Look, you guys are welcome to your beliefs, and they can be as important to you as you choose.

You are not welcome, or likely, to force anyone to Christian beliefs or Christian-based legislation. Sorry. The Christian version of Kasrut or Sharia is never coming to the US, and it should not.

You can say "god" and "christian" as many times as you like, and expect to gather interest from people who are already in agreement with you, and expect, virtually 100% to bring no additional supporters into alignment. Congratulations! Welcome to one of the biggest problems Republicans have now, and an excellent future being angry sitting in front of the TV, computer or on the porch.

Not sure if you realize, but Ayn was an atheist. She was not perfect, but this is not Fallwell's Gulch.

This was to you Thoritsu. I think God means everything to some of us But you are free to believe your way and i am free to disagree with you.

Aside from the incompatibility of Objectivism and religion on core principles, on a simple practical level the problem with introducing any given religious clause into any intellectual article - be it a constitution, a piece of legislation, a pledge - is that if your context is an individualist, just and free society, then its constitution, every law that emanates from it, and even things like a pledge whose recitation is required of kids, must be universally applicable.

The second you introduce Your Favorite Religious Element into the mix, you have thereby made that constitution, that law, that required teaching, a component of a particular faction, i.e., not universally applicable to all individual citizens of that nation. You also create a situation ripe for protracted - nay, endless - warfare between religious factions, each striving to make its religious beliefs dominant within government. For a vivid example of this, see the entire history of the Middle East; for a detailed and pithy examination of it in the general format of a Socratic dialog, see C.F. Volney's 1791 work "The Ruins; or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires."

The issue of the Pledge of Allegiance is only a problem in context of the unaddressed injustice which makes it a problem: The continued absence of a necessary (and ultimately achievable) Separation of Education and State. Once we have eliminated all government involvement in schools and all schools are a matter of individual choice (or refusal, for those who would choose homeschooling - which generally speaking is vastly superior in any case,) people can choose a school that recites the original pledge, or a school that recites the pledge with "under god" added, or a school that recites no pledge at all.

This idea - 100% decentralized and 100% privatized schools, for as vast a variety, brands and choice among curricula, foci and "options" as we have for hotels, restaurants, insurance agencies, car tires, microbrews, athletic shoes, novels, albums, fast foods, house paint, clothing, or any other product you can imagine - clarifies the distinction I believe America's Founders understood as a given and were trying to communicate to the world, with only partial success: A truly- and strictly - universal constitutional and legal foundation is not only conducive to the harmonious "coexistence" (to use a loaded leftwing-bumpersticker term) of a multitude of otherwise incompatible beliefs, it is essential to it.

Put differently, given equal treatment under the law, there can be harmonious societal coexistence between people who are religious and people who are atheist. An Aristotelian, atheistic metaphysical foundation is no imposition on religious belief in the public realm - so long as we do not see government agents violating the First Amendment's free exercise clause as we have been seeing in recent months; to the extent that religious beliefs foster an advocacy of individual sovereignty and a generalized concept of "goodness" in the public realm - and assuming these people understand the just prohibition of any imposition of religious strictures or "goodness" unrelated to the criterion of human rights - there is no imposition on nonbelievers. But the vital, indispensable foundation must be a constitutional and legal framework that is rooted in the universal value of man's life as an individual, rational being - regardless of particular beliefs beyond that core.

In his "Notes on the State of Virginia" Jefferson put it in terms far more concise than I'll ever manage: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

To religious people who are interested and open-minded enough to investigate this vital distinction, I cannot recommend highly enough the 1975 work titled "The Enlightenment in America" by Ernest Cassara. I believe it's currently out of print but is relatively easy to find at Amazon, Alibris, Allbookstores, etc. for less than the cost of one beer at the airport. It has no particular axe to grind; it simply presents a concise but thorough history of the intellectual context for America's Founding, taken from the voluminous writings of those Founders - on this still-contentious issue of how to develop and maintain a government that is truly universal, a government that provides for the harmonious coexistence of all beliefs within its nation's borders without advocating for any particular one of those beliefs - aside from the facts of man's metaphysical nature, his individualism and his human rights.
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Belief is a very fragile foundation. I hope that is not so.

As allegory, fine. As foundation, unacceptable. Even worse than climate change.

These incidences during Trumps Presidency were far less frequent than during Obama/buy-dem and the start of buy-dem/Whoris admins!