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Originally Posted by filtherton
It seems to me that whatever you or i think about the constitutionality of the phrase is irrelevant. The courts, the actual interpreters of the constitution, don't agree with you. In fact, when ruling on "under god" in the pledge of allegiance, lower courts don't agree with you, and the SC has really done everything in its power to avoid having to rule on the matter because they apparently don't want to deal with the political aftermath of ruling the phrase unconstitutional.
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Actually, you are wrong here. The motto "In God we Trust" has been affirmed by lower courts previously. And the "under God" in the pledge being ruled against depends largely on the court the case comes up in. As for the SC not wanting to deal with political aftermath, this seems laughable. The majority of the cases they rule on have political aftermaths, but they are life time appointments. Also, it seems you are already presuming you know how they would rule, where I think the SC would tend to side with me. But until a case actually reaches, we'll never know.
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It is pretty easy just to write people off as complainers and not think at all about what something may mean to them, but unfortunately, this is america, where everyone is constantly encouraged to change everyone else to fit their world view. This country wouldn't exist if everyone took your advice about "not changing everyone else to fit our world view". Imagine the founding fathers looking within themselves.
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But shouldn't the people with the problem also have to think what the phrase means to those without the problem?
And I don't follow the rest of the paragraph, could you clarify?
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Even so, in this instance i fail to see how removing mention of a god from our money results in "changing everyone else to fit our world view". All it would really accomplish would be to remove a certain phrase from our money that is both meaningless and non representative of a certain portion of our populace. There are a great many people who do not put their trust in god, where is the sense in them being forced to use money created in their name, for their use, which attributes to them a religious belief of which they do not have? No one is saying that theists can't still in their heart of hearts tell themselves that america truly cares about their faith. To me it just seems a little empty to try to show your nondenominational diety how much you trust him/her/it by writing it on your money, as if this is the only way you can possibly convey such a message.
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The meaningless part is your interpretation, not everyone's. And, even though it doesn't represent some, it does represent most. Also to remember it's the American slogan that is printed on money. I don't see a problem with the American slogan being printed on it's money.
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How would you feel if whenever someone complained of racism, the response was "You are being overly sensitive and should possibly look internally instead of trying to change everyone else into fitting in your world view."? I realize that we're talking about two separate issues. I'm just wondering if you'd have any problem with someone giving you that response? To me it just reeks of arrogance, and a refusal to actually address an argument on its merits.
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I would only have that problem if I believed it was a true case of racism. But removing "In God we Trust" from currency and as the motto because of the views of some non-monotheists would be akin to me crying racism everytime I went to someone's home and cried racism because there weren't any black people there. In this case, it's only offensive if you go out of your way to find something offensive about it. I personally do think that many black people (myself included) are often oversensitive, so it isn't necessarily arrogant. Also, if the issue at hand is ridiculous then there's no need to address it on its merits (because it lacks any).