Faux Pas: National Motto is “In God We Trust” Not E Pluribus Unum
In her acceptance speech tonight, Hillary Clinton stated:
Our country's motto is e pluribus unum: out of many, we are one.
Will we stay true to that motto?
Sound familiar? In 2010, President Obama similarly said, “In the United States, our motto is E pluribus unum — out of many, one.”
One problem. E pluribus unum isn’t our National Motto. In 1956, “In God We Trust” was made the official National Motto of the United States of America . . . by law. It has long been a part of American lore. Our National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner, (also made official by an act of Congress) long included the phrase: “And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’”
Since then angry atheists have long tried to strip our National Motto and remove its meaning.
True to form, the angry atheists at the Freedom From Religion Foundation immediately seized on tonight’s comments:
Hillary Clinton trumpets the motto "E Pluribus Unum" (from many, come one), not the upstart 'In God We Trust.'Our 'faith is in each other.'
— FFRF (@FFRF) July 29, 2016
In God We Trust, a johnny come lately motto, was added as an additional motto, but it didn'supplant E Pluribus Unum. https://t.co/Em5dbGOAQA
— FFRF (@FFRF) July 29, 2016
Atheists are not "angry." We are aware of our nation's secular roots being tampered with by zealots. https://t.co/V0K0oYJWRR
— FFRF (@FFRF) July 29, 2016
Of course they are just flat wrong. Let me quote 36 U.S.C. § 302 in its entirety: “‘In God we trust’ is the national motto.” E pluribus unum, while included on the Great Seal of the United States, has never been the National Motto.
Facts are stubborn things.
Unfortunately, these attacks and woeful naiveté are not just mere rhetoric. The National Motto is once again under legal attack by those who want to censor every vestige of our religious heritage of our nation from our society.
As we’ve reported before:
Now [Michael] Newdow is renewing the same trite attempt to eviscerate our National Motto – and with it our religious heritage – from our currency. This time, he is claiming that the National Motto on our currency somehow constitutes an unconstitutional “religious test” for “office or public trust under the United States.” That’s absolutely ludicrous. . . .
This legally flawed reasoning should lead to the same result as Newdow’s and his angry atheist allies’ numerous other failed legal attacks on our religious heritage as a nation. It should be thrown out of court.
Newdow has also tried and failed to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. In 2004, the ACLJ filed a major amicus brief at the Supreme Court in that case on behalf of 68 Members of Congress and over 260,000 Americans, helping to successfully defeat this outrageous legal challenge. We’ve filed briefs in a number of Newdow’s failed attacks on inaugural prayer and our National Motto.
In addition, at the ACLJ, we filed an amicus brief on behalf of 50 Members of Congress successfully defending “In God We Trust” on the wall of the Capitol Visitors Center when FFRF challenged it in federal court and failed.
Now, we have filed a critical amicus brief in this case defending “In God We Trust” on behalf of 50 Members of Congress and 120,000 concerned Americans, a brief that the court has paid particular attention to.
It is important to not only set the record straight but to ensure that our history as a nation is not erased right before our eyes. We will keep working to protect our National Motto.
This article, coauthored by ACLJ Senior Counsel for Digital Advocacy Matthew Clark, is crossposted at RedState.com.