Christopher Orlet

Until he was handed his hat and told to peddle his socialist mumbo jumbo elsewhere, Francis Bellamy was a Baptist minister in Boston, and chair of the National Education Association’s Committee of State Superintendents of Education. During his tenure with the NEA, Bellamy was asked to prepare a public school program celebrating the quadricentennial of Columbus Day. The preacher set to work and structured a patriotic program around a salute and oath to Old Glory.

Thus, the Pledge was born.

Originally, Bellamy’s Pledge ran: “I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” According to Baer, author of “The Pledge of Allegiance, A Centennial History, 1892-1992,” the idea of “equality for all” had to be scrapped, presumably because the state superintendents of education were opposed to equality for women and minorities.

Since it was penned in August 1892, Bellamy’s oath has been tampered with twice. In 1924, despite the author’s protests, the National Flag Conference changed the phrase “my flag,” to “the flag of the United States of America,” seemingly so that godless communists could not hijack the Pledge and make it their own. And again in 1956, during the height of the Cold War, the Knights of Columbus, a usually harmless Catholic organization of grown men with swords, pressured Congress to include the phrase “under God.” Bellamy was no longer around to protest — not that it would have done any good — but his granddaughter commented that the former preacher would not have been pleased.

The reaction to the court’s June 26 opinion was loud and predictable. Immediately, politicos of every stripe attacked the court. The majority leader of the Senate, Tom Daschle, D-S.D., defended his opposition to the judiciary’s decision with these memorable words: “This decision is just nuts.” The persecution of the court continued apace when Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., rewarded Judge Goodwin’s courage by calling him names, in particular an “atheist lawyer.”

“I hope his name never comes before this body for any promotion, because he will be remembered,” threatened the Christian Byrd. This may be interpreted as a good thing, as the judge will now be more likely to vote his conscience rather than cater to the schizophrenic whims of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

One by one, congressmen lined up to outdo each other in Christian patriotic boosterism. “Let us not wait for the Supreme Court to act on this,” cried Sen. John Warner, R-Va. “Why don’t we go ahead and formulate this amendment, put it together, have it in place, presumably with all 100 United States senators?”

From the Senate gallery, it appeared the Inquisition had returned in full force with President Bush playing the role of Cardinal Richelieu. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking at a summit Bush was attending in that heathen country to the north, announced: “This decision will not sit well with the American people. Certainly it does not sit well with the president of the United States.”

Fleischer noted how the Supreme Court and U.S. Congress open each session with references to God, and how the Declaration of Independence refers to God or the Creator (or Divine Providence) four times. The Declaration of Independence also refers to “merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” But it’s best not to talk of such things.

In the illustrious halls of Congress, not one word of support was offered for the court’s decision. Instead, plans were hatched to quickly repair the damage to the Republic by monkeying with the Constitution, as though Mr. Monroe’s document were simply a rough draft. If there were one or two enlightened legislators who secretly applauded the decision, they were too cowardly to speak out, knowing it would mean an end to their careers as public servants and force the necessity of finding honest work.

Nor has it been commented upon that the Republic’s keen sense of political correctness apparently extends to everyone except the godless. Even those of the Muslim faith are treated with more compassion than the skeptic. Fortunately for them, the Republic’s sanction and promotion of religion is largely harmless. Etching “In God We Trust” on our currency is not quite the same as the Taliban butchering infidels in Afghanistan. Luckily, most atheists are highly civilized people and are able to look on the antics of their Christian brethren with a laughing eye. In fact, watching the boobs in Congress stumble over one another to be first to the podium to decry the court’s decision is an amusing spectacle in itself. Obviously these politicians are simply milking this welcome opportunity to show off for their hometown church groups, a tactic that they — I almost said pray — that they hope will, at the end of the day, translate into a nice Election Night windfall. How many of the drunken, lascivious boors in Congress do you suppose really bend their knee at night, or mutter a prayer of thanks before dinner? I doubt you would find more than a handful.

Passage of a constitutional amendment, no doubt, is a sure thing. Unlike the recent attempt by aged veterans to save Old Glory from desecration, this amendment will have the backing of a unanimous Legislature. The American people will show up in hordes to overturn the infidel court. And once approved and safely on the books, the amendment will have the distinction of being the dumbest addition to the Constitution since the geniuses in Congress outlawed booze.

But if we insist on monkeying with Bellamy’s pledge — and we do — shouldn’t it be to include the word “equality”? I think the old boy would have approved of a version of his Pledge that ran: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with equality, liberty and justice for all.”

OK, maybe it doesn’t “flow” as well as the version just deemed unconstitutional. But it sure sounds better.

