Where is the Kid Who Isn’t Under God?

Somewhere in the US there’s a bright, articulate, worldly kid who can succeed where Michael Newdow failed. It’s frustrating that, after such a long process, the US Supreme Court should throw his case out on what amounts to a technicality. I am so far away from being a lawyer that I’m coming back in the other direction, so for all I know the technicality is a perfectly valid one, and their non-decision decision is entirely appropriate — if infuriating to have come so late in the day — but the failure to have addressed the main point of contention at all is dispiriting.

How fitting, then, given the nature of the technicality, that it should be a child who steps forward, unencumbered by the baggage of their parents’ beliefs or non-beliefs, to state as clearly as they can that they believe the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional, and have it properly tested. Conventional wisdom has it that such a challenge would fail anyway, but the clarity of a child’s position would illuminate the clarity of the First Amendment. I’m with Newdow here. The unconstitutionality of the ‘under God’ phrase of the Pledge of Allegiance seems as clear as day. Adding it was an act of state, in a time of paranoia. How fitting also that it should be a child, since children are the primary target, and the primary consumers, of the Pledge.

The conventional wisdom amounts to a claim that the United States remains a society sufficiently based on religious belief that the removal of ‘under God’ would be significantly at odds with the desires and principles of the vast majority. To which, of course, the obvious response is to point out that such opposition to the change would be entirely irrelevant. Constitutionality is (should be) the only issue here.

That it obviously isn’t reflects the fact that there’s a one-way ratchet at work here. In a time of perceived threat to the United States, it retreated behind a flag of faith, and constitutionality be damned. There can indeed be a slow creep of religiosity into the social structures of the US, since there are so few voices in opposition, especially — as was true during the ’50s — when patriotism co-opts religion, and the secular (never mind the openly atheistic) becomes worthy of suspicion and even prejudice. The reverse is in effect impossible. Secularity is a vote-loser. Atheism is a vote-killer. The ratchet allows a relaxation of the separation between church and state when it’s a matter of puffed-up nationalism, but cannot enforce the separation even when it’s constitutional. At the time of writing, it is inconceivable that an atheist could become US President. How, in a country whose constitution guarantees the separation between church and state, can that happen? And how can people care so little that it’s the case?

Atheism is marginalised in the United States to an alarming degree. I used to carry in my wallet a card that I picked up on a whim from the display-table of a group of atheists on Venice Beach one Sunday. That’s the same Venice Beach that’s mile upon mile of psychics, healers and various colourful new-age crap. The punch-line, of course, is that more people walking by them would associate with the psychics than with the atheists. The psychics are closer to the belief-systems of most Americans than the atheists. How can this be so?

I wrote a piece a while ago about the importance of choosing appropriate software defaults, and it seems to me that there’s a useful analogy here. Legal defaults are equally important. (Trust a programmer to see the word ‘equally’ as belonging in that sentence.) And here’s one of the most important of all:

No law should be made which assumes the existence of a god.

That places the burden of proof exactly where it belongs. And it’s about as consistent with the First Amendment as can be. See how many specious arguments fall by the wayside if it’s applied fully: arguments based on religious precepts that men are superior to women; arguments based on religious precepts that homosexuality is a ‘sin’; arguments based on religious precepts that men of one colour are superior to men of another colour; arguments based on religious precepts that seek to prevent contraception, or abortion. Let an argument stand or fall according to its own merits, and let anyone claiming the divine be told to scoot off and provide, as a prerequisite, proof beyond reasonable doubt of the existence of the divine, before they’re given even a moment’s further attention.

With that default, the addition of ‘under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance would have (ought to have) failed utterly. The default being applied now with appropriate dispassionate logic, the phrase would be (ought to be) wiped away. Funny thing is, the default basically already exists as part of the First Amendment. Somewhere, there’s a kid who can step forward and say that.