Jerry Brown on the Pledge of Allegiance controversy

As I've said on more than one occasion, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, who is running for state Attorney General in 2006, is a surprising guy.

Brown's statement on the Ninth Circuit Court's decision in 2002 saying that the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag should not be recited in schools because of its mention of God, may surprise some people.  It's found in the Archives of his home page www.jerrybrown.org, but there isn't a direct link to the document.

Since it isn't a news article, and since politicians and public officials are normally more than happy to have their words passed along, I'm reproducing here in full, without the italics I normally use for quotations.

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Pledge of Allegiance Decision

At a common sense level the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals decision was absurd. From the very founding of America, the concept of God has been invoked to explain the basis of our constitutional system. The premise of unalienable rights is expressly derived from Divine, not human origin in the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln invoked the name of God eight times in his historic Second Inaugural address. Countless other references to God can be found in official documents and practices going back to 1776.

The court's ruling can only be understood as a hyper-technical extension of the modern Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state. While it snugly fits into contemporary secular ideology, it flies in the face of both history and current practice. Without a doubt, the decision will be overturned.

Nevertheless,there is a lesson to be learned: not every issue is appropriate for judges to decide. Whenever a matter comes to the court, there is a winner and a loser. It is a winner-take-all kind of proposition. Yet, in a democratic and diverse nation, compromise has to be the order of the day and that is the work of legislators, not judges.

If Michael Newdow feels his daughter is corrupted by the Pledge because of its mention of God, he can appeal to the school board. If there are enough people who agree with him, the pledge will not be said. Under no circumstances will his daughter be coerced into saying the pledge. The Supreme Court settledthat long ago. But to find a constitutional question here is actually symptomatic of an anti-democratic perspective. As citizens, we cannot expect that government will validate all of our ideas and preferences. We are entitled to seek legislative agreement and support, but that is far different from asking the judiciary to enshrine in the fundamental law of the land our particular beliefs and prejudices.

Every country has a founding story and historic experience that gives it shape and identity. That is something that we tear up at our peril. Democracy only works if as a people we fundamentally agree on who we are as Americans. That certainly evolves over time but not to the point where it becomes unconstitutional to speak in the language of our founders.

What the Ninth Circuit did was to find an injury where there was none. After a child is excused from reciting the pledge, what more should be done. The court majority felt that the entire nation should conform to Mr. Newdow's view of the world. That is judicial overreach and distorts the role of the judiciary. The courts are only effective if they operative within certain constraints, one of which is abiding respect for the guiding principles that made this democratic experiment possible. In reducing the mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance to an "endorsement of religious ideology," the Ninth Circuit Court rewrote history to fit their own ideology.

That's bad law and bad politics.

Jerry Brown, June 2002