Rabbi Eugene Korn, the ADL representative who was present at the private screening at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, accused the filmmakers of portraying Jewish authorities and the Jewish mob as “forcing the decision to torture and execute Jesus; of weaving a narrative that oversimplifies history; and of committing numerous factual and historical errors, including relying on the visionary writings of a 17th century anti-Semitic nun.”

The fact that an ADL representative was allowed to see the film at all is somewhat surprising, and comes only after months of pressure by pro-Jewish groups and intense media scrutiny. Until this week, the film had been screened only by a handpicked traditional Catholic audience and a few Jewish Gibson supporters, many of whom report that the Jews do indeed come off looking rather guilty of deicide. (The film itself won’t be released for another seven months, but trailers for “The Passion” are already popping up on various Web sites.)

But it is not only the sometimes touchy ADL that is troubled. The Guardian newspaper this week quoted a panel of three Jewish and six Catholic scholars who translated and studied a draft script, and concluded that the film is indeed anti-Semitic and theologically inaccurate, portraying “The Jews” as bloodthirsty and vengeful. “All the way through, the Jews are portrayed as bloodthirsty,” said Sister Mary C. Boys, one of the panelists and a professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. As for stirring up anti-Semitic passions, Sister Mary told the New Republic that she has already begun receiving “vicious letters filled with personal attacks and anti-Semitic drivel.” Confronted with these accusations, Gibson, a fundamentalist Catholic who has bankrolled an obscure Los Angeles sect that refuses to accept the Second Vatican reforms, including the Vatican’s apology for Jewish persecution, readily admits the film may ruffle a few Jewish feathers, though it is not meant to. “It’s meant just to tell the truth.” Besides, he says, the Holy Spirit was dictating what really went into the film.

Of course, anything an Academy-Award winning actor and director produces is going to have an air of legitimacy about it, whatever the facts may be. But is “The Passion” an innocent Hollywood entertainment or a medieval passion play of the sort that in the Middle Ages stirred up the passions of the Christian mob and led to the butchering of the local Jewry?

Gibson has bragged about the historical veracity of his script, going so far as to film the movie in the Aramaic and Latin languages without subtitles. Scholars, however, have been quick to point out the film’s obvious historical inaccuracies, which, it turns out, are legion. Indeed, any theological or biblical scholar could have told Gibson that few Roman soldiers were in Jerusalem, and rather were local draftees who would have spoken one of the local dialects, Mishnaic Hebrew or, based on funerary evidence, Greek. Similarly Pilate and the chief priest Caiaphas would have communicated in Greek, not Latin.

But Gibson’s biggest sin, critics charge, is his portrait of Jewish culpability in Jesus’ execution.

It should be noted that to Jews of the first century, Jesus of Nazareth was simply another false messiah, one of hundreds — a Galilean village preacher with a ragtag following of Jewish fishermen who, in various statements, claimed to be the Jewish messiah, God’s son and the Jewish king all wrapped into one. The traditional Jewish messiah, however, would not be a deity, but a bellicose homo sapiens, with a hankering to lead an uprising against the Romans, perhaps someone with the stature and nobility of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. To claim you were the messiah but that you were unconcerned with this world was absurd. Likewise, to preach that you were God’s son was the supreme blasphemy, as well as the ultimate absurdity. God had no son, and whoever uttered such absurdities sealed his own doom.

So who was to blame for the execution of Jesus of Nazareth? The Jews? The Romans? Jesus himself? Christians who believe Jesus died for their individual sins are logically themselves responsible for his death, and have no cause to scapegoat “The Jews.” But if we believe the Nazarene was simply a Jewish reformer executed by his own tribesmen for the crime of blasphemy, then he suffered the same fate as thousands of reformers from the Jewish Matthias to the Christian Savonarola. Or, we may believe that Jesus was crucified because of some perceived threat to Roman authority. Rome was, after all, interested in but one thing: order. If the Romans executed Jesus it was because he was seen as a considerable threat to the stability of the empire. The gospels hint only vaguely at this, in a scene showing Jesus causing some seemingly minor disturbance at the Jerusalem temple. No doubt there was more to the story. Writing in the New Republic this week, Paula Fredrikson, Aurelio professor of Scripture at Boston University and a member of a panel of scholars who studied Gibson’s script, writes:

“The fact that Jesus was publicly executed by the method of crucifixion can only mean that Rome wanted him dead: Rome alone had the sovereign authority to crucify. Moreover, the point of a public execution … was to communicate a message. Crucifixion itself implies that Pilate was concerned about sedition … Jesus’ death on the cross points to a primarily Roman agenda.”

Sedition, then, seems the likely cause of Jesus’ execution, and not some minor theological squabble among Jews.

