One Nation, Under God?

Some years back when I was teaching school, one of my peers began a brouhaha about the Pledge of Allegiance. Everyone, she claimed, was saying it wrong! The "wrong" came about as most of us said the Pledge with a bit of a pause, as if there were a comma between "one nation" and "under God." There is NO comma she reminded us again and again.

At the time I thought she was a little bit nuts, and in retrospect I still think that, but I also think she was expressing her wish that the United States was in truth a Christian nation, under God.


Yesterday, David Edwards and Nick Juliano at therawstory, wrote of a Republican congressman from Georgia who, like my school teacher friend, believes the deletion of the inserted comma to be of vital, national importance.

He's a freshman congressperson by name of Paul Broun who had the temerity, while leading the Pledge of Allegiance, to lecture the members of the House of Representatives as to the proper way to say the Pledge.

"There should not be a comma between 'one nation' and 'under God,'" said Mr. Broun, preachily.


It is well known that before 1954, the Pledge contained no reference to a deity. By the mid-fifties, however, many Americans had become convinced that the Communists were the greatest threat since Margaret Truman began singing. So, to reassure the deity that we were on her side, the phrase "under God" was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance.

These days, the Christian fundamentalists love it because the phrase so succinctly expresses their notion that the United States was founded by Christians and is a Christian nation, and if it isn't, well by God it better be pretty soon or we're all gonna be left behind when Jesus returns to "rapture" his faithful Gentile followers.

But if we're going to get through to god, the Pledge has to be recited without that damn comma, or it's no good! It's like history professor, Matthew Dennis, said: "Without a comma, the phrase indicates that the central characteristic of the United States as a political community is its subordination to God." And that's what the Brouns of the world want.

Edwards and Juliano write that "A Broun spokesman even said there should be no pause to emphasize there is 'no separation or implied separation between nation and God.'" Arrrgh!

Okay. Here we have another bozo elected to Congress who doesn't understand the Constitution of the United States! Or he just doesn't care. He's a true believer who's job, he thinks, is to make sure all the rest of us believe like he does. In November of 2007, he lent his support to a bunch of revisionists haunting the halls of Congress who were (and are) trying to promote the Ten Commandments. At that time, he said "I commend the Ten Commandments Commission for their efforts to remind Americans that we are, in fact, 'one nation under God.'"

Who is Paul Broun, you ask. He's a physician from Athens, Georgia. He's an avid hunter, and has killed an African lion, a Kodiak bear, a red stag from Argentina, an eland, a cape buffalo, and a wart hog. "I've hunted wild mountain sheep in Africa, as well as Spain and Pakistan."

He also eats everything he kills. Lion is "not very tasty. It's really chewy."

Warthog is the best-tasting.

I guess all that killing makes him a "real" man?

Broun found Jesus (I didn't even know he was lost) back in 1975 when he saw a John 3:16 banner at a football game. And when he recently became a congressperson, Jesus told him what to do. Jesus said outlaw abortion, because all fetuses are people and abortion is an unmitigated evil. Thus Broun thinks "...it's my job in Congress to prove that the unborn are people under the law and deserve protection under the Constitution, so I will continue as long as I'm in Congress to introduce my Sanctity of Human Life bill every year..."

This is the funniest part! He ran for Congress as a Republican "because of the moral issues..." Ha, ha, ha, ha. These days it just doesn't work to include the words, "Republican" and "moral," in the same sentence. But, says Broun, "My faith is very important to me. The Republican Party was and is now the party of limited government and no intrusion into people's lives, and that's what I believe in..."

You have to wonder about a man whose mind allows him to proclaim he's for limited government and not intruding into people's lives and then wants to pass a bill that would ban abortion, or post the Ten Commandments in public places! Talk about overbearing government and intrusion into people's lives!


Well, what else can you expect from a man who spells Brown Broun? (I'm just kidding!) Still, it is really tiring to listen to the crap these right-wing fundamentalist hypocrites keep throwing at the rest of us. And when he talks about a god this nation is under, what god is he talking about? We all know, of course, he's talking about the Christian fundamentalist god created by biblical illiterates, but it's still a fair question seeing as how we've got all kinds of gods being worshipped in this "one nation, under God."

Furthermore, you'd think a first-term congressperson would sit down, shut up, listen to what his colleagues had to say and work on something of real importance to the country. That, however, might require a bit of effort, a tad of common sense, and a whole lot less religion!