On Wednesday Dr. Michael Newdow, a non-practicing lawyer and emergency room doctor, went before the United States Supreme Court to argue for the removal of “under God” from our Pledge of Allegiance.

Dr. Newdow is concerned that his daughter is being traumatized when school officials lead her through the Pledge each morning. He believes her school district is violating the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause by requiring schools to lead even willing students in the Pledge.

His 9 year old daughter doesn’t report being traumatized. She and her mother, Sandra Banning, are Christians. Sandra Banning wants “under God” left in the Pledge. Dr. Newdow is an atheist activist. He and Sandra never married. She has been battling the tenacious Dr. Newdow for years in a series of legal skirmishes over custody of the child.

So if we are being accurate we would say that it is Dr. Newdow who is traumatized that his daughter agrees with her mother and gladly says the words “one nation under God” every morning in school. If anything is traumatizing Dr. Newdow’s daughter it would most likely be his repeated legal harassment of her and her mother.

He was more honest when he told the court that, “when I see the flag and I think of pledging allegiance, it’s like I’m getting slapped in the face every time, bam, you know, ‘this is a nation under God, your religious belief system is wrong.’”

A bit of history is needed lest we become trapped inside Dr. Newdow’s sensibilities.

The separation of church and state does not mean yielding cultural control to the state. In fact, it means the exact opposite. If individuals do not posses inalienable rights based on “God or God’s nature”, history has taught us that individuals end up under the authority of a powerful few.

Even William of Ockham, that great defender of the individual, a full four hundred years before our forefathers signed the United States Constitution, insisted that our individual liberty comes from God or nature. Our natural positive right of use of things or to make laws and sit rulers can not ultimately be taken away. No ruler or state has absolute power because they can not remove these liberties granted to men by God and nature.

Our founding fathers agreed. Their declared rights of liberty and equality come from God, not from government.
If our liberty comes from a government then that same government can take that liberty away. Our founding fathers believed that government is only the custodian of a liberty derived from a source that is beyond the authority of the state.

In short, we are a nation “under God”, not “under itself”.

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis,
a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?"

Thomas Jefferson

The French revolution took place just after ours. Their source of liberty was the state. That revolution was short lived. It ended in a reign of terror followed by decades of despotic rule.

Our founder’s insistence on the separation of church and state was to sustain, not diminish, the people’s positive liberty to express their faith, whatever that faith is, even Dr. Newdow’s atheism.

But what would happen if we as a nation all agree with Dr. Newdow and no longer believe in God?

Nietzsche predicted the answer. He asserted that western civilization was built on the fiction that God exists and that he gives meaning to our lives.
Belief in God sustains silly notions such as human equality and individual rights. Once God’s death is finally accepted the west would collapse into a great despair. Totalitarian strong men would be welcomed by the common person who is now hungry for meaning and order in a Godless world.

What is so chilling about Nietzsche’s prediction is that he was right. Following God’s funeral in 19th century Europe, the next century will be remembered as the age of atheistic totalitarianism. Nazism and Communism took 100 million lives, both mocking human equality and individual liberty.

So when our good friends, The Knights of Columbus, proposed in 1954 that Congress add “under God” to our Pledge of Allegiance the vote was unanimous. Not quite a decade out from its horrifying war with goose-stepping Nazis, America was entering a new conflict, this time a Cold War, with yet another atheistic totalitarian regime.

Atheistic totalitarianism was becoming a real pain in the neck.

"[The words 'under God'] will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded."

President Dwight Eisenhower

Today Dr. Newdow and other evangelical atheists seek to undo all of this. It would be a remarkable concession to the power of the state and to exclusive secularism to decide to remove “under God” from the pledge.

Why would the court do this?

Because Dr. Newdow and his friends are employing a new strategy. They assert that faith statements can be offensive and violate our privacy. Maybe if we eliminate them from prominence we would all get along better?

But beliefs by their definition are worldviews lacking absolute knowledge.
This would include not only theistic beliefs such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but also secular belief systems such as atheism and scientism. They are all worldviews. Even Dr. Newdow admits his atheism is a ‘religious belief system’.

Belief is an integral part of what it means to be human, to be limited in our ability to know. We all are people of faith. The question is faith in what?

This fabricated new right, the right to be protected from being offended by what others believe, has the potential of becoming a moral cancer on America. It is also a ridiculous notion.

A recent poll said that 87% of the American public want “under God” to remain in the pledge.

It is essential for all of our liberties, including those of Dr. Newdow, that the Supreme Court leave it in.