As good of a president as Ronald Reagan was, he still made mistakes, as all humans do. One of his biggest mistakes, in my opinion, was Sandra Day O’Connor, who often cast the deciding vote in important Supreme Court decisions. For instance, she was the deciding vote in the Supreme Court's affirming of Roe v Wade in 1992 and of the Court's rubber stamping of affirmative action in college admissions in 2003, both of which have since been overturned by the Supreme Court. She was also the deciding vote in the Court's empowering of the Environmental Protection Agency's right to govern American businesses with dictatorial regulations, which played no small part in the rise of today's tyrannical bureaucratic state. The following story is an excellent example of why I feel compelled to sound a sour note in our country’s eulogizing swan song for America's first female Supreme Court Justice.
In 1954, during the Cold War, the United States Congress attempted to contrast the difference between communist governments and ours by adding the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Communism is based on atheism; therefore, it views the state as supreme. Since communists believe that there is no God, they inevitably conclude that the state is supreme and the sole arbiter of human rights. In communist countries, men’s rights are not viewed as God-given, but as government-granted. Thus, the government, which is seen as the grantor of human rights, is also granted the power to revoke men’s rights. In communist lands, the government alone determines who has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as well as who doesn’t.
Our government, unlike communist governments, is based on a belief in God. God is therefore seen as supreme and the sole arbiter of human rights. Nothing, including the state, can dare to usurp the place of God and revoke the inalienable rights of men. Since our rights are God-given, not government-granted, our government has no right to revoke them. Instead, it exists for the sole purpose of protecting and preserving them. If it ever ceases to guarantee and guard our inalienable rights, we the people, as our Founding Fathers asserted, have ever right to overthrow it; otherwise, we will become mere subjects of a tyrannical government.
On June 26, 2002, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance was “unconstitutional.” Ironically, by striking down the Pledge as unconstitutional and by ruling in favor of a California atheist by the name of Michael Newdow, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the very thing that the phrase “under God” was inserted into the Pledge to combat; namely, atheism—the basis for godless communism. While one would expect this kind of ruling from a communist court, like the Standing Committee of the National People’s Republic of China, it came as quite a shock from an American Appeals Court. Not only did this loony, left-coast court’s ruling fly in the face of our Founding Fathers, but it also undermined our founding document and pulled from beneath our nation the bedrock principle upon which it was founded⏤belief in God.
Many took solace in the fact that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was eventually overturned by the United States Supreme Court on June 14, 2004. Yet, I found little comfort in this, since the Supreme Court refused to decide the issue and opted instead to overturn the 9th Circuit on a technicality. The Supreme Court ended up throwing the case out. It found that Michael Newdow had no legal standing to bring it, since he did not have legal custody of his daughter and since his daughter had no objection to saying the Pledge. What does it say about today’s judiciary when a case has to get all of the way to the United States Supreme Court before it’s figured out that the case should have been thrown out of court to start with? Far from taking solace in this, it ought to scare us to death.
Adding insult to injury, Justice Sandra Day O’Conner took it upon herself to proffer a voluntary opinion on Newdow’s illegal suit and the 9th Circuit Court’s ridiculous ruling. According to O’Conner, the phrase “one nation under God” in the Pledge is not unconstitutional because “our continued repetition” of it has reduced it to a “ceremonial deism.” O’Conner went on to argue that “any religious [meaning] the words may have meant to carry originally has long since been lost.” In other words, O’Conner said it’s okay to acknowledge God in today’s America as long as we don’t mean anything by it.
According to the late Sandra Day O’Conner, America's first female Supreme Court Justice, the only time it’s lawful to acknowledge God is when we do so in violation of God’s law, in particularly of the 3rd Commandment—“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Apparently, O’Conner believed that it’s legal for America’s school children to continue saying the Pledge as long as they’re taking God’s name in vain and not speaking it in reverence. Likewise, it’s okay for today’s public school children to use God’s name in profanity, but never in prayer, which the Supreme Court outlawed in 1985, with the concurrence of Sandra Day O’Connor.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR, FORMER SUPREME COURT JUSTICE, DEAD AT 93
