HowToFoldSoup

The recent controversy with relation to the suggested removal of 'Under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance is quite disturbing. Disturbing because people are so offended by the suggestion of it. It often comes down to people yelling about how the majority of people in the U.S. are Christian, and that the original intention of the 'Freedom of Religion' wasn't freedom FROM religion, or simply that separation of church and state can be maintained with all the current occurrences of it in our current governmental processes.

So what if the majority of people living in the U.S. are christian? Note: I'm not conceding that they are. The system we have in place is in place for exactly that reason, that a majority of people can't simply inflict their views/beliefs on to others who choose to believe differently. If we were in a tyrannical system (Mind you, I personally believe we're on the cusp of such an occurrence), then the majority religion could 'vote' into action whatever piece of legislation they want to, forcing people to pray, etc. I only have two points to make about that. One, your lives will finally be bereft of all logical thought with the checks and balances of critical, non-christian thinkers removed, and the country would crumble to pieces in about 10 years (more hope than prediction). Two, if you force people to pray, you make great enemies out of those who would otherwise probably be on your side for a more conservative way of things.

I quote one of the many advocates of similar ideas when I say 'The separation of Church and State was never meant to mean that our Divine Creator should be excluded from the public arena.'. Of course, his bias is that there is only one creator, versus many, or none, but that aside, I have this response to that statement. Yes, it meant EXACTLY that. The Constitutional verbiage "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That's the first amendment. All of it. Where did separation of church and state come from? Thomas Jefferson said it in reference to a situation occurring in Connecticut where a Baptist Church felt the local government was bearing down a little to hard on them. Of course, at that time, Connecticut hadn't ratified the constitution, so even in his presidential status he could do nothing, but he did write a letter in which he said

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law regarding an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

Over the years this has been reinforced many times over by the rulings of the Supreme Court, and is a well established fact, that even if the framers of the Constitution meant it otherwise, the wisest course of action was to interpret the laws as they have been, which is to say, the absolute separation of church and state.

I'll end this essay with a few simple points about specifically the "Under God" portion of the Pledge of Allegiance. It was instituted in 1954 as a covert way to weed out Communists, the logic being no atheistic commie would be willing to say the phrase "Under God", and therefore we could just pick them out of the crowd. Again, I'll point out that these weren't the best examples of the American Way, and Senator McCarthy went out of his way to vilify those who had the right, under our constitution, to believe whatever they wanted to. It's often said that the bill passed with an overwhelming majority. I'm sure it was quite impressive. However, contextually, if you look at the paranoia the McCarthy Era created with reference to personal opinion and beliefs, it's obvious why.

Equivocate it to being called a terrorist today.

In a related note, I'll be changing my name to Lee Praise-satan.