Wednesday, July 3, 2002

I never thought I would see the day but it arrived none the less! It seems that the Pledge of Allegiance has been ruled unconstitutional because the words "under God" were added in 1954. It seems the [Ninth Circuit] Court [of Appeals] has based its opinion on the Constitution's establishment clause of "separation of Church and State."

I wonder if any of these justices have read the entire Constitution and if so, did they read it more than once. I know I have and it used to be required school reading at one time. We even had to memorize the preamble as a class assignment.

Not anymore! My own daughter, who graduates from Fayette County High School next year, has never read the entire Constitution (She will before this year is over), and it makes me wonder if any of our public-funded institutions of learning require this anymore.

I admit I am not a "learned" Constitutional scholar, but I do understand English quite well. To this day I just do not understand where, how or why our elected officials and justices came up with the interpretation that religion must be separated from the state.

When I read this statement our forefathers made when designing our Constitution, I came to believe that their intention was to make sure that our government never endorsed a "single" religion to be forced upon our people, that we were to never have a "national" religion we all had to follow. I guess based on many of the decisions our courts have ruled on these past 45 years or so, it should be no surprise to me that this decision would be made as well.

It saddens me that we have come so far from what our Fathers had intended and it scares me that our court system seems to be the grounds where so many of our rights will be taken away.

No longer is a jury allowed to determine a criminal's guilt. If the decision is not a satisfactory one to our courts, then they make it their right to change our decisions, the decisions of our jury. It is not hard to see that our nation is slowly slipping toward the very depths of despair that drove our fathers here to America: Taxation without representation, total government control over our rights to bear arms as individuals and so many other issues we thought were guaranteed and protected by our Constitution. Not any longer, because our court system believes it now has the right to decide what our rights should be.

Why has the term "under God" been right since 1954 and all of a sudden it is wrong? I believe the answer is quite simple. We are children to our courts and government and should have our rights dictated as a child would. Today our government and court system is becoming even bolder in making their decisions. They have whittled away many of our guarantees in smaller pieces for so many years and in such a way that we have taken so very little notice.

Why, we even had a President who abused his office, showed no moral conscience when caught in a sexually compromising situation and even tried to rewrite the English language with his own interpretation of many of the words it contained. The hard part for me to take was he got away with it!

People, we need to wake up and understand that there are forces working under it all that want to take away the very rights our fathers died to provide us. We have become a nation of lazy, forgetful people who for the most part are secure in their own lives as long as they can have the food, clothing and shelter they need to exist each day.

It is time for us to use the power of the ballot to put those people in office who will stay the course our nation was steered toward in the first place. Stop excepting the thin excuses our leaders offer us when they fail to keep promises; quit letting the "good ol' boys" get reelected year after year because they act like they are our friends.

It is time to vote these people out of the offices they have become so fat in and replace them with individuals whose concern is for our nation, state and community and the moral strengths and standards that have stood the test of time. We must hold these men and women accountable each and every day to keep their promises and quit taking away our God-given rights to satisfy the few in our land who take offense to the guarantees our fathers fought and died to preserve! Make your stand today and this election year by making your vote count.

John Nance

Fayetteville

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