1. It's sort of a fuck you to me. It's a, "I'm part of this club (Christians) and this is who I'm watching out for.While I may tolerate you being an atheist, I certainly don't appreciate people like you." It certainly doesn't feel inclusive to me.
2. It's a by-product. I don't think saying God Bless America inheriently makes state and country intermingled, but the fact that it
is said is a result of Christianity and state being mingled.
I view the Republican party as the Christian Party. They aren't really for smaller government. They support prohibition and all sorts of laws legislating morals. They are for "old-fashioned values" and "the past history of Christianity in this country." Often, they step very closely on the line between theocracy and democratic republic. Pat Robertson (who ran on the Republican ticket, and is now an outspoken Republican) basically has all but used the word theocracy. This is from the
IMDB.
Quote:
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Claimed that the portion of the U.S. Constitution that pertains to the separation of church and state was not in the original Constitution and was forged onto it by a Communist spy sent to Washington, DC, by the Russians in the late 1920s. According to Robertson, the original framers of the Constitution were told by God that the United States was to be governed by a coalition of ministers, businessmen and property owners, and that the words "democracy" and "republic" are nowhere to be found in the original U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. [1996]
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I view the Democrats as the slightly more flexible, but still Christian Party. You occasionally get legislation based on Christian morals from this side of the aisle (like Al and Tipper's many crusades against art and entertainment). One only needs to read some of the PMRC hearings to understand that Christianity as a litmus test is still very alive.
Either way, simply stopping them from saying In God We Trust (or saying the admended Pledge) isn't going to change the basic outlook of the government.