A Matter of "Trust"

Congress last week got down to the nuts and bolts of governing and overwhelmingly passed a resolution . . . to re-affirm "In God We Trust" as our national motto.  Representative Randy Forbes (R-VA) declared that the resolution was necessary to remind President Obama that "In God We Trust," not "E Pluribus Unum," was the nation's official motto (and has been since 1956) after Obama referred to "E Pluribus Unum" as our national motto a recent speech.  Forbes and other members of Congress also got angry when "E Pluribus Unum" was inscribed in the U.S. Capitol's new visitors' center, and they demanded that it be corrected.  Well, that should provide a couple of temporary jobs for masons.

I am appalled and offended by this story for two reasons.  First of all, there was no reason to suspect that the official motto was ever in danger of being undermined by anyone, let alone the President.  Second of all, our official national motto is a violation of the separation of church and state and a subtle dismissal of agnosticism, meant at discouraging critical thinking.  But then, discouraging critical thinking is what we Americans are best at.

Both mottos have a long history, and both appear on our coinage.  As for "In God We Trust," the earliest use of the phrase was in the third verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner" (only the first verse is sung at sporting events), which Francis Scott Key wrote in 1814.  U.S. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase urged the use of "In God We Trust" on American coinage in 1862 as a reaction to the outbreak of the Civil War. Chase insisted that "[no] nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins."  It first appeared on our coinage in 1864.

"In God We Trust" became the national motto in 1956 as a talisman against Soviet Communism at a period when the United States was engaged during a period of smarmy self-righteousness - a period of our history that, despite the end of the Cold War, continues to this day.  The move - which added the phase to our paper currency - offended every thinking American with a sophisticated world view, and such Americans were, in the 1950s, in severely short supply.  But Paul Fussell - a World War II veteran who fought and almost died for his country in France - was particularly livid.  Having found American culture to have "seemed more than ever bellicose, ignorant, selfish and greedy, shot through with quasi-religious fraud and hypocrisy," he declared that the America of the mid-1950s "was the sort of place any decent person would want to leave."   

The United States in 2011? Draw your own conclusion.  The national government has been hijacked by reactionaries offended by the very idea of a black President and driven to preserve the overwhelmingly Caucasian and Judeo-Christian America of the past, with all of the restrictions on civil liberties that implies - without much regard to repairing the obscene economic inequities that have developed over the past 35 years.  And regarding the former point, we shouldn't expect to see "E Pluribus Unum" - Latin for "from many, one" - to ever become the official motto.  (In fact, it never has been.)  Originally referring to the creation of one nation by the original thirteen states, it could just as easily refer to the increasing racial, ethnic and, yes, religious diversity of the nation today, and that offends Republicans turned off by the idea of a polyglot society.  Plus, we can't have a phrase like "E Pluribus Unum" as our national motto; that would require politicians to learn enough Latin to understand it.     

As I have indicated in the past, it's not only obscene to have a national motto that violates the separation of church and state, but it's even more obscene to include it on money, a sacrilege pointed out by noted Commie pinko subversive Theodore Roosevelt.  But then maybe it's appropriate to do so, in light of an observation an executive for the British Broadcasting Corporation made while working with American commercial broadcasters in a bi-national broadcasting collaboration in the thirties . . . that Americans are somehow able to worship God and Mammon at the same time.

We Americans do trust in God, but everyone else has to put up collateral.