WND's fatuous reporting________________
Posted: December 2, 2006, 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Mike Newdow
Recently, WND published two articles concerning my lawsuit challenging the national motto: "God 'erased'? Suit could force city name changes" Nov. 22, and "Judge Moore files brief supporting 'In God We Trust'" Nov. 30. Because the accounts were quite misleading, I feel it is important to provide some clarification.
I'll begin by pointing to WND's view that government has to take one or another position vis-à-vis the existence of God, and that it is "technically impossible" to have "'the government treat everybody's religious views equally.'" If the government stops saying that we trust in God, it is argued, our nation will be espousing an atheistic worldview.
What nonsense! When Congress passes highway bills or makes appropriations for cancer research, it doesn't say God exists. Does WND believe that Congress, in those bills, is promoting an atheistic agenda? Similarly, in the motto and the pledge, the government doesn't say anything about Jesus' divinity. Why doesn't WND interpret that as taking the position that Jesus wasn't the son of God?
The reason is obvious: Those are ridiculous conclusions. In fact, to show just how ridiculous they are, one can apply the same logic in reverse. It can just as forcefully (and fatuously) be argued that because government doesn't DENY "His" existence, it's taking the position that God does exists, and that by failing to specify that Jesus was NOT the son of God, government is saying that he was.
It is not "technically impossible" at all for the government to treat everybody's religious views equally. On the contrary, it's very simple: Government needs only to stay out of the religion business – precisely as the Constitution demands. The problem is that our legislators have been favoring (Christian) monotheism for the last half century, and ending that favoritism appears (to those who have been its beneficiaries) to be "favoring" the atheists.
This appearance, of course, is illusory. No one claimed atheists were being favored from 1794-1864 (when none of our coins had "In God We Trust") or from 1892-1954 (when the Pledge did not contain the "under God" phrase). How could restoring the coins and the Pledge to their original neutral states be "favoring" atheists now?
WND's assertion that "Newdow has admitted that ... [he] ... wants to ... install his own belief system that does not acknowledge God" is similarly misleading. By focusing on the elimination of "acknowledgments" of God's existence, it is implied that it is atheism ("his own belief system") that I seek to have government endorse. But the fact is that if the government adhered to my atheistic views and claimed that God is a myth, I would demand the elimination of that assertion as well. The "belief system" I'm striving to uphold is the one based on equality, not on any religious opinion – including my own. The real question is not why I am fighting for that "belief system" (i.e., equality), but why others are fighting against it.
That I'm for "[b]anning references to God or Christianity in the public sphere" is yet another bogus contention. Let me be clear on this: I want God and Christianity in the public sphere. In fact, if any people ever find government interfering with their rights to enter the public sphere and proclaim what they believe is God's or Jesus' glory, they can count on me for assistance. If any government employee is castigated for bringing a Bible to work, or any child is prohibited from praying in school, please call me up so that I can help put an end to such unconstitutional and abusive governmental activity. But the right of individuals and groups to voice their own religious opinions is very different from the "right" to have the government join them in their endeavors. In fact, that posited "right" is no right at all; it is precisely what the Establishment Clause prohibits. In other words, when it comes to religious issues, that "public sphere" belongs only to the public, not the government. As Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has written, "The government may not … lend its power to one or the other side in controversies over religious … dogma." Surely the question of the existence of God is such a controversy.
Many individuals who strongly believe in God – such as the 33 named Jewish and Christian clergy who wrote a brief in support of my position when the Pledge case went to the Supreme Court – understand that the constitutional principles underlying this view protect us all. If America in the future has a Muslim, or a Buddhist, or ("God forbid") an atheistic majority, it is the position I'm advocating, not that of my opponents, that will protect the remaining Christians.
It is ironic that the first of the WND articles was written on Nov. 22. That's the day on which John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Kennedy, it may be recalled, was the first Catholic president. His election undoubtedly would have astounded those white, male Protestant Christians who founded our nation, for they lived in an era where anti-Catholic animus was little different from the anti-atheism of today. During his campaign for the presidency, Kennedy addressed the American Society of Newspaper Editors, stating, "I strongly support … the guarantees of religious equality provided by the First Amendment; and I ask only that these same guarantees be extended to me." The editors of WND, as they report the news to their readers, might wish to focus on those magnificent guarantees rather than on nonsensical and misleading assertions that divert attention from what is truly at issue.
Mike Newdow currently has cases in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals challenging "In God We Trust" as the nation's motto and "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. He can be contacted via restorethepledge.com.
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