Under God

Eugene Volokh was guest blogging last week on GlennReynolds.com. His last post, on Friday, discussed the House bill limiting the courts ability to limit the jurisdiction of the Federal and Supreme courts on this issue. He provided an interesting commentary on why this isn't a good idea for those who want to keep 'under God' in the pledge. I think that those who are opposed to 'under God' are missing a significant point of this issue by focusing narrowly on the idea that somehow having the pledge include the words 'under God' violated the principle of seperation of church and state. Basically, my interpretation of the phrase 'under God' is that it is an explicit acknowledgement that the authority of the state is constrained by being subservient to a higher authority. In other words, that so long as the nation is behaving in a moral fashion (it is being true to the higher authority) we owe it allegiance. Should that condition not be satisfied, allegiance to the higher moral authority would take precedence. In our language, God is the catchall term for that higher authority. Our nations traditions and laws make it clear that it is the providence of the individual to determine the exact characteristics and properties of that higher authority and what our individual duties to the higher authority are. For some, this is the Christian God, for others Allah, and for an atheist it would be the personnal moral code he believes is necessary to be a good human being. From this perspective, it seems as though the 'under God' phrase would by and large be more attractive to the left rather than the right. It allows for such things as civil disobediance in cases when the laws are not moral without the breaking of one's personnal Pledge of Allegiance.