Friday, March 26, 2004 :::
Jonah Goldberg writes:Newdow's assault on the Pledge of Allegiance depends on the criticism that any public recognition of God is unacceptably tyrranical. Here's an exchange, recounted by Greenhouse, between Justice Souter and Newdow from yesterday hearing:
Justice Souter's question for Dr. Newdow was whether, even assuming that schoolchildren were being asked "as a technical matter" to make a personal religious affirmation, the recitation had become in practice "so tepid, so diluted, so far, let's say, from a compulsory prayer that in fact it should be, in effect, beneath the constitutional radar." Was it the case, Justice Souter asked, that by "the way we live and think and work in schools and in civic society in which the pledge is made, that whatever is distinctively religious as an affirmation is simply lost?"
Dr. Newdow replied: "That is a view that you may choose to take and the majority of Americans may choose to take. But it's not the view I take, and 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.'"
"I, I, I." You get the sense this all about Newdow? Remember this isn't even a case about what the pledge does to him, it's supposed to be about what the pledge does to his daughter.
I'm sorry but this country may have been established to protect individual rights, but it wasn't founded to cater to the feelings of every individual. Newdow is unconcerned by the fact that if he got his way he'd be slapping, literally, hundreds of millions of Americans in the face. He thinks that's fair because of his ego and because his capacity for abstraction affords him the ability to shove his head up his own butt and mistake the darkness for a temple of reason. Lily Malcolm writes:Jonah Goldberg thinks "under God" should stay in the Pledge of Allegiance because the majority of Americans want to keep it. I trust he will be just as enthusiastic about gay marriage when, in the not-too-distant future, the majority of Americans are in favor of that too. This is about the standard of accuracy I expect from a newspaper -- I can see the relationship between what Lily describes and her description of it, but it's a pretty charicatured description (even more so, I'd say, than Jonah's description of Newdow's comments as being purely about Newdow, when these comments were in response to a question about whether the case really matters, and were clearly meant to be representative of the impact on atheists in general).
But there are a couple twists that I think add a bit of irony here. First, Jonah Goldberg has written in opposition to pure democracy more often than any columnist I can think of -- or maybe it just seems that way, since his description of the majority peeing in the minority's cornflakes is so vivid. Second -- and conversely -- Goldberg is currently near the middle of public opinion, opposing gay marriage but supporting civil unions; in other words, it's possible that if support for gay marriage were to become the majority opinion, Goldberg would be part of that. I suspect he'd lag the median voter -- his mind is probably more made up than that of the average American -- but not necessarily by much.
Last but not least, I'd like to go on record as opposing Goldberg's figurative use of the word "literally". [UPDATE: I've changed my mind on this one.]
::: posted by Steven at 9:26 AM
|
