Yesterday I wrote about a sheriff in Virginia who had spent nearly $1500 of his personal money to outfit his unit’s police cars with “In God We Trust” decals. Sheriff J. D. “Danny” Diggs said this, among other things:
“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.” Diggs said. “It honors God. God has been good to me and this agency.”
“Having ‘In God We Trust’ on our vehicles does not injure or threaten anyone. It is not an attempt to urge anyone to support or convert to any one religion. God has blessed me and the Sheriff’s Office. This is one way of honoring God by acknowledging Him for His blessings upon us and it shows our patriotism by displaying our national motto.”
. . . Diggs also stated Monday, “The legislatures and courts approve, and God is most certainly approving of this.”
But this gesture is clearly a violation of the First Amendment’s mandate for a separation between church and state.
WAVY.com also had a poll about whether readers supported the sheriff; the question was this:
“Do you support the Sheriff’s Office’s decision to place ‘In God We Truist’ on its patrol cars?” When I made the post at about 8 pm last night (UK time), these were the results:
I added that I’d be disappointed if I woke up and found the “yes” votes still leading. Well, it’s now 11 a.m. in England, and here’s the latest tally:
The tide has turned! I wonder why? Well, there’s still an opportunity to vote your conscience. Simply click on the link above, or on either screenshot, and scroll down to the poll. (You can vote only once).
I have about 38,300 subscribers, and surely all of them would want to vote one way or the other, if for no other reason than it’s a small gesture and because I don’t ask anyone for money or expose them to ads! All I ask is for you to vote your conscience. And I’m hoping that we’ll give a ringing endorsement to secularism. The faithful continue to vote, and we should too.
YES WE CAN!
YES WE CAN! …
or
NOTHING AS!
The damn thing seems to know if you have already voted. I think it must be fixed as most elections will be. You probably have to be a registered g*d voter.
Look for a cookie.
Or, for that matter, try voting through several different browsers. If you’re on Windows, you could even put a portable browser on several memory sticks and try voting multiple times from instances of your browser running from multiple sticks.
That could be quite amusing, in a fly-wing-removal sense.
The “citations without incantations” citizenship of this country has finally had enough.
I wonder if the sheriff would feel differently if his agency’s cars were emblazoned with “In Allah We Trust..”
Carl Kruse
latest:
No : 61.43% ( 4199 votes )
Yes : 35.69% ( 2330 votes )
… I suppose a Sophisticated Theologian would argue that because the “Yes” votes only tally about 2000 votes compared to over 4000 for “No”, it is clearly unfair and biased poll towards voters who vote “No”.
Odd that in the 10 or 15 minutes since I looked and voted and your figures – the no vote is exactly the same but the yes vote increased by 44 votes. I think this thing is rigged.
It gets odder. By the time I got to it, at 9:40am CST, there were nearly a hundred more ‘NO’ votes.
64.8% (4293) NO
35.2% (2332) YES
Is this the WEIT Commentariat waking up and checking in?
Or there’s a counter campaign going on at (for example) AiG.
… 4300 and counting, for the NOs.
I have to profess that I am not personally affronted by the logo. I go to court everyday and see In God We Trust in every courtroom. It is really a meaningless platitude as there are so many gods and definitions of god. Plus, he did pay for it.
I voted NO, however, because I didn’t want to offend Professor Ceiling Cat, my favorite deity, and while I am not offended by the logo, I do not SUPPORT it.
Pharyngula does a lot of this kind of pole crashing. It not only makes me feel better to see the correct answer, it tells all involved that internet poling is not to be trusted.
They call it “pharyngulating” a poll. Would this be “ceiling catatating” a poll?
I like jerrymander (though my iPad thinks that ought to be Jerry anger).
The noes are now up to over 65% – have just cast my own vote.
Surely non-US citizens cannot…?
I haven’t tried one way or another. While I agree wholeheartedly with PCC(E) and his loyal herd (*) jumping the vote, I do think that it’s an American problem that should be settled by Americans. Similarly, I saw from the Twitter feed that there is a post I will work my way to shortly about the Beeb’s “Thought for the Day” slot on the morning radio news. While the support of American atheists in de-religioning this would be appreciated, at the end of the day it’s a fight that we Beeb-tax payers should fight.
Politically, getting caught rigging a vote like this by using foreign mercenaries is far worse than getting caught rigging a vote using the efforts of natives who at least have the right to a vote.
Mercenaries? What are you offering?
Blood, toil, tears ans sweat.
Sorry, Winnie, my price is a bit higher than that.
It would be more reassuring if he trusts in the evidence alone and disregards imaginary stuff. At what point does ‘god’ have an input into the legal proceedings which are in place to deal with facts in the here and now? It’s nonsensical. Many will considerate it harmless. But it’s a shameful abuse of the power invested in him to treat all citizens equally. There must be some Muslims, Jews, etc in his jurisdiction, Although they ultimately worship the same ‘god’ they know he’s promoting the Christian path to that ‘god’. And, by implication, demonising them. Is he even sure all of his police officers want it too? It’s an affront to fair, impartial policing.
Voted yesterday, went back to original posting and voted again. Maybe it’s only once a day. Or maybe refreshing screen is enough.
Good work!
I just dropped a line in the comment section over there referencing Ben Goren’s now somewhat well-known question about Jesus calling 9-1-1. Maybe the sheriff should adorn his vehicle in banners with that particular question…now that I’d approve of! 😉
I dislike “In God We Trust” on money because it implies God is on America’s side in conflicts with other nations.
The problems with this are rightly discussed in Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address discussing the civil war “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.”
(See also Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side”)
Granted early invocations of the phrase are on the side I support. The phrase first appears in the 1st stanza of The Star Spangled Banner about the war of 1812. When it first appeared on money in 1861, one motive was to assert that God was on the side of the Union in the civil war. It became America’s official motto in the 1950s during the Cold War.
OK, ladies and gentlemen. I too supported America in the war of 1812, the Union in the civil war, and America in the Cold War years.
On these matters, my sentiments seem to be in agreement then with your deity, if only because your deity’s sentiments are remarkably in accord with mine.
But George Bush claimed the guidance of a heavenly father in his reckless Iraq war, concerning which dissent was characterized by right wingers as treasonous.
Abraham Lincoln again “In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is somewhat different from the purpose of either party…”
Now think about the troubling implications of claiming God is on my side for the police force.
Fourth (4th) stanza of StrSpngBann , not 1st
In one sense, ‘stacking’ a poll like that is pretty meaningless. Suppose we do ‘win’, all it will prove is that we’re good at pharyngulating polls. It won’t prove anything about what the general populace thinks.
On the other hand, the Godbots are very possibly trying to stack it too. And if they won, very likely Sheriff Diggs would claim it as proof of the rightness of his actions. So it does deny them an opportunity for propaganda, and for that reason I guess there is a valid point in ‘stacking’ it.
However, like the gravelinspector and for similar reasons, I won’t vote myself.
cr
I would have to wonder if a legal challenge to the decals would fail because afterall, it’s the motto of the US? I don’t like either (the decal or the official motto), but there’s the sign I once saw: In God We Trust… all others pay cash.