LAST WEEK, Michael Newdow, an amateur lawyer arguing to banish the Pledge of Allegiance from public schools, brought the audience to applause in his first case before the Supreme Court. When Chief Justice Rehnquist cited the unanimous congressional vote to include "under God" in the pledge as evidence the phrase is not divisive, Newdow shot back, "That's only because no atheist can get elected to public office."
I am not particularly religious. But instead of applauding Newdow, I rolled my eyes at his outright arrogance. Newdow's contempt was directed not so much at the Court as it was aimed at all of us. Beneath this hubris, people like Newdow are swimming in a sea of paranoia. Around every corner they see persecution. Under Newdow's logic, every cross-dresser, every practicer of voodoo and everyone else who has some discrete minority interest deserves a seat at the table simply by dint of his particular idiosyncrasy. This is an outright assault on our democracy, which respects majority preferences so long as they are not trampling on minority rights.
The concept of representative government means that, for the most part, the interests of numerical majorities will be represented more often than those of the minority. In a country where the overwhelming majority comes from a Judeo-Christian background, what harm does it really do for the government to merely acknowledge the religious beliefs of a majority, so long as it is not proselytizing or shoving religion down people's throats?
In Newdow's case, why does it bother him so much that his daughter is attending a school where the majority of parents and students presumably want the pledge to be recited in class with the reference to God? Indeed, the mother of Newdow's daughter, with whom he is estranged, would like the child to participate in this exercise.
Newdow claims this practice suggests to his daughter that his religious beliefs, or lack thereof, are wrong. But in a society where religion is ever present, Newdow cannot possibly lock her up so that she is never exposed to religion. In fact, Newdow doesn't even have custody. And even if the child or her parents objected to the pledge, the Supreme Court has already ruled more than 60 years ago that students are not required to take part.
When we strip away Newdow's constitutional arguments, what we find is that his gripe is nothing more than a dislike for the commonly shared values and practices of the majority.
But what if we put the shoe on the other foot? What if Newdow were Christian, and he put his daughter in a majority Muslim school district in the middle of Dearborn, Michigan, and then argued that he wanted to exclude all Muslim cultural practices because he didn't like them? And just as an atheist can't get elected to Congress, no bigot can get elected to the Dearborn city council. Should the community bend over backward to accommodate his hatred for the majority and applaud him for his courageous stand?
Compounding the danger of Newdow's worldview is that it has seeped down into every level of our society. Here at the University, I have heard students in discussions about race talk of a "presumption of whiteness" in our society. At the Law School, which is known for its tradition of "beer and softball," I have heard students bristle against this "white culture." Like Newdow, these sadly mistaken individuals confuse the common interests of a numerical majority with the oppression of minorities.
As examples of the "presumption of whiteness," these students cite the lack of ethnic foods at the supermarket, or the difficulty of obtaining an ethnic haircut at the corner barbershop. But again, put the shoe on the other foot. If we were to airlift an American student and drop him in a Middle Eastern village, would we say that his inability to get a Big Mac or a shave is a "presumption of Arabism?" And is the lack of a Mickey-D's or a barbershop really such a grievous harm to him? Is it diminishing his individual dignity? Should he feel oppressed by "the Man?"
Amid all the talk about accommodating minorities, we have overlooked the need for the minority to sometimes accommodate the majority too. Instead of imposing a tyranny of the minority and pursuing a nihilistic agenda to destroy every majority practice and institution they oppose, people like Newdow should try a little tolerance.
Eric Wang's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.
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