The United States Supreme Court has just refused certiorari, thus confirming the rejection of this suit (PDF) to remove "In God we Trust" as our national motto. This is from a personal communication received today from the plaintiff and attorney, Michael Newdow.
His email was in response to one I sent him (see below) describing a speech yesterday by Newt Gingrich, where he described Newdow's earlier case as pivotal. The video of a portion of his speech is shown below, one that could set the tone for those vying for the Republican nomination.
This was my letter to Newdow, that describes Gingrich's speech:
I was watching Eliot Spitzer on CNN when they cut to Newt Gingrich giving a speech to Iowa Republicans. I almost got it on the DVR, but in his introduction, going over all the depredations of the left that have caused him to make the great personal sacrifice to serve his country as President he said this. "But the turning point was a decision by the ninth circuit, that American children don't have to say, (shall not say?) "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. When our country has fallen so far that activist judges can go against the will of the people, a decision that reminds me of the Dred Scott case, then something must be done."
He was on a roll, and I now paraphrase: "There is one major question for this next election, is America because of our declaration of independence, because we are "endowed by the Creator" an exceptional country, or just a regular country like all those others. God has given authority to the people, not to government. It is yours, you are the sovereigns......"
Powerful stuff, as obviously he is channeling the Creator and will be his figurehead in the Oval Office as he translates the sovereign people's will into......I would say governance but I don't think that this what he wants done by the government.
His gobbledegook does get hazy. Yet he quotes a few central European scholars so he must be a true intellectual. The sad thing is that he just may be the most reasonable of the bunch of this slate of Christian soldiers who are going to save us from secular socialism.
This will be a crusade, as he said he will lead the most revolutionary change in our life time. He has identified evil, and whoever it was who was responsible for that decision of the 9th circuit will be the best one to respond to his accusation.
The full speech is not available, but this link of the last four minutes gives the flavor:
Gingrich's riff about truth referenced the philosopher Albert Camus, who was part of an intellectual climate that would have either ridiculed, feared or despised someone who made the claim that his "truth" corresponded with that of God. While Gingrich may have known that Camus was an atheist, he was confident that none of his audience would know or care about this detail. There is no documentation that I could find of the Lincoln quote. There is, however, a long list of apocryphal quotes attributed to Einstein, Jefferson as well as Lincoln, that certain people use to give vacuous statements a patina of legitimacy.
Gingrich's using Abraham Lincoln to give credence to his assertion that his political platform is not based on man-made ideology, but rather that of the Creator, is a special kind of blasphemy. It is more egregious because Newt Gingrich enjoys the imprimatur of his doctorate in History.
Among all of Lincoln's great speeches, the most profound, the one that had he lived may have changed the course of our nation's history, was his second inaugural address. He was speaking for the ages, as he would only live for a few more weeks. He was directly addressing those who, like Newt Gingrich, would claim that their cause was God's cause:
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