I love how people on the right nowadays insert Judeo before Christian to suggest a veneer of tolerance. Then they invent take the ide of "secular Humanism" and leave off the "secular," (because of course many people whom they would like to agree with them think the government should be secular) and come up with a conflict between "the Judeo-Christian and the Humanist world views," which is, as many have pointed out here, a load of crap.

The question is not which values we live our lives by, but what the government is allowed to require people to do, say, see and read. To put it in a way the right might understand, a law that forces certain businesses to be closed on Sunday (like liquor stores in Philadelphia) is a direct economic penalty on Jewish owners. If a Christian owner wishes to observe his religion, he can open for six days a week, while a Jew can only open for five, because the law favors specific Christian practice, not "Judeo-Christian values."

The "pledge of allegiance" is another interesting case. Originally, of course, the words "under God" were not in it. They were added in a fit of governmental religious zeal in the 1950s. So the uproar over the pledge nowadays is not about some cherished old tradition, but about reversing the Christian activism of the previous generation. In general, I think it is amusing in the first place that we can force children to recite a pledge claiming that we value "liberty and justice for all." How about the liberty not to pledge "allegiance" to a flag (whatever the hell that means), which in a strict interpretation of Judaism is idolatry? Why is the Ghost from Valley Forge so silent about infringements of this kind of liberty?

That poem is execrable in many ways of course. One is that it uses such statements as:

"Your daughters visit doctors so children won't be born" as an example of the violation of a "God-given right."

Which right is that? The right to control and imprison your daughter and force her to do your will?

No thanks, I'll pass.