Of the five discrepant biblical accounts of Jesus’ trial, composed decades after his execution by men absent from his trial, none are very helpful, nor are the disciples very trustworthy sources. We know that early Christians put great emphasis on staying on the Romans’ good side lest they lose potential converts or, worse, be massacred or driven out of Rome and Jerusalem like their Jewish brethren. It is not surprising then that early Christians would blame “The Jews” (who were even then the universal scapegoats) for Jesus’ death, and that Matthew would make sure that 2,000 years hence “The Jews” would still be on the hook, by attributing to the Jewish multitude the fantastic quote: “His blood be on us and on our children.” A peculiar thing for a Jewish mob to shout, it must be said. The Gospel writers are exceedingly clumsy in dealing with the trial of Jesus. Again and again the Roman prefect Pilate comes off not as the iron-fisted autocrat we know from history but as a lame, ineffectual pamby who is prevented from setting Jesus free by the bloodthirsty Jewish mob. The scene stretches credulity. Likewise, many scholars dispute the accuracy of the Jews’ claim that Roman law forbids them to execute Jesus. In fact, the Jews of Jerusalem executed each other all the time. They stoned Jesus’ brother James, and only a year or two after Jesus’ death they stoned Stephen, the traditional first Christian martyr. A well-known sign (in Greek) in the Jerusalem temple promised death to any non-Jew who invaded the inner sanctum.

The most damning piece of evidence for Jewish culpability, however, comes down from the Roman-Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, who wrote in the early 90s C.E.: “About the same time there lived Jesus, a wise man for he was a performer of marvelous feats and a teacher of such men who received the truth with pleasure. He attracted many Jews and many Greeks. He was called the Christ. Pilate sentenced him to die on the cross, having been urged to do so by the noblest of our citizens.”

“The noblest of our citizens” urging Jesus’ execution would seem to vindicate the gospel writers. And yet historians readily admit that early Christian writers monkeyed with Josephus’ text, adding references to Jesus’ resurrection, and, likely, the sentence about the “noblest of our citizens.”

The fact is that the truths surrounding Jesus’ execution will never be known. And what has been handed down to posterity is legend, vision, conjecture, superstition and doubtlessly historically inaccurate. But does the Gibson film discuss the differing accounts, the historical inaccuracies, and the political nuances involved in the trial and execution of Jesus of Nazareth? Don’t count on it. The audience would soon be snoozing in their seats. Instead “The Passion” will most likely offer up the familiar puerile, stereotypical view of the evil Jew calling for Jesus’ blood and the clueless Pilate begging him to reconsider. It is a view guaranteed to stir anew the passions of the rabid Christian, and one that will send the Jews scurrying back to the dark corners of history.

This will be little comfort to other journalists who will now be suspected of traveling in the company of people who carry weapons, if not carrying weapons themselves.

CNN was already under withering criticism in the news profession after its chief news executive, Eason Jordan, revealed in a New York Times Op-Ed piece last Friday that the network had suppressed reports of torture and other atrocities in Iraq in hopes of keeping its sources alive — and, critics say, in hopes of keeping its Baghdad bureau open. On Monday, the organization Reporters Sans Frontières lambasted CNN’s decision to provide armed security for its teams. RSF Secretary General Robert Menard was quoted as saying: “There is a real risk that combatants will henceforth assume that all press vehicles are armed … Employing private security firms that do not hesitate to use their firearms just increases the confusion between reporters and combatants.”

Under the Geneva Conventions journalists are regarded as unarmed civilians, and are generally treated as such. Even so, the profession of war correspondent ranks alongside bomb-squad technician and Alaskan crab fisherman as one of the most hazardous careers. So far in the Iraq war, 12 journalists have died and two are reported missing. But rather than making journalists’ jobs safer, CNN’s move will likely have the opposite long-term effect.

This is certainly the belief of Alain Modoux, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Information Department. “While it is essential that journalists be allowed to report on whether international law is being followed during armed conflicts, journalists are entitled to no greater protection than any civilian while in pursuit of that information,” he said. This attitude may strike some as cavalier at a time when most journalists who die in war zones are murdered.

The question then is whether changing circumstances require changing policies. In previous wars, correspondents were most often embedded with troops, wearing the camouflage uniform of their host army. (This began to change during the Vietnam War as journalists sought to distance themselves from the policies of the U.S. government.) Under the Geneva Conventions, captured journalists then as now are legally part of that military entourage. If captured by opposing forces, they can expect to be treated as prisoners of war. Indeed, the Geneva Conventions equate war correspondents with “civilian members of military aircraft crews” and other integral, albeit nonuniformed, participants.

