The original motto of the United States, e pluribus unum -- from many, one -- originally signified the inclusion of 13 separate colonies into one body politic. But it also came to represent the notion that you can come to this country and become a participating citizen, taking on the responsibilities and reaping the benefits.
In the 1950s, in response to severe threats playing out on the world stage, we adopted a new motto, In God We Trust. In many ways, this motto's intentions were similar to those of the original -- to unite us around a common purpose in order to prevail against forces seeking to destroy us.
It was an understandable but risky choice to adopt the new motto. And now the full extent of that risk is becoming clearer every day. The trends we can see developing around us are making it more obvious than ever that we have to quash the terrifying specter of a government that wields the power of religion.
Power does not respect religion. It only uses it to advance its own ends, destroying both the faith and then eventually itself. And always, always it destroys many lives in the process.
It all seems harmless enough at first. We are tempted to use the power of religion to attain some cherished political ambitions -- restoring morality or greatness to the nation, or ridding us of some terrible "evil." But in the very next breath after we yield up that power, or even in the same breath, we invariably start to observe it being misused for terrible purposes. Banning books, enacting restrictions on people who don't look or think, like "us", and using the law to impose the will of some on others -- these phenomena appear, as we have seen, instantaneously. And it only goes downhill from there. The people who clamored to put the power of religion into the hands of the government soon find it being used as a weapon. And then, once that power is dug in, they find that they themselves are never more than a single election away from having that weapon pointed at them. Or if they succeed in undermining the electoral process or the Rule of Law, there is no barrier at all between them and the capricious will of any demagogue who manages to grab onto power.
When engineering our government, the founders were intensely, acutely aware of this risk, and they went to extraordinary lengths to try to prevent this terrible outcome from occurring. Let us not be the generation known for heedlessly throwing away our government "of the people, by the people, for the people."
Let us instead be known as the generation who saved the nation by restoring our original motto -- from many, one. It is well for some people that they derive a benefit from trusting in their chosen deity. But we must also Never Forget those twin towers in New York City. Their destruction was the direct result of a trust in God -- a trust that was usurped by political ambition and turned into a weapon of mass destruction.
Bad outcomes like that WILL happen to us if we continue down the terrible path that demagogues are trying to entice us into entering. They are following the Demagoguery 101 playbook to the letter, playing on our fear of change, fear of loss, and fear of others who don't look like us. They grab at this power, not for our benefit, but only to gain power for themselves.
All you who approve of what we have seen in many state legislatures and in the Supreme Court this year to force the morality, the beliefs, and the prejudices of the majority on other people, turn back now before it's too late. You are selling our birthright of liberty for a mess of culture war pottage.
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