In God we Bust

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

7/9/00

Don't look now, but a group of Stealth pseudo-Christian wing nuts on the Colorado Board of Education have opened the doors to doing something that has been the dream of many Americans for years: taking that stupid "In God We Trust" off the money.

Now, this may seem like an odd thing for a bunch of rabid theocrats to be doing. After all, isn’t it their goal to claim the free and secular United States as their own private turf?

Well, yes. But...

In their never-ending efforts to use the government to promote their own religious nuttiness, the Colorado BofE has ordered that all schools hang a big sign that reads, "In God We Trust". They say that this does not violate separation of church and state because this is the national motto, and rather than being a prayer, is merely an inspirational statement of historical value. Well, of course, there’s all sorts of inspirational statements of historical value. "We shall overcome"; "Remember the Maine!", "Lafayette, We have come", "We have nothing to fear but fear itself". Unfortunately, most of them address American freedom, rather than the efforts of some pseudo-Christian types to put Americans in servitude. That won’t do.

So they’ve voted in their little council, packed with candidates who ran, carefully never mentioning their religious agenda, and they’ve ordered all the schools in the state to put these signs up. Well, someone will sue, of course. Oh, a lot of True Believers will try to frighten and intimidate dissenters as happened in the Santa Fe School Prayer case, but someone will sue. Don’t be surprised if those suing don’t include people from the same church; there’s a lot of Christians who realize that freedom requires tolerance, and even more who realize that orthodox is an increasingly exclusionary process.

And eventually, the case, or cases, will reach the Supreme Court. Now the Court has denied cert on cases concerning the motto on money in the past , since it isn't a real pressing concern. The slogan on the money is a minor irritation to nonbelievers. And any libertarian knows the god referred to on the money isn’t some invisible supernatural deity; it’s Adam Smith’s "invisible hand".

But now, it’s the schools. They can't ignore that. This isn’t a bunch of kids spraying some graffiti on the outfield fences and running away. This is crayoning on the Constitution.

These bible banging idiots want the Court to rule on this graffiti, not as a prayer, but on it's essential constitutionality AS THE NATIONAL MOTTO!

The court can only rule one way. It isn’t constitutional. The government is not there to support any religion. These guys don’t want to settle for "Does it belong in the schools?" (It doesn’t). They want a ruling on whether it is fit and right to be the national motto of a free and secular nation.

It isn’t. America is not the property of any church.

And once the court has struck down the motto, as it must, the mint will have to stop putting it on the money. (Any church can mint it’s own bullion coins, and that’s legal under the Constitution, as long as fair value is given in the materials. They can make their own "God coins", and nobody can stop them, that being the (excuse me) flip side of religious freedom. They might even prove popular.

So that silly and irritating slogan will be coming off the money in a year or so. I suspect that even most Christians will be just as glad, since the tenets of their faith don’t really support such a conjoining of faith and Moloch.

In the next week or so, I'll have a section on my web page, soliciting suggestions for a new national motto. All entries will be considered. Then we can have a vote, and pass the results along to the mint.

This being an open internet vote, the results will be a complete travesty, of course. But that’s the fun part. Nobody’s going to take it seriously, so let your imaginations run wild!