Our fork in the road

When the U.S. Supreme Court justices hear arguments in the Pledge of Allegiance case today, we hope they will keep firmly in mind what this case is not about.

It is not about establishing a religion.

It is not about forcing anyone to pray.

It is not about choosing one deity over another.

What the case is about is the importance of acknowledging a higher power - certainly a higher power than the U.S. federal government in all its forms.

It's about the American people's right to acknowledge God in public.

It's about turning back what might be called the "tyranny of the minority" - the view, backed by activist judges, that one person can prevent entire communities, states or even the country from exercising their right of self-determination.

Somehow, these people think it's illegal for American communities to do or say anything unless every single individual acquiesces.

It's about stopping, in its tracks, the cynical campaign against all forms of spirituality in American public life.

Lastly, it's about whether the courts, or the people and their elected representatives, will chart this country's cultural course and political discourse.

That, and more, is what's behind those two powerful words in the Pledge of Allegiance: under God.

Yes, it's just a pledge. It's just two words in that pledge. But in terms of symbolically setting the tone for public life, this case is as important as it gets.

In supporting keeping "under God" in the pledge, seven Orthodox Jewish organizations wrote that "Jewish tradition teaches that human recognition of God is the hallmark of civilization," and that the pledge gives voice to the fact that "man's destiny is shaped by a Supreme being."

And, as Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice notes, one of the founding principles of this country is that "rights emanate from God, not from government."

Ironically, the plaintiff trying to have "under God" stripped from the pledge - atheist Californian Michael Newdow - may not have the legal standing to force his views on his own fourth-grade daughter; the girl's mother, Sandra Banning, is a born-again Christian who says her daughter is just fine saying the words "under God."

Yet, Newdow, in what is largely an academic exercise, has come close to denying the rest of the country's schoolchildren that privilege.

What if he prevails? Will God be taken off our money? All our public buildings? All our public pronouncements? All our historical and founding documents?

God help us if we go down that road.