This paper was an analysis of a newspaper article in the LA Times.

1

Recently, the Pledge of Allegiance has become a topic of much controversy, due to its mention of “one nation, under God.” This portion of the Pledge has many people up in arms because they believe it is a violation of the first amendment’s freedom of religion clause. They believe that their rights are being violated by having this included in the Pledge, and that it seems to have the government endorsing Christianity over all others. They have successfully caused the U.S. 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals to declare that portion of the Pledge unconstitutional. This issue is nonsense, Charlotte Allen says, because the Pledge is in no way required, and in her article on the subject, she proves this effectively enough by discrediting the man bringing the lawsuit, comparing the lawsuit’s nature to the frivolity of other lawsuits in the past, and bringing up the point that most people are monotheists of some sort and most Americans were not happy with the Court’s ruling.

“De minimis non curat lex. (The law does not concern itself with trifles.)” While it can in no way be stated that the separation of church and state is a trifling matter, it can be said that this tumult over the Pledge of Allegiance is one because it is not a matter of church and state; as Allen points out in the article, the separation of church and state says that Congress must not endorse any religion. Nowhere is it said in the Constitution that there must be no mention of religion in things having to do with the government. It merely says that people must be free to choose their own religions. People can choose not to say the pledge, or simply omit the lines that they do not wish to say. Allen’s main point in this article is that this controversy is a very trivial matter and there is no reason for courts to have to make a ruling of any kind.

Allen states that most people in this country do believe in a god. More to the point, the majority of people in this country believe in the Christian God. People like to overlook the fact that if you don’t pay attention to something it’ll go away, in the same spirit of Proposition 54, where supporters thought overlooking race would somehow lead to a color-blind society. If most people in this country are Christian, or at the very least monotheists who believe in one God, then it would make sense for the Pledge to reflect that. Overlooking the fact does no one any good. In a democracy, the majority rules. Allen makes the strong point that initially, the ruling of the Court was that the words “under God” should be outlawed in all cases; but the people, outraged as they would be, took action and got the Court to instead extend their ruling only to public schools. This shows that the populace does not agree with “under God” being taken out and it is antithetical to a democracy to not have the populace determine law. Allen does not make this point as strongly as she might, mostly because she is trying to focus on the idea that the whole thing is a trifling matter altogether. She just says that most people are Christian, so there shouldn’t really be any controversy.

Allen relates this Court-ruled idiocy to other instances in litigation. She describes this type of triviality as equivalent to a man obtaining civil rights damages from bars offering ladies’ night discounts, which, while not completely accurate, at least hammers home her reasoning on the subject. It is not a completely valid analogy because the people trying to outlaw the Pledge of Allegiance are not doing it for any direct personal benefit; they are doing it for ideological purposes, however mistaken they may be. The men who sue bars offering ladies’ night discounts are doing it for personal, monetary gain. The point she’s making, though, is that there is an equivalent insignificant nature in the two cases. While the viability of this point may be debated, it does offer a stark comparison between the pledge of allegiance dispute and seemingly nonsensical lawsuits, which is an effective rhetorical technique.

The plaintiff in the case, Michael Newdow, was bringing the case to court because of hypothetical hurt it may have rendered on his atheist daughter to sit silently in class while others recited the Pledge of Allegiance. This specific point isn’t valid

because the girl is not an atheist, and the father wouldn’t even know what went on in her school because she lives with her mother, which Allen stresses in her argument. This is mostly effective, because it discredits Newdow, but it doesn’t serve to refute the main point of the lawsuit; it just casts doubt on the man bringing the lawsuit.

The general point of the lawsuit does raise an important question. Should the Pledge be a part of school if some students do not wish to take part? Allen’s response is that it should and that if students do not wish to conform and at least say the parts of the Pledge that are completely secular, then they are responsible for dealing with whatever social ostracism occurs. She’s of the opinion that expedience is not always the worst way to go and that if it is easier to not raise a fuss over the “under god” then don’t. This opinion of hers could have been made more effective if she had noted that the main point of the Pledge of Allegiance is to instill patriotism, not to support any religious belief, but overall it is effective enough because she raises questions about Newdow and casts doubt on the merits of the lawsuit itself.

Allen also makes the point that Newdow himself is a professional litigator. He has pressed suits against the US government for it to take “In God We Trust” off of currency and against Reverend Franklin Graham to keep him from saying a prayer at George Bush’s inauguration. Most would agree that these are both frivolous lawsuits, which makes one wonder how, in a country where de minimis non curat lex is rule of law, such trivial matters can be discussed in the highest courts. It also becomes easier to say that the case against the “under god” in the pledge is frivolous, coming from a man who is known for legal frivolity. Like the boy who cried, “wolf,“ Newdow’s history of lawsuits wholly without merit do not help to lend credence to his case against the Pledge. Allen further makes this point by saying that many reforms, including ones taking religion out of schools, have been beneficial. She describes 3 different reforms that were serious-minded, namely the fight against segregation, which was . In context with these 3 reforms, the pledge lawsuit seems even more frivolous and trivial. As she puts it, “…claiming to be hurt by a reference to the deity in the Pledge of Allegiance? C’mon.”

The only major weakness in her argument is her failure to fully cover the fact that the “under god” was only added to the Pledge fifty years ago, so it is not unthinkable to change it. The reason for the “under god” in the Pledge was to combat Communism in yet another way. It was thought that if they had to cover their spies through pledging allegiance to this country, the “godless” communists wouldn’t be able to say the “under god” part. This was pure nonsense, but it must be noted that it was an addition, and that anything that can be changed through addition can be changed through subtraction. Allen doesn’t mention it for whatever reasons, but the solution to this problem that, if it continues to be a problem, would be to omit the “under god” from the Pledge and change it back to how it was before 1954. Many people, Christians and other monotheists, might be angered at this, but it need only be said to them that this was how it was before 1954, and now it is deemed appropriate to change it back. Allen only offers a shadow of the counterpoint to her argument by noting that the Pledge of Allegiance, in the Court’s opinion, “amounted to a religious act” when it was instituted in 1954, and it actually serves to weaken her arguments because she goes no further in depth on this counterargument.

She also states that the Supreme Court will probably have a major headache trying to solve this problem because they have already started the complete secularizing of schools by eliminating school prayer entirely. She says that the Court is on a sort of “slippery slope” that would, in the course it has set for itself, eventually lead to it having to declare any mentions of a specific religion in anything having to do with the government unconstitutional. Because the Supreme Court is more conservative than it was in the 60’s, when school prayer was outlawed, it finds itself trying to answer the question of how they can declare the “under god” clause constitutional while saying school prayer is unconstitutional in a previous ruling. This is one of the hard questions they will have to answer, and Allen says that they will probably not make a definitive statement on it; instead they will rule against it on some minor technicality and hope the

problem goes away. She may or may not be right here. At this point she is drifting into pure speculation, but it does serve as an effective way of ending her argument. She does a good job of both starting off and ending the article with abstracts. A reader might get lost in the middle of the article, but the ending serves to grab the attention again and give them reason to remember the article.

Her basic way of arguing is effective. She hits her own points very well and never gets lost in what she’s talking about or forgets her thesis (that the law should not concern itself with lawsuits with no merit.) Her one major flaw is that she is so busy hitting her own points that she forgets to defend against the points people might raise against her views. This would be more of an apparent flaw if her argument was not as sound as it is. The article is not exactly concise, but it is clear and easily followed.