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Our Court System - Purveyors of Moral Poverty
By Thomas D. Segel
June 27, 2002

The Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. So speaks our United States Court of Appeals in an order, which must be unbelievably repugnant to every loyal American. However, such a ruling was foreordained. One only needed to view the leftward march of our court system to realize such a decision would one day be trumpeted from some lofty alter of activism.

We need not travel too far back in time to understand what has been happening in this expanding tactic of legislation from the bench. Just about the time Lyndon B. Johnson initiated his failed war on economic poverty, the courts of this nation launched their own war. It has been a war on morality... a war on spirituality... a war on character... a war on ethical standards.

In a nation where the vast majority of citizens profess their belief in God, our courts have ruled there is no place for His word, His praise or His glory in any public place from the schoolroom to the City Park.

A child can wear a Satan inscribed T-shirt to school and it is his freedom of speech. Another child can carry a Bible through the school doorway and be castigated for bringing the word of God into the halls of learning.

The courts have scanned our Internet and deemed the disgusting denigration of children cannot be classified as pornography, if the images of children's sex acts are computer generated. This too, is freedom of speech.

The courts have sanctioned vulgarity, lewdness, displays of homosexual behavior, crudeness of action, conduct and language... all as the individual's right of expression.

At the same time our honorable judges have decided we, as a nation of civil and moral people, cannot demand any respectable standard of conduct, language or actions from those who seek to denigrade our society.

Thirty-five years ago Herbert Prochnow, writer and former Assistant Under Secretary of State in the Eisenhower Administration, observed that as a nation, we were suffering from poverty of character, poverty of moral standards and spiritual poverty. He said, "Perhaps we need to reaffirm our stand on two great principles that have strongly motivated the conduct of our people throughout our history. The first principle is our Pleasure is not the goal of people. Power is not the goal of government. Expediency is not the guiding principle of conduct...

"The second great principle we need to reemphasize is the divine worth of man. We believe in the independence and dignity of every man, for he is made in the image of God and is overshadowed only by Him."

Though Prochnow did not voice this idea, we also believe in rule of the majority. In every meeting, in every game, in every law, in every civilized act we perform the rule of our prevailing majority dictates what actions we will take. This holds true in almost everything... except our court system, where the majority is all too often forced to suffer under decisions, which champion those on the fringe.

Now the court has decided that to speak aloud a Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands... one nation... under God, with liberty and justice for ALL... is unconstitutional. Perhaps if we took the time to have " God"... "Liberty"... "Justice"... and " For All" computer generated, those in black robes, who purvey our moral poverty, would find the compromise acceptable.