I notice that my email inbox has filled up lately with messages from organizations outraged by the Ninth Circuit Court decision (as if it were a surprise!) that "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance" is unconstitutional. The same messages usually ask for money to do battle against the wicked forces in America who are arranging for such horrid outcomes in our courts and culture.
Even President Bush has leaped on the bandwagon. CNS News reports that, "Speaking to a veterans group [at Ripley, West Virginia on July 4] Bush said, u2018no authority in America' could prevent people from u2018pledging allegiance to one nation under God.'"
Of course the fix was already in, and Bush is just coat-tailing on this hot-button issue. The judge who wrote the opinion had already ordered a stay of its implementation, and I'll bet we'll hear rather little about enforcement from now on. Bush & Co. are at least as realistic as Stalin, who made some peace with the Orthodox Church when he was faced with making war against an exterior enemy. So Bush will certainly pour on the rhetoric to placate his "right-wing Christian" support. It costs nothing, and it calms the folks out in the boonies. And, of course, on this one he is in fact on the side of the angels; the court's decision was just another instance of the continuing, concerted, and loony effort to tear down traditional American society.
Unfortunately that effort is winning in the large, even if now and then some small aspect of it, like this one about "under God," has to be withdrawn as a result of a great public uproar.
There is, however, no sign of overall withdrawal of the campaign mandated and financed by our controlling elites to demoralize and marginalize all religious groups, so that there will be no real countervailing force to oppose the monolithic statism that is our future.
I noticed the extraordinary elegiac tone Joseph Sobran achieved in his July 4th post on LRC, "How America Has Changed." He writes a virtual obituary for the Republic and the free society the American Founders designed and gave us, and which we have permitted to be betrayed.
Bush's 4th of July remarks to America were the usual boilerplate about "preserving our precious freedoms." Bush talks in basic Orwellian; such that you can translate without a dictionary – just reverse meanings: "Enduring freedom" means "Increasing bondage," etc.
There are odd little leaks in high places that put you on notice as to the realities. Lynn Cheney popped off the other day about "the little engine that could" of American life and politics. What is it? Why, it's the "separation of Church and State" There's another one that needs a quick Orwellian translation (still using just the basic vocabulary): "Separation of Church and State" means the State tells the Church what it can and cannot do. Neat and simple, you have to admit. Basic.
I had to go out this morning to get some bananas at the local supermarket. We have lately moved house in the same town, and I am still assessing my new neighborhood. After September 11, flags sprouted all over the place in the old location. A real estate broker had gone through the area planting little flags in front lawns. Nearly everybody left them in place for months until they were ruined by the weather. But this morning, July 4, I noticed there were no flags at all flying along the five or six long residential blocks between us and the supermarket.
It appears the whole super-patriotic shtick has gotten a little tired. What to do to whomp it up again? I notice in the back of my mind as I write this that I am wondering if the warnings about terrorism on the 4th will issue in anything. I hope to God not. It would only encourage the present regime.
There are rumblings about a possible return of the draft. Get young men off the (depressed) job market and improve the services' pool of talent. On this I think the regime will confront a buzz saw. Radical Islam seems to be able to recruit a lot of suicide bombers. I think placid America will balk at furnishing only sons or daughters to the military for assorted overseas adventurings in search of universal peace through perpetual war.
July 5, 2002
