liquid

What was that quote from eisenhower about children bowing their heads or something, re the pledge?

liquid

Oh, got it now... an interesting bit on the pledge amendment from an <a href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067499" target="_blank">article</a>


"The "under God" movement didn't take off, however, until the next year, when it was endorsed by the Rev. George M. Docherty, the pastor of the Presbyterian church in Washington that Eisenhower attended. In February 1954, Docherty gave a sermon—with the president in the pew before him—arguing that apart from "the United States of America," the pledge "could be the pledge of any country." He added, "I could hear little Moscovites [sic] repeat a similar pledge to their hammer-and-sickle flag with equal solemnity." Perhaps forgetting that "liberty and justice for all" was not the norm in Moscow, Docherty urged the inclusion of "under God" in the pledge to denote what he felt was special about the United States.

The ensuing congressional speechifying—debate would be a misnomer, given the near-unanimity of opinion—offered more proof that the point of the bill was to promote religion. The legislative history of the 1954 act stated that the hope was to "acknowledge the dependence of our people and our Government upon … the Creator … [and] deny the atheistic and materialistic concept of communism.""

Note specific monotheistic and christian emphasis from both president and legislature. Neither ceremonial deism, nor de minimus.

Buffman

IMHO, from its inception, America has been a covert Christian tyranny state masked by an extremely successful propagana pacification campaign of secular constitutionalism. The current administration has merely moved from covert to overt.