But as the murder of Daniel Pearl showed, times have indeed changed. Journalists seldom cover wars in the traditional sense, but more often cover guerrilla conflicts, where the rules of the Geneva Conventions are unknown or disregarded. Meanwhile Western journalists are seen by many nontraditional fighters as accessible and legitimate targets.

Rather than treading lightly through this new and relatively unknown territory, journalists are taking greater risks than ever, whether their motive is dedication to the story or one-upping the competition. How useful this risk-taking journalism is remains open to debate, as — in the case of Iraq — access to information and people has been restricted not just by the government minders who were in almost constant attendance, but also by the fact that before the fall of Saddam, people were afraid to speak freely. Conversely, the handful of reporters who remained in Baghdad were able to groom sources and provide background, color and context unavailable to embedded reporters. Plus, thanks to their coverage, those of us back home were able to get a genuine sense of how out of touch with reality Saddam’s regime had become in its final days.

Meanwhile, there is a growing fear among organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists that the policy of arming journalists is gaining momentum worldwide. South American journalists covering the drug-trafficking beat have for a decade carried concealed weapons, and two years ago, following the murder of several prominent Ukrainian journalists, the Ukrainian government passed a decree allowing its journalists to carry weapons that fire rubber bullets. The head of Ukraine’s Union of Journalists, Ihor Lubchenko, fired back saying that if a reporter carried a gun, he was even more likely to be shot himself. Even if that gun fired harmless rubber bullets.

“Censorship and secrecy are the main problems we face,” Lubchenko said. Not, apparently, bullets.

For the time being, CNN heads remain defiant, claiming that they have not set a precedent in Iraq, and that journalists have used bodyguards in both Afghanistan and Somalia. And then there is the strange case of Peter Arnett, who bragged of being armed throughout the Vietnam War. If that is indeed the case, it might be too late to put the proverbial cat back in the bag, and journalists may as well begin packing heat — and a lot of it — because that’s what will be expected of them.

Whatever his beliefs, Kamen should have a big, fat market for his new invention. Americans, in general, are loath to walk, which may help to explain why 27 percent of us are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control. A nationwide Personal Transportation Survey reports that the number of trips taken on foot dropped by 42 percent in the last 20 years. The main reason for this is our suburban-commuter lifestyle, where virtually nothing is within walking distance. As for cities, a stroll around most downtowns is likely to leave you cold, as ground-floor shops have been replaced by the cool steel and glass of skyscrapers. Modern American cities, where Kamen envisions his Segways having their greatest impact, are designed for the automobile, not the pedestrian, so Kamen predicts his invention will ultimately lead to a rethinking and redesign of cities where cars become subordinated to scooters. Grandiose, maybe, but then they laughed at Edison.

Kamen positively gushes at the idea of rendering walking obsolete. “When you stand on this machine it kind of walks for you,” he told “The Today Show.” He is not alone in his enthusiasm. The networks, news magazines and major newspapers have all joined in the hype, as have some big names of the high-tech world. Bigger than the PC, said Apple’s Steve Jobs. Bigger than the Net, said Kleiner-Perkins’ John Doerr. Though not, presumably, bigger than our sedentary butts will be.

When Kamen says, “[A walk that] used to take you half an hour will take you 7, 8, 9 minutes,” one is reminded of the scene in Saint-Exupery’s “Little Prince” where the prince meets a merchant who has invented pills that quench thirst. When the prince asks why such things are needed, the merchant explains that the pills will save a person time, to which the prince replies that if he had the extra time he would use it to take a leisurely walk to a spring of fresh water.

Be that as it may, able-bodied Americans will soon have the opportunity to purchase their very own two-wheel human transport system for the low, low price of $3,000. The federal government is already on board for several hundred at $4,000 a wheel. Soon obscenely fat postal workers and park rangers across the nation will be scooting around perspiration-free.

Almost 150 years ago, in his essay “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least — and it is commonly more than that — sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements … When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them — as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon — I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.” Which calls to mind another fictional episode, this from “The Simpsons,” where Homer considers swallowing a suicide pill rather than suffer a long walk through Mr. Burns’ mansion.

It is difficult to know what impact Kamen imagines the Segway will have on our car culture. One minute he tells Time the scooter is not a replacement for the automobile, the next he says it “will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy.”

Truly what is needed is not another gizmo that provides otherwise healthy men and women with another reason to remain sedentary, but more sidewalks and walking trails, safer intersections, the reappearance of street-side shops and sidewalk cafes that once made urban walking enjoyable, and flatfoot cops on the beat that made that sauntering safe. What is needed are bicycle lanes and routes like the ones you still find in European cities. It is unfortunate that a man as ingenious as Dean Kamen has dedicated the last decade to working to make walking obsolete, when he might have put his considerable intellectual gifts toward creating something to improve, not diminish, the quality of life.