A Currency Debate

Quilly just told me about a hot-topic poll going on as these words are typed. The question:

Should the motto “In God We Trust” be removed from U.S. currency?

As of right now, more than a million votes have been cast, and the race is neck-and-neck. [Update, 22 August: The tally is now nearly 7 million, and the trusters are running away with it.]

For those of you who tuned in late, and possibly are wondering why in hell, with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan etc. etc. etc., the collapse of the U. S. housing market, the energy and grain and credit crises, and Michael Phelps’s eight gold medals, anyone (never mind a million of us, and counting) cares about what’s on the money except the number and the units, and how many of those numbers and units it will take to buy a stick of chewing gum – we’ve already given up on gasoline – tomorrow:

Turns out, according to the U. S. Treasury Department’s history of the matter, that “In God We Trust” first showed up on American money in 1864, during the Confederate Revolutionary War Civil War. When U. S. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, a devout and, ehm, somewhat sanctimonious Christian, wanted to make extra-special sure that Jesus was on the side of the Union. The phrase has been on the money, off and on, ever since.

The U. S. Constitution be damned.

We the People made matters worse by declaring, in 1956, that “In God We Trust” be the official motto of these Untied States, and in that capacity must appear on Our money. Thus do We illustrate the cardinal principle of all Law, code and common: When We write it, We mean what We say. Except when We don’t.

Now as it happens, the United States of America had a perfectly good motto, one that exemplifies both the history and the ideals of Our nation and dates back to Our nation’s inception: E pluribus unum (One formed out of Many). Only one trouble with this motto (aside from the fact that it wasn’t written in God’s first language, English, so nobody now knows what it means): no one bothered to make it official. Which gave an opening to another devout Christian, Ike Eisenhower, who was seeking for a catchy way to distinguish the Godly Good Americans from the Ungodly Bad Russians, to whom Die Religion ist … das Opium des Volkes. (This, in 1956, was a decade before American Baby Boomers dispensed with the cheap substitute Religion in favor of the real McCoy. But there was no way Eisenhower could have known this, and he passed away before he could observe it).

So now we have this argument. Should “In God We Trust” stay on the money, because it’s historical and patriotic? Or should it go, because it’s an unconstitutional “establishment of religion”?

This is a job for Amoeba’s Rule, which states: Whenever people can’t find an answer to a question, it’s usually because they’re asking the wrong question. Or, in this case, maybe, not considering all the available answers. I venture to suggest that the trouble with “In God We Trust” is not that it’s wrong, but that it’s incomplete. If we merely completed the thought, like it was meant to be, and as it appeared (still appears?) over the cash registers of thousands of little shops throughout this Great Land, all difficulty would vanish.

In God We Trust. All Others Pay Cash.

Hey. Isn’t that why we coin money? And besides. What could be more quintessentially American? Especially in the post-Mastercard era.

  – O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2008 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.