thomas jefferson would have been proud: today, the ninth circuit court decided to outlaw the pledge of allegiance on the basis of the line: 'one nation, under god'. this strikes me as interesting for a couple of reasons. first, the lines were added in 1954. before then, apparantly, there was no reference to us being a nation under god...the rationale then was that we wished to distinguish our country from the atheism over in Russia. this alone, apart from any legal precedent, seems to clearly mean that the pledge is an endorsement of mono-theism. it also seems to be easily fixed: why not simply restore the original pledge? much like south carolina's flag spat, which began in 1962 when someone decided the anniversary of the civil war was a good occasion to hoist the confederate flag over the capitol. (could well-meaning germans throw up nazi banners in 2038...claiming that the movement was really misunderstood?) One can only wonder why these ideas seemed good at the time. Yet even if the phrase is not struck down, some people's defense of it seems laughable, others quite clear. In the post article, it notes that the late justice William Brennan coined a phrase, "ceremonial deism" that refered to notions of god so frequently invoked that they lost all religious meaning. This seems to me to be the strongest argument against leaving it in the pledge, yet at the same time, isn't taking the Lord's name in vain a sin? Absurdly, any religious person should dismiss this argument because to trivialize god is worse than to simply omit the words: all good people of mono-theistic faiths should support the use of god in the pledge precisely because they feel the pledge should be rooted in mono-theism. For this reason, it should be stricken. The far less compelling argument, equally illogical given the current state of the nation is that the use of the word god doesn't promote religion. Yes, and Anderson's auditing was completely separate from their consulting work, too. If you believe that the use of religion in schools doesn't encourage students to support a faith, then you have been hoodwinked by those same people who believe that human nature is somehow divorced from peer and societal pressures. At least at Anderson, naked greed can be the cause of the willingness to wink, whereas in school, kids might only gain the knowledge that they are like their peers. The chinese wall between church and state should not be broken down for the mere convenience of so called moralists, the same way that auditors broke down their wall between client and consultant, or newsrooms between editorial and business. TJ, and by extension, the founders, were quite clear that America was not to be a nation, like England, with an offical state religion. If they had intended otherwise, then the nation would be filled with Episcopalians, like me.