"ONE STATE, UNDER GOD"...MY GOD, IT'S TEXAS

Mah Texas correspondent, Pete Donaldson, provides this alert. 

By act of the Texas legislature, that most holy of places, schoolchildren in that great state will now have to pledge allegiance not only to the United States but to Texas.  To fill what some see as a glaring hole in the Texas pledge, the children will now have to acknowledge a Supreme Being, or THE Supreme Being, named God.  This would be the Supreme Being designated by the Texas legislature, which has gone into the God business. 

The Texas Supreme Being, called "God," or sometimes, in frustration, "Gawd," or in anger, "Goddammit," is to be distinguished from other Supreme Beings who, I don't think, were being considered for possible selection during debate on the issue, if there were any debate, such as Allah, Zoroaster, Zeus, Jesus (how could they forget Him?), the Sun, or that tree over yonder.  All have served as Supreme Beings of choice in various places over the years.

Why is Texas, a state, turning itself into a church, I wonder?

Doesn't Texas have enough problems already?

Churches, as soon as they get started, begin fighting among the members over which faction is holier.  This leads to schism, or break-up and Reformation.  Does Texas want to break up?  Reform?  Isn't Texas already a mess?  We have a president from Texas.  Is this the best Texas can do?  Shame about Ann Richards passing away awhile back.  As governor, she's the one who proclaimed that Bush Senior, the  former president and the current president's father, had been born with a silver shoe in his mouth, a man who'd been born on 3rd-base and thought he'd hit a triple.  Why can't we get any good Texans any more, you know, the real intelligent kind?

"One state under God," indeed.  The mind reels. 

I still have trouble with "under God" in the national pledge. 

Those two meter-destroying words were added when I was in grade-school during the early Cold War.  I was fine with the pledge up until then.  I think "under God" should be held unconstitutional on artistic grounds, one of the unenumerated rights reserved to the people under Amendment Ten, I should think.

The article from the Houston Chronicle is below.

Thanks, Pete; stay on the alert, willya?

Regards,

Bob

***

Update from Pete, deep in the Heart of Texas, Kingwood, to be exact.  I'ma gonna havta look that up on a map:

Hi Bob,

Further to my previous email re. addition to the Texas pledge, thought you might enjoy reading Lisa Gray's column in today's Chronicle at:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/gray/5027759.html

After receiving your reply I sent a letter to the editor which was published and can be seen at:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/5023478.html

I'm sure you recognize the (unattributed) last sentence of George Donaldson's letter ("Pete" is a nickname since birth, probably something to do with being a Jr.) for which I offer a belated thanks.

Regards,

Pete D.

***

Attaboy, Pete.  Between you'n'me we're gonna set that Texas Legislature straight.

***

I don't get pledging allegiance to a state, do you?

Isn't that something like pledging allegiance to a corporation?

A state is a big corporation by which we try to regulate our messy lives a bit.  We use it to pass laws so that we don't kill each other any more than we need to while speeding down down the highways.  We arrange for our estates to descend in an orderly manner when we do kill ourselves speeding down the highway.  We tax ourselves to pay the salaries of legislators who, as Pete points out, want to waste their time and their constituents' money passing divisive, useless, bills instead of paying teachers more money to attract better teachers.

Texas is a corporation.  If it were subject to the antitrust laws it would probably have been broken up long ago for being too big for its own good.  It seems to have a monopoly on Texans. 

As long as Texas seems to have been allowed at birth to subdivide into five smaller units, why not let the different parts go into competition with each other? 

Instead of wearing those big ten gallon hats, Texans could start wearing two gallons apiece and save on the juice.

One Texas, Under God!

How about Five Texases, under Five Gods? 

This way, in case of catastrophe, they've got their bets covered five ways, instead of one which may turn out to be wrong.

Did the Texas Legislature consider that it may be consigning its constituents to damnation by picking the wrong God from all of the interesting choices available?

How does the Texas Legislature know fer sure which of these Buggers is really running the show?

