My wife and I taught our two sons never to describe things or people as “stupid.” I explained that the use of a word like “stupid” shows a lack of critical thinking. If everything is “stupid,” then there is no way to assess differences and gradation in arguments. Also, saying “stupid” all the time dilutes the significance of the word when you really need to use it.
Michael Newdow, the “under God” critic, is now taking on “In God We Trust.” After hearing him being interviewed by Neal Cavuto, all I can say is, Michael Newdow is stupid! I don’t understand how a man like Newdow, a lawyer and physician, can sound so dumb, but he gets away with his absurd arguments because so many Americans lack an understanding of history.
Newdow told Cavuto that the Constitution guarantees that all of us should be treated equally. Following Newdow’s logic, equality means that America should be officially atheistic. Of course, Newdow would claim that taking “In God We Trust” off U.S. currency is not atheism; it’s neutrality. If God is not acknowledged by our government, then the government is atheistic. Atheism is defined as “no God (a=no + theos=God). How is the removal of God treating theists “equally”? By the way, the Constitution does not say anything about treating everyone equally. Check it out for yourself.
If you want to talk about “equality,” go to the Declaration of Independence and notice the source of equality:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . .
Equality depends on creation, and creation depends on a Creator, and a Creator means God. Then there is the reference to Jesus Christ in the Constitution: “DONE in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven. . . .” In case Mr./Dr. Newdow misses the reference, “our Lord” is a reference to Jesus Christ.
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On September 25, 1789, almost immediately after the approval of the Bill of rights, which included the First Amendment, Congress called on President Washington to proclaim a national day of prayer and thanksgiving:
Mr. [Elias] Boudinot said he could not think of letting the congressional session pass over without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining with one voice in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings He had poured down upon them. With this view, therefore, he would move the following resolution: “Resolved, that a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Constitution of government for their safety and happiness.”
Mr. [Roger] Sherman justified the practice of thanksgiving on any signal event not only as a laudable one in itself, but as warranted by a number of precedents in Holy Writ: for instance, the solemn thanksgivings and rejoicings which took place in the time of Solomon, after the building of the temple, was a case in point. This example, he thought, worthy of a Christian imitation on the present occasion; and he would agree with the gentlemen who moved the resolution.[1]
There was some opposition, but in the end the “resolution was carried in the affirmative.” No one raised a constitutional question then, and Mr. Newdow has no historical basis to raise one today.
Endnotes:
[1] Joseph Gales, compiler, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the Senate of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1834), 949–950:
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=001/llac001.db&recNum=476