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We're in a major drought, unemployment is rising, and our state budget is no more balanced than my checkbook. So guess how our legislature is coping.
Last week, the House State, Veterans and Military
Affairs Committee approved a bill which requires that In
God We Trust
be posted in every public building and
classroom in Colorado. According to the bill's sponsor, an
Aurora Republican named Debbie Stafford, posting the
national motto will show public support for American
soldiers.
While I'm all for supporting American soldiers (for one thing, the IRS really doesn't give us much choice in this matter), this does seem a curious way to go about it.
Try to imagine hearing this statement from a future
Medal of Honor winner: When those bullets started coming
our way, I was going to take cover, like everybody else.
Then I remembered all those 'In God We Trust' signs back
home in Colorado, and so I charged the machine-gun
nest.
Somehow, the United States managed to win conflicts,
from the Revolution to Desert Storm, without plastering the
national motto on thousands of Colorado walls. Indeed, for
most of that time, In God We Trust
was not even the
national motto.
Look at the back side of a dollar bill, and on the
right, you'll see the obverse of the Great Seal of the
United States, with an eagle holding a banner with the
original motto of our country: E pluribus unum.
This Latin phrase means out of many, one,
and it
seems like a fine motto, reflecting both American unity and
diversity. Its first such use was apparently in a design
for a national seal submitted on Aug. 10, 1776, by Benjamin
Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
But in 1956, the U.S. Congress and President Dwight D.
Eisenhower decided they could improve on the work of
Franklin, Adams and Jefferson. That year, In God We
Trust
was decreed the official motto of the United
States, and Congress also declared that this motto should
be placed on currency as well as coins.
Its use on coins goes back to the Civil War. In late
1861, one M.R. Watkinson, a Pennsylvania minister, wrote to
Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the treasury. He feared that
antiquarians of succeeding centuries
might find
coins and decide that we were a heathen nation
because coins then featured a symbolic Goddess of
Liberty.
Thus Watkinson wanted the recognition of the Almighty
God in some form on our coins,
since even though
Americans were killing each other by the thousands on a
daily basis, I have felt our national shame in disowning
God as not the least of our present disasters.
Chase went to work with Congress, and in 1864, the new
two-cent coin appeared with In God We Trust.
There
is a story, probably apocryphal, that Chase had suggested
to President Lincoln that this motto also appear on the new
greenbacks -- paper money that was not backed by metal. To
which Lincoln replied that if a religious statement was
necessary, why not Silver and gold have I none, but such
as I have I give thee.
(from Acts 3:6)
The only President who had a problem with In God We
Trust
on coins was apparently Theodore Roosevelt, who
wrote in 1907 that it does no good but does positive
harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously
close to sacrilege.
But that's money, and in Colorado we're talking about
courthouses, classrooms and state offices. A posting
requirement might appear to violate Article 2, section 4 of
our state constitution, which holds in part that No
person shall be required to attend or support any ministry
or place of worship, religious sect or denomination against
his consent. Nor shall any preference be given by law to
any religious denomination or mode of worship.
In God We Trust
might be such an unconstitutional
preference -- just think of the public reaction if the
state started posting In Allah We Trust,
In
Buddha We Trust,
or even a secular slogan like In
Mammon We Trust.
But I'm not a federal judge, and in 1970, the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the motto, as
used on money anyway, has nothing whatsoever to do with
the establishment of religion
and that its use is of
a patriotic or ceremonial character.
So if this bill passes, it's easy to imagine a state court holding that the legislature exceeded its constitutional power in requiring the posting of a statement that gives preference to a mode of worship, while a federal court might hold that it's not even a religious statement. This might assist our poor, struggling legal profession, but it's not likely to do the rest of us much good.
And besides, have you ever seen a schoolhouse or courthouse in Colorado that doesn't fly the U.S. flag? Why isn't that enough for Rep. Stafford and the rest of our legislature?
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