In emendation we trust

I swear (or affirm) I had no intention of soon returning to a religious theme, but emergent occasion — all the kafuffle about the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance — is forcing my hand. All the columnists who count are writing about it, and I must attempt to stay in the game. William Safire, for instance, has the feeble suggestion that we keep the phrase, but that atheists simply perform a silent trisyllabic caesura when it comes by. This very page last Wednesday featured a much better essay by Tom Hale '04, to which I shall soon return.

I want to point out, though, that the whole problem comes about on account of the divine right of emendation — emendation being the editorial amelioration, real or supposed, of a text. If you are old enough, there simply is no problem, since the last time I can remember reciting the pledge "under God" was not there. God entered the pledge, by emendation, about the same time that He exited halftime entertainments at football games, somewhat after WWII. By then I was through pledging.

The phrase is OK with me. It all seems a matter of relative probabilities. If you can believe that a communion wafer is bread, believing that it's the body of Christ is a cinch. If you confidently proclaim "liberty and justice for all," a little divine supervision is a piece of cake. But as I learn with shock and sorrow from my weekly email, not everybody thinks the way I do, so I must consider alternatives. What has been sickened by emendation may perhaps be healed by emendation.

In his aforementioned essay Mr. Hale approves an emendation proposed by our new provost, Christopher Eisgruber '83. "Eisgruber," Hale tells us, "is a poet and a lawyer." The lawyer shows in the Solomonic wisdom of Eisgruber's emendation, the poet in its supposed euphony. Slaves of superstition will continue to say "under God" while, simultaneously and with virtuous cacophony, freethinkers are saying "of equals."

The principle of metrical substitution works in "Old Nassau," after all, with old geezers still singing "Her sons shall give" instead of gendocratic "Our hearts will give." But still. I really must point out that "ún-der-Gód" scans long-short-long whereas "of–é-quals" scans short-long-short.

In brief, a more metrically incompetent botch of a trisyllabic foot would be impossible to achieve, and one prays (or hopes) that the new provost will have more fruitful communion with the general counsel than he has had with the Muse. We need a dum-dee-dum. I suggest, maintaining the leitmotiv of the previous paragraph, "Wonder Bread". Try it. Sounds great. If it's got the swing it don't need to mean a thing.

Few of us, however, actually regard the Pledge as one of the nation's "foundational" documents. The same cannot be said of the Declaration of Independence, from which it will prove considerably more difficult to emend the pesky Deity. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

According to authoritative glosses I have read, Jefferson's first thought for this triad had been "Life, Liberty and the Possession of Property," but after mulling it over he self-emended the final phrase to the more ecumenical "the pursuit of Happiness" with the prophetic intuition that there might be, somewhere, some day, Americans for whom the pursuit of happiness was not merely a textual variant for the possession of property.

Metrical substitution may still save us from having to give God credit for human rights if we can find the appropriate melodic emendation for "théir–Cre-á-tor". Here I suggest two alternatives. The first, for scientific atheists, is "Mó-ther –Ná-ture." Hardcore secular humanists could substitute "Pét-er-Síng-er."

The problem of the motto "In God We Trust" on our legal tender is thornier. Here half measures simply will not serve. What is needed is the boldest sort of emendation, emendation worthy of Richard Bentley or the recent scholar who greatly improved Yeats's "Among School Children" by correcting "solider Aristotle" to "soldier Aristotle." Accommodate the atheists, by all means; but don't entirely neglect the dyslexics. I suggest IN DOG WE STRUT. As a national motto it makes just as much sense as its accompanying emblem in the Great Seal — a triangulated eyeball atop a stone pyramid. John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 professor of English. His column appears on Mondays.