{"id":42738,"date":"2024-11-02T00:01:45","date_gmt":"2024-11-02T07:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=42738"},"modified":"2026-06-05T09:46:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:46:23","slug":"thoughts-before-election-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/thoughts-before-election-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Widowed: Some Thoughts Before Election Day — From Jon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"thoughts<\/a>
Jon posed with American flag he’d hung for the Fourth of July. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Some thoughts before election day:<\/p>\n

Jon was a journalist. I was a journalist. We kept up with the news. The dinner hour at our house was accompanied by the nightly news followed by an hour or so of cable network talking heads.When the Capitol was attacked on January 6, 2021, just weeks before Jon died, he and I sat together, glued to the TV, anxiously following the day’s events.<\/p>\n

Jon had opinions, and so did I. Luckily for our marriage, there wasn’t much air between Jon’s thoughts on politics and mine.<\/p>\n

One topic — the inclusion of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance — rankled us both, but Jon was more outraged by those words than I. And so, one day in 2010, he asked if he could write a guest post on the subject. I said yes.<\/p>\n

A Patriotic Voice From the Past<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I’m reposting that 2010 post today because Jon is not here to write a guest post on the upcoming election. I am making do with a re-run of his “under God” post.<\/p>\n

The post was written fourteen years ago, but it has a lot to say in 2024. Notice, for example, how Jon ends his piece with optimism, affection and respect for his country.<\/p>\n

I’m glad Jon wrote down his thoughts back then. Some days I have trouble remembering how things used to be, how Jon and I — and most Americans, it seemed — felt about their country.<\/p>\n

In writing that post, Jon spoke as a reasonable person who assumed he’d be heard by reasonable people. He assumed he lived in a place of social trust, a trust that has since gone missing from our country.<\/p>\n

A Guest Post From Jon: Does ‘Under God’ Belong in the Pledge of Allegiance?<\/h3>\n
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By Jon Newhall, March 13, 2010<\/em><\/p>\n

We were sitting at breakfast on Friday morning when Barbara pointed out a story in that morning\u2019s San Francisco Chronicle.\u00a0 A three-judge panel of the Federal Appeals Court had ruled, 2-1, that including the phrase \u201cunder God\u201d in the Pledge of Allegiance does not violate the Constitution\u2019s so-called \u201cEstablishment Clause.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cEstablishment Clause\u201d \u2014 as you know \u2014 is the first of the ten Amendments in the Bill of Rights.\u00a0 It states: \u201cCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.\u201d<\/p>\n

Are We Indoctrinating Our Children?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

My God, I thought, this latest decision doesn\u2019t make any sense.\u00a0\u00a0 After all, many if not most of our public schools encourage children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance aloud each morning.\u00a0 And when that daily chant includes the words \u201cunder God,\u201d aren\u2019t we indoctrinating our children with a firm religious belief?\u00a0 Like it or not, there are millions of Americans who don\u2019t believe in God, or who have other very sincere concepts of religion that find this wording objectionable.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine the outcry from certain folks on the far, far right if the wording were to say: \u201cone nation under \u2018the Gods,\u2019” or \u201cone nation under \u2018Zeus,\u2019” or \u201cone nation under \u2018Allah\u2019”?<\/p>\n

\"thoughts<\/a>
Some thoughts before election day: This America flag with the peace symbol in the blue field was hanging in Jon’s apartment when I met him. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The\u00a0Chronicle story went on to report that Judge Carlos T. Bea justified the decision by explaining:\u00a0 \u201cThe Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded and for which we continue to strive: one Nation under God\u2013the Founding Fathers\u2019 belief that the people of this nation are endowed by their Creator.\u201d<\/p>\n

No God in the Constitution<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Judge Carlos T. Bea might be surprised to learn a fact about the Constitution.\u00a0 The word \u201cGod\u201d or \u201cdeity\u201d or any similar term does not appear \u2013 even once \u2013 in the entire Constitution.\u00a0 Why? \u00a0That was not by accident.\u00a0 It was because the Founding Fathers were strong believers in the separation of church and state.<\/p>\n

They knew from personal experience the dangers posed by allowing religion or the church to meddle in the affairs of the state.<\/p>\n

I need to make a slight confession here.\u00a0 One of the reasons I find the inclusion of \u201cunder God\u201d so tacky is that I\u2019m a child of the 1940s and 1950s.\u00a0 I clearly remember reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before<\/em>\u00a0the God phrase was added in 1954.\u00a0 To this day, I find the rhythm of today\u2019s Pledge a tad off key because of the imposition of that phrase.<\/p>\n

Last Thoughts Before Election Day<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I also remember that \u201cunder God\u201d was added during the so-called McCarthy era, an period of national paranoia.\u00a0 One of its primary purpose was to prove that God-fearing Americans were clearly superior to those godless communists on the other side of the world.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always felt that America is better than that, and that we don\u2019t need to chant about our nation and God in order to prove our system is the best the world has to offer. Because it really is.<\/p>\n

I have my own thoughts on the Pledge of Allegiance. See “The Fourth of July –With Liberty and Justice for All.”<\/a>\u00a0 More thoughts on religion in America at “A Chance to Get Acquainted With That Muslim Next Door.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"thoughts<\/a>
Some thoughts before Election Day. Jon was the one who hung our American flag on the front of the house for the Fourth of July. I was too short to reach the bracket. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"thoughts<\/a><\/p>\n

Thoughts before election day: My husband’s 2010 opinion piece on the Pledge of Allegiance assumed a social trust that’s since gone missing in America.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14],"tags":[533,34,2910,29,535,282,2911,2230,2419],"class_list":["post-42738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-widowed","tag-american-flag","tag-dont-miss","tag-election-day","tag-jon","tag-pledge-of-allegiance","tag-politics","tag-social-trust","tag-trump","tag-widowed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42738"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48669,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42738\/revisions\/48669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}