What is the great state of Texas going to do?  Throw some little pardner in jail for refusing to bow down to the Idol of Texas as prescribed by their elected officials?

Maybe the legislature of the Great State of Texas ought to take a look a the case of West Virginia School Board vs. Barnette (1943).  This is the case where, when that state tried to force school-children to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. Flag during World War Two when we were fighting for freedom, expelled students who refused to say the Pledge.  The religious group called the Jehovah's Witnesses believe in the biblical injunction that commands them not to bow down to graven images, idols, and the like.  This would include saying pledges to flags symbolizing great powers like nations.

Justice Jackson, writing for the Court, held that no government in America can force anyone, and in particular a pupil in a government mandated public school, to salute or pledge to a flag, as a matter of conscience, and now, law.

Later cases, such as Lee v. Weisman (1992), recognize that peer pressure on children to follow along and do what other children do is coercive and unfair to those who are made uncomfortable being pressured into singing the hymns and prayers of religious groups to which they do not adhere.  We don't force Christian pupils to sing Hebrew prayers, so why pressure Jewish pupils to sing in praise of Jesus? 

I don't think I'd very much like being forced in public to sing in praise of someone in whose name so many of my people had been persecuted unto their death, even if he was Jewish, would you?  I didn't think so.  It's un-American.

More specifically, prayer in school, held the Court in Weisman, supra, is a violation of the First Amendment guarantee that government is not allowed to enter the God business.  We call doing this "establishing a religion."  Back in the bad old days, government sponsored religion.  They taxed you in support of someone else's religion to pay the salaries of the ministers.  This is the way it was in Virginia (Episcopal, formerly known as Anglican or Church of England, whose name had to be changed after the unpleasantness known as the American War for Independence; successful) and in Massachusetts (Congregational, the church founded by the Puritans who gave us the Sunday-closing and blue laws, as in "banned-in-Boston."

The first line of the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights (ratified Dec. 15, 1791) states:  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

As Justice Hugo Black argued, that's pretty clear, isn't it?  "No law" means no law, so cut it out, all this nibbling away, trying to sneak religion back into the schools and into the little children's heads, and not even into the heads of the legislators' own children, but of your child and mine who may not hold to the religion espoused and established by the Texas legislature.

Texas doesn't get what being an American is, I guess. 

Texas doesn't get what men died face down in the mud fighting for, including a lot of Texans, I guess.

If Texas doesn't want to respect what those patriots died fighting for, Texas is beyond any help from me.

Texas must think that it can dictate what your child and mine must believe in order to be good little Americans, or Texans, when to be a good American, or Texan, you must be allowed the freedom to make up your own mind as to what you will or will not believe. That is the American way, of which Texas would like to be a part, I hear.

Texas must not have a lot of confidence in their own school-children, the ones who will grow up and lead the state when their turn comes, if Texas thinks it must indoctrinate them to recite, like robots, some prescribed, official prayer or statement of belief.

Do you ever believe what you have been forced to recite?

My guess is that the School-Children of Texas have more brains than their legislature gives them credit for, if only those folks in Austin will leave them alone to think for themselves.  The children will be a lot better for it and Texas will be even greater for it.  It's what's inside the head that is more important than the long horns growing out of it.  But I guess Texas knew that already, except for a couple of folks who thought they might look good grandstanding for votes or currying brownie points with their Texas version of the Big Ranger in the Sky. 

I wonder whether the God of Texas wears boots and spurs...

...of course He does.  What else would a Texas God wear, a pink tutu?  I don't think so.  That's what our God in San Francisco wears, but only on Halloween after a couple of pops.

When a devout Texan arrives at the Pearly Gates, however unlikely this may seem,  is "Howdy, Pardner," what he says to St. Peter?  To the Big Rancher in the Sky Hisself?  Does Mr. T Texas ask, "Remember the Alamo?"  "And say, Why did Y'all let all'em good men die fer?"

I don't see why not.

After all, the Texas Legislature would probably like to know.

God must be tard a' hearin' that.