Senate majority leader Thomas Daschle, a Democrat, and Republican Senator Trent Lott co-sponsored a resolution that was approved 99 to 0 calling for the decision to be reversed by the full appellate court or the Supreme Court. Daschle urged all senators to be present the next morning to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

The House of Representatives voted 416 to 3 for a similar resolution. During the Senate vote Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert led dozens of Congress members down the steps of the Capitol for a recitation of the pledge followed by a rendition of "God Bless America."

"At a time when our troops are overseas in harm’s way and our nation is under attack, the words of the pledge hold even more significance," said Democratic representative Nita Lowey.

In the months prior to the decision the U.S. ruling class used the September 11 events to accelerate its assault on working people at home and abroad. In the context of this drive, governments in Colorado, Illinois, Connecticut, Indiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Missouri promoted bills to make the Pledge of Allegiance mandatory in schools.

"This ruling is not only out of step with the Constitution and the founding principles of this nation, but is offensive to most Americans," asserted Republican senator Samuel Brownback.

Bush administration spokesperson Ari Fleischer said the court ruling "does not sit well with the president of the United States" and that the Justice Department would ask the full Ninth Circuit court to reverse the decision. Bush later added that the ruling helps highlight why "we need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God."

California governor Gray Davis, a Democrat, proclaimed that he was "personally offended" by the ruling and had instructed the state’s lawyers to take "decisive action to overturn" it.

Given the stakes cited by these officials in overturning the ruling, none explained how U.S. imperialism was able to make it through two world wars and every military conflict from the Spanish-American War in the late 1800s to the brutal assault on Korea in the 1950s without "under God" as part of the pledge. The phrase was only added to the pledge by Congress in 1954.

The June 26 decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said both the oath, which is recited by millions of young students at the start of each school day, and a California school district policy requiring teachers to lead pupils in reciting the pledge, amount to not only state endorsement of religion but also a subtle form of coercion over children in elementary schools.

The ruling affects nine western states under the appellate court’s jurisdiction--Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. The National Conference of State Legislatures says half the states in the country require the oath as part of the school day and half a dozen more recommend it.  
 
First Amendment
The First Amendment, which is part of the Bill of Rights, maintains a separation of church and state. It declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

"In the context of the pledge, the statement that the United States is a nation, ‘under God’ is an endorsement of religion. It is a profession of a religious belief," declared Judge Alfred Goodwin, who wrote the majority opinion for the three-judge panel.

Amid the chorus of denunciations, Goodwin put a stay on his own decision, which means the ruling would not be implemented while the case is being appealed.

The court decision came from a lawsuit filed by Michael Newdow, whose daughter was compelled to recite the pledge at the elementary school in Sacramento, California, that she attends. A federal judge dismissed his lawsuit, but the Ninth Circuit ordered the case to proceed to trial.

"This is my parental right to say I don’t want the government telling my child what to believe in," said Newdow, an emergency room physician. Newdow said he filed the suit to draw a line between church and state. He said that forcing children to pledge allegiance is unconstitutional and ostracizes those who are not religious. "Could we say we are ‘one nation under David Koresh’? Or Mohammed? No. And we can’t say we are ‘one Nation under God.’"

The original pledge of allegiance, written in 1892, made no reference to religion. The phrase "under God" was added by Congress and signed into law by President Dwight Eisenhower on June 14, 1954, as part of the U.S. rulers’ preparations for imperialist interventions abroad and assaults on workers’ rights at home. "Millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty," Eisenhower declared at a ceremony when he penned the legislation.

The change in the pledge was made to draw a distinction between the U.S. capitalist government and "godless Communism," said Sen. Robert Byrd who was a member of the House of Representatives in 1954.

June 1954 was the month in which ultrarightist senator Joseph McCarthy testified in the Army-McCarthy hearings. McCarthy led the continuation of the assault on constitutional liberties that had begun before World War II under the Roosevelt administration in the name of vigilance against subversives. In the hearings McCarthy declared the Truman administration guilty of "five instances of treason" that helped lead to Washington’s defeat in Korea.

But the Senate hearings were part of the unraveling of McCarthy’s power, after he overreached himself with the establishment of a spy network in the U.S. armed forces and the targeting of sections of the military with his charges. Dominant sections of the ruling class then began repudiating him.

Despite preparing the groundwork for McCarthy’s demise, the Eisenhower administration worked overtime with both parties to get reactionary legislation passed. Measures that were either approved or under consideration in the spring of 1954 included a bill requiring organizations that had been ordered to register as "subversive" to give the attorney general a list of all their printing equipment; a bill to legalize use of evidence obtained by wiretapping; a measure to punish peacetime espionage by death; and legislation to take citizenship away from people, including native-born citizens, convicted of "conspiring to advocate" force and violence against the government.

Other legislation included proposals by Attorney General Herbert Brownell to give him the authority to dissolve unions and other organizations that he considered to be "communist infiltrated." He also proposed a measure that would allow bosses to fire any worker who they deemed "might" commit sabotage or espionage at some future date. Giving employers this legal sanction to fire union militants at will was a direct extension of the McCarthyite policy adopted by large corporations such as General Electric. A number of GE workers had lost their jobs for refusing to "cooperate" with McCarthy when he demanded they turn over the names of past and present associates.

One representative, Katherine St. George, introduced a bill on May 25, 1954, that would have allowed the postmaster general to revoke second-class mailing rights of publications that "contain material advocating political and other doctrines contrary to the best interests of the United States." She admitted that this was a "long first step" to outright censorship since second-class rights permit the circulation of newspapers and magazines at a discount.

In response to these probes against workers’ rights, the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen issued a statement July 12 warning working people to "beware" of the legislation "pending before Congress that would make this country over after the pattern of totalitarian regimes, with a government ‘labor front’ like Hitler’s."

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, striking down Jim Crow segregation in the public schools. The court ruled that the "separate but equal" doctrine violated the Constitution when applied to public schools. Washington’s international diplomatic needs in face of the rising anticolonial struggles, combined with the Black-led fight for civil rights, had forced the hand of the court.

Washington’s aggressive course abroad continued as well. Under the pretext of confronting a new "communist threat" in Vietnam, the Eisenhower administration began discussing sending U.S. ground forces to Indochina to suppress the rising revolutionary movement for national independence that had defeated the French imperialists at Dien Bien Phu.

On June 18, 1954, the U.S. State Department in collusion with the United Fruit Company engineered the overthrow of the elected government of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz by a mercenary invasion force. Washington’s campaign for intervention had been mounting ever since land reform measures were enacted by the Arbenz government in 1952.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home