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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 9/22/12

GOP now God's Own Party

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Message Al Rodbell
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I started to write this article before before the video defaming the Prophet of Allah unleashed homicidal fury among some Muslims, yet I saw clearly the danger of what was being sowed by Candidate Romney. I envisioned his promoting a mindset that would justify similar hatred in this country against those who do not espouse the dominant religious views.  

Romney has a law degree from Harvard, and must be aware of the Jurisprudence of the Pledge of Allegiance that he so blatantly ignores in detail and in spirit. His latest action is described in this N.Y. Times article, In Romney's Hands, Pledge of Allegiance Is Framework for Criticism that I will quote from:

While we fear that the revolution of the Arab Spring could be the opening for Muslim Fundamentalists, we ignore the overt perversion of our own country's tradition of secularism that is unabashedly a strategy of the Romney-Ryan ticket. From the article:

But at a Saturday afternoon rally here, Mr. Romney did not just recite the Pledge of Allegiance; he metaphorically wrapped his stump speech in it, using each line of the pledge to attack President Obama.

"The promises that were made in that pledge are promises I plan on keeping if I am president, and I've kept them so far in my life," Mr. Romney said, standing among old airplanes in a hangar at the Military Aviation Museum here. "That pledge says "under God.' I will not take "God' out of the name of our platform. "


He speaks of the "promises that were made in that pledge" as if it were a solemn personal obligation that binds each American who says the words, emphasizing "Under God." Thus the elementary school children who are cajoled under fear of social ostracism to recite words, the meaning of which they could not comprehend, are bound to their oath of fealty to God.

Make no mistake, this is not a theological issue, as I do not believe that Mitt Romney is a Christian Fundamentalist who actually believes we are God's chosen country, that we alone were "endowed by our Creator" and other extensions of this biblical based American Exceptionalism. No, I believe that this is the most crass example of Realpolitik as played by a man with great ambition that knows no moral limits.

I happened to have studied quite a bit of this narrow area of constitutional law, having had the pleasure of extensive correspondence with Michael Newdow, who argued his case against the the Pledge in front of the Supreme Court, having prevailed at the appeals court level. Far from it being a meaningful personal pledge that Romney so passionately argued at that outing and on other occasions, such use of the word God is only given a constitutional pass by being relegated to "ceremonial deism" as described in this essay from the Pew Foundation:

Justice William Brennan wrote that while he thought this particular Christmas display was unconstitutional, less controversial expressions of religion might be permissible under the Establishment Clause. Citing Dean Rostow, Brennan argued that certain official references to a deity - such as the inclusion of God in the Pledge of Allegiance - might be constitutional "as a form [of] 'ceremonial deism.' " According to Brennan, these expressions might not violate the Establishment Clause "because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content."


In other words, far from being a personal oath, they have through repeated usage become simply meaningless words. Romney goes on to expand on a national theocratic ethos that approaches that of the Muslim Brotherhood, or worse. He continued:

" I will not take "God' off our coins, and I will not take God out of my heart. We're a nation bestowed by God."


Interesting concept "Nation Bestowed by God" that deserves some serious exegeses, a word usually reserved for biblical analysis. This goes beyond the Christian Dominionist's argument that the Declaration of Independence words "We are endowed by our creator...." mean we alone have this endowment. ignoring the clear context that these are qualities that are universals to all people. "Bestow" is a transitive verb meaning that this country was the object bestowed..... on humanity or the world. Romney doesn't say. This is Mitt Romney's own coinage, as the phrase does not show up on a search of the Internet and has no provenance in any historical or academic source.

There are those who think that atheists have a perverse compulsion to deny individuals of their faith, their religious beliefs that sustain and comfort them. It is often said to me, why do I make a big deal out of children being compelled to recite the pledge of allegiance or whether there is a Christian cross on public land....why not just let things be for the sake of comity. The answer is demonstrated in the campaign we are now seeing, where religion and patriotism are being merged with the goal of making non believers or those who worship a different god, into outcasts.

Under a President Romney, it is probable that we would lose the single vote that defeated both the Supreme Court decision and the Constitutional amendment that would have made the destruction of a tri-colored cloth a criminal offense in America, similar to what is now the law for the destruction of a page of the Koran among Muslims.

Mitt Romney fully understands the unifying value of fostering hatred of outsiders mediated by religious fervor; and by all evidence, he is unconcerned with the disastrous consequences that this could bring, to our country and the world.

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Challenges to the Pledge of Allegiance have all been based on Establishment Clause of the first amendment.  There is another approach based on a seminal case of Barnette v. West Virginia in 1943, before the religious words had been added in 1954.   In this case one of the greatest Justices as described by Antonin Scalia, Justice Robert Jackson proclaimed that any compelled statement of orthodoxy of thought is the most clearly proscribed activity of government.  Romney's approach described herein is further evidence that there is a constitutional case that should prevail against the tacit compulsion of reciting a pledge that can no longer be dismissed as meaningless.  

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Retired Commercial Printing Executive, developer of I.T. systems for the industry. Advanced degrees in Social Psychology, now living in Southern California
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