Who can blame patriotic Christians for their voluminous outrage that anyone, especially a judge, would try to take that purely non-religious mention of God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?

George Bush perhaps explained it best when he said it has nothing to do with officially sanctifying one particular religion--it is merely an acknowledgement that "our rights come from God." He modestly refrained from mentioning that it also means that his presidential powers emanate straight from the Almighty as well. But maybe he figured everybody knows that already; after all, once we were done with the Pledge in school, we studied all about the divine right of kings and the hereditary monarchy.

Some deeper analysis of the situation suggests that radical extremist judges aren't root of the problem. We could have really used a few more common sense Founding Fathers.

Those so-called patriots didn't see fit to mention God anywhere in their Constitution, except to prohibit official coercion on His, or any other deities', behalf. Today's left-wing judges are really small fry, with the real kingpins of godlessness are to be found staring out from our money. The Bill of Rights is brimming with left-wing, terrorist-coddling notions that threaten our security to this day. Those so-called American heroes were decidedly far to the left of the mainstream of today.

We shouldn't be surprised, given the hard core activism of those original east coast liberals, like a cross between the Trial Lawyers Association and Earth First!. Far from acknowledging the necessary trade-off between freedoms and security, Osama bin Franklin himself suggested that anyone who would trade essential liberties for the perception of safety and security deserve neither liberty nor security.

It's not surprising that our staunch ally, Britain, took harsh action against their radical, revolutionary rhetoric right from the beginning. It was bad enough that our purported national heroes disrespected the King--another man named George who ruled because God gave him, just his father, the right to treat the country like his private property. But even worse, they repeatedly destroyed private property. Hooligans, all of them.

You can see why a Pledge of Allegiance is necessary--to flush out the ingrates. If they won't say a loyalty oath, next thing you know, they won't pay taxes, and before you know it they'll be chopping off George's head.

With the pledge and its intrinsic God under attack, our brave legislators are falling all over themselves in their eagerness to be the loudest and bestest in its defense. They'd be idiots not to. All their real work is tainted by scandal, corruption, and malfeasance. Nothing to be gained there.

But I can see a compromise in the works, where constitutionally god-fearing folk can keep our pledge, and the multitude of little special interests can replace "god," with identity words reflecting their own community and background. Admittedly, this solution does balkanize the pledge somewhat, but eventually we are going to have to exchange nouns for peace, and the sooner we get to it the better. What's important is that children, and all of us, learn to pledge loyalty and to obey. It doesn't really matter who we obey.

The only other real option would be to institute a cabinet-level Department of Pledge of Allegiance Security, but too many of its responsibilities would overlap with those of the FBI, John Ashcroft's prayer meetings, and the Department of Prevention of Flag Burning.

It may be some time before Congress gets around to enacting a multiple choice Pledge, what with their full schedule of flag hoisting, flag saluting, flag pledging, flag waving, flag wrapping, flag pedalling, flag whipping, flagrant violations and flagging confidence.

Proactive citizens need not wait for Congress. Since the constitutional God simply represents that unnameable mystery from whence our rights come, each person knows for himself what name best describes that for them personally. The Pledge can become an expression of our diversity even as it enforces our loyalty.

Why shouldn't Satanists just say "under Satan" while they are taking the pledge at the Mariners game? It's a lot less complicated than having everybody think they mean God when they say "under god," when they really mean Satan.

Muslims, Jews, Christians and Mormons could all continue to say "God," since all these religions are speaking of the same particular god, albeit in slightly different ways.

Buddhists and Chomskyites both might share something like "one nation under illusions," while Atheists can comfortably quote the equation for the second law of thermodynamics or simply spit out "under religious tyranny."

There's no need to stick to religious reference at all. The individualistic reciter might profitably choose to inject some topical or political sentiment into his oration of the pledge. Nothing like "one nation, under indictment," to remind nearby citizens of the state of our nation's leadership. And wouldn't it be more clear to everyone if the school day began "one nation, under funded?"

Surrealists could use "one nation under the raincoat," or even "one nation joggle desert spoon," while Tom Ridge could fill his whole remaining tour of duty as Homeland Defender by loudly proclaiming, "one nation, under level three terrorism alert. Today is orange."

Meanwhile, every morning, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft stand in a row, hands on hearts, until they get to that very special part when they slap each other high fives as Cheney emphasizes, "One nation, under my thumb," Rumsfeld barks "under the gun!" and Ashcroft scolds out "under holy inqua-zi-shun." Bush is out of the room, getting coffee.

Which leads to my own personal choice at the moment, "one nation, under the control of freaking maniacs."