I was relieved to hear that Michael Newdow aquitted himself well before the Supreme Court. I have mixed feelings about this case. On the one hand, I still can't see that God in the pledge is an important enough battle to fight. But since the case did make it all the way to the top, I certainly would not want it in the hands of someone who was "a sloppy, overzealous mess," as Dahlia Lithwick reasonably assumed Newdow would be before hearing him. The last thing we atheists need is to be represented by another embarrassing nutjob.
There's also the unavoidable matter of Newdow being right on the law, as William Safire reluctantly admits.
So good for Newdow, however this ends up. I'm not too surprised he pulled it off, however, since I heard him speak last year and found him very impressive. After his talk I told him that while I thought he was right, I worried that by picking on something so simultaneously silly and beloved, he risked diminishing the cause of freedom of religion. Don't you realize, I said, that from now on when we raise alarms about the religious right taking over health care or rewriting textbooks, people are going to dismiss us by saying, they're the same wackos who wanted to take God out of the prayer.
Newdow replied that he saw it the opposite way. The religious right has the traction it does to take such measures in large part because the politicians who serve them are of the unshakable belief that America is and should be a Christian nation, subservient to religious doctrine � and that this misapprehension is reinforced everyday precisely because ubiquitous appeals to God � in the pledge, in the prayer that starts sessions of Congress and the courts, on money even � are never challenged. As long as there is such a thing as ceremonial deism � religion so habitual as to be meaningless � why wouldn't lawmakers think their duty is to serve those who claim to serve God?
I can't say I was entirely persuaded. But I sure wouldn't have wanted to be Ted Olson.
