One Nation Under God
$85.00
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This artwork was inspired by President Dwight Eisenhower’s signing of a bill on June 14, 1954, to insert the phrase “under God” into the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, which children recited every morning in school. Previously, the pledge—originally written in 1892—had no reference to religion.
Because of all the tension and division this 2024 presidential election represents, it has inspired me to think about all the noble statements about our country and how we resemble adult Hitler, Mussolini, and other dictators. Propaganda is now influencing minor-league thinking people. The world stands on the brink of great-power conflict—yet neither candidate has mapped out for American voters how the U.S. can meet this challenge. Americans on November 5 will be electing a wartime president. This isn’t a prediction. It’s reality.
Neither major party candidate has yet spoken enough to the American people about the perils represented by the growing geopolitical and defense-industrial collaboration among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. This axis of aggressors may be unprecedented in the potential peril it represents.
April 27, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln instructs General Winfield Scott to suspend habeas corpus as necessary to keep vital transport and supply lines clear in Maryland. This action kicks off a legal dispute with the Supreme Court.
One month later, on May 25, 1861, John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland, is arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington during the Civil War and is held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials. His attorney immediately sought a writ of habeas corpus so that a federal court could examine the charges. However, because President Lincoln had suspended the right, the general in command of Fort McHenry refused to turn Merryman over to the authorities.
Federal judge Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court (and also the author of the infamous Dred Scott decision), issued a ruling that President Lincoln did not have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Lincoln didn’t respond, appeal, or order the release of Merryman. But during a July 4 speech, Lincoln was defiant, insisting that he needed to suspend the rules in order to put down the rebellion in the South.
Five years later, a new Supreme Court essentially backed Justice Taney’s ruling: In an unrelated case, the court held that only Congress could suspend habeas corpus and that civilians were not subject to military courts, even in times of war.
This was not the first or last time that the U.S. federal government willfully ignored its laws during times of strife. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps following the attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War II. Some forty years later, a U.S. congressional commission determined that those held in the camps had been victims of discrimination. Each camp survivor was awarded $20,000 in compensation from the U.S. government.
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