The United States Supreme Court has just refused certiorari, thus confirming the rejection of this suit (PDF) to remove "In God we Trust" as our national motto. This is from a personal communication received today from the plaintiff and attorney, Michael Newdow.
His email was in response to one I sent him (see below) describing a speech yesterday by Newt Gingrich, where he described Newdow's earlier case as pivotal. The video of a portion of his speech is shown below, one that could set the tone for those vying for the Republican nomination.
This was my letter to Newdow, that describes Gingrich's speech:
I was watching Eliot Spitzer on CNN when they cut to Newt Gingrich giving a speech to Iowa Republicans. I almost got it on the DVR, but in his introduction, going over all the depredations of the left that have caused him to make the great personal sacrifice to serve his country as President he said this. "But the turning point was a decision by the ninth circuit, that American children don't have to say, (shall not say?) "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. When our country has fallen so far that activist judges can go against the will of the people, a decision that reminds me of the Dred Scott case, then something must be done."
He was on a roll, and I now paraphrase: "There is one major question for this next election, is America because of our declaration of independence, because we are "endowed by the Creator" an exceptional country, or just a regular country like all those others. God has given authority to the people, not to government. It is yours, you are the sovereigns......"
Powerful stuff, as obviously he is channeling the Creator and will be his figurehead in the Oval Office as he translates the sovereign people's will into......I would say governance but I don't think that this what he wants done by the government. His gobbledegook does get hazy. Yet he quotes a few central European scholars so he must be a true intellectual. The sad thing is that he just may be the most reasonable of the bunch of this slate of Christian soldiers who are going to save us from secular socialism.
This will be a crusade, as he said he will lead the most revolutionary change in our life time. He has identified evil, and whoever it was who was responsible for that decision of the 9th circuit will be the best one to respond to his accusation.
The full speech is not available, but this gives the flavor:
Gingrich riff about truth referenced the philosopher Albert Camus, who was part of an intellectual climate that would have either ridiculed, feared or despised someone who made the claim that his "truth" corresponded with that of God. While Gingrich may have known that Camus was an atheist, he was confident that none of his audience would know or care about this detail. There is no documentation that I could find of the Lincoln quote. There is, however, a long list of apocryphal quotes attributed to Einstein, Jefferson as well as Lincoln, that certain people use to give vacuous statements a patina of legitimacy.
Gingrich's using Abraham Lincoln to give credence to his assertion that his political platform is not based on man-made ideology, but rather that of the Creator, is a special kind of blasphemy. It is more egregious because Newt Gingrich enjoys the imprimatur of his doctorate in History.
Among all of Lincoln's great speeches, the most profound, the one that had he lived may have changed the course of our nation's history, was his second inaugural address. He was speaking for the ages, as he would only live for a few more weeks. He was directly addressing those who, like Newt Gingrich, would claim that their cause was God's cause:
Lincoln speech describes the two sides of the civil war,
Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.
The Wikipedia articledescribes a document that illuminates the contrast between Lincoln's deepest sentiments, and that of Gingrich:
Lincoln's points, that God's purposes are not directly knowable to humans, represent a theme that Lincoln had expressed earlier. After Lincoln's death, his secretaries found among his papers an undated manuscript now generally known as the "Meditations on the Divine Will". In that manuscript, Lincoln wrote:
The will of God prevails — In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is somewhat different from the purpose of either party — and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect this.[3]
Gingrich's wild inflammatory attack against a non existent "Secular Socialism" arouses all of the passions of those who see the world in apocalyptic terms, with Democrats being the party of Obama, the Anti-Christ. He will stoop to anything to reach the deepest atavistic levels of his audience, and still retain the image of the scholar. With enough bombast he hopes that his audience will gloss over his contradictions.
The day of this speech he was was interviewed by Gretta Van Susteren. He could casually say that he would do something about college becoming more unaffordable in the same breath as talking about the immorality of deficit spending. Gretta didn't ask him exactly how he could help those who can't afford college, or those seniors who would be thrown into poverty or continue to have a military that could act unilaterally; while at the same time slashing the federal budget.
Perhaps, the real message that Gingrich is making is that as God's Representative on earth, that which is impossible for mere mortals shall be given to him and his followers. It is not a new argument; in fact it is ancient. It should have been put to rest by the legion of thinkers over the last half millennium, but it still lives in the deepest recesses of unknown numbers of Americans.
Gingrich is counting on that number being more than we can imagine.