"Meaning of" removing "under God"

[Paul Finkelman]

Mark:  

Quite franklly, I doubt you would be so easy going about this if the 
pledge said "one nation under Allah" or "under Zeus" or "under the Great 
Spirit."  Yours is sadly typical of what de Tocquville identified as the 
tyranny of the majority.  Your faith is not offended by the pledge, so 
you naturally assume that everyone else should be happy with it.

I also think the arguments about Jefferson are a bit out of context, 
despite my respect for Dan Conkle.  What the men Dan mentioned had in 
common is that they all refused to put in our public documents any 
acknowledgement of God in the context of the Jews or the Christians. 
 Instead, they carefully and thoughtfully used terms like "nature's God" 
or "their creator" and specifically prohibited religious tests for 
officeholding.  You on the other hand, endorse a daily religous test for 
good citizenship.  I a religious test for the President and the Congress 
is offensive to the Constitution, then surely it must be offensive to 
the Constitition have Congress and the President team up to impose such 
a test on 5 year olds in order for them to prove their patriotism.

Paul Finkelman

-- 
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, OK   74104-3189

918-631-3706 (office)
918-631-2194 (fax)

paul-finkelman at utulsa.edu


>  
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu 
> [mailto:conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Scarberry, Mark
> Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 2:57 PM
> To: Conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
> Subject: RE: "Meaning of" removing "under God"
>
>  
>
> Prof. Schweber continues to misunderstand my point. I'm happy to have 
> Odin worshippers think of Odin when they say "under God" in the 
> pledge. The whole point of my defense of "under God" (or at least the 
> major point) has been that so many of us with so many different 
> religious or quasi-religious views can use the term in good conscience.
>
>  
>
> Further, Prof. Schweber's notion that I must have forgotten the 
> existence of the Constitution if I think a belief in something divine 
> is needed in order to uphold liberty is also puzzling, or perhaps just 
> dismissive. Jefferson noted, as Dan Conkle pointed out, that belief in 
> God was the foundation for religious liberty. I might remind Prof. 
> Schweber that the Soviet Union had a constitution that guaranteed, on 
> paper, lots of wonderful human rights. In 1954 Congress certainly had 
> before it an example of a state (the USSR) that rejected any notion 
> that it was limited by any higher principles and which, as a result, 
> ignored the written guarantees of rights in its Constitution.
>
>  
>
> Mark S. Scarberry
>
> Pepperdine University School of Law
>
>  
>
> -
>

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