Jehovah's Witnesses were the most disliked religious group in America because they opposed saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.

What could it hurt, argued countless school boards and eight Supreme Court justices in a 1940 ruling, for schoolchildren to learn a lesson in patriotism? Jehovah's Witnesses responded that swearing an oath to a flag was the equivalent of worshipping a graven image. They also noted the similarity of the flag salute, which at the time involved children pointing their outstretched right arms toward the flag, to the "Heil Hitler" salute of Nazi Germany. The Nazis were at that time persecuting Jehovah's Witnesses for refusing to give that salute.

After the 1940 court decision on the pledge, Witnesses' children could be denied the right to attend school, even if they stood respectfully and quietly during the pledge. The court's ruling unleashed a wave of violence against Witnesses nationwide, with 335 attacks against 1,500 Witnesses in 1940 alone -- including a castration in Nebraska.

Out of shame over the wave of religious violence it had triggered, the Supreme Court overturned itself only three years later, the fastest reversal in its history. Wrote Justice Robert Jackson, who was later to serve as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials: "To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds."

As amended in 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance makes a statement about God's role in the republic that the framers of the Constitution omitted in 1787. True, the signature line of the Constitution does include the standard dating convention "in the year of our Lord," but that hardly qualifies as an assertion equivalent to "one nation under God." Despite pleas in the ratification debates to add such divine references to the Constitution, the framers believed these are the words we all can agree on:

"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."

Linda R. Monk is author of "The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution."