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Last March former White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States that the U.S. government "failed to prevent the tragedy of 9/11." He proceeded to apologize for that failure.

At the same hour that Clarke testified to the 9/11 Commission, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow. There Michael Newdow argued that the United States no longer should be acknowledged as "one nation under God." Those two hearings may at first glance seem unrelated. But there is an important link.

Of course the government failed to prevent the attack on the Twin Towers. But beyond that, the government also failed to prevent the Chicago Fire, the San Francisco Earthquake, the Johnstown Flood, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the stock-market crash of 1929, the Holocaust, the aids epidemic, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine killings, Hurricane Whatshername, the Enron meltdown, and a long list of other tragedies and disasters, both natural and man-made.

Clarke seemed to presume that "your government" should somehow have been able to anticipate and prevent evil from happening—both the evil that we call natural disasters, and the evil that comes directly from the hearts and hands of evil people. It is a false premise. To presume the government's ability to prevent such a catastrophe is to assume that it possesses qualities and abilities that no person, let alone a government, can ever possess.

Omniscience and omnipotence are qualities that we ascribe only to God. Clarke fails to recognize the inherent limitations of government. The U.S. Constitution certainly envisions no omniscience or omnipotence for the federal government.

In fact, the Constitution sets comparatively modest, human-sized objectives for the government: "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Those finite tasks are challenging enough. Providing for the "common defense" is a noble task for a government. Protecting every citizen from any kind of harm is quite another matter.

On the same day that we heard that our government had failed, Newdow argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that "under God" should be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance.

One cannot help being struck by the irony of these hearings taking place only hundreds of feet apart. At issue in both hearings was the same question: Are we "under God"?

Let us be careful here. If there is a Creator, then we are "under God" whether we acknowledge it in a pledge or not. If there is a Creator, then we are creatures. If there is a Creator, then he is the one who is omniscient and omnipotent, and not us.

Many Americans are "practical atheists" who have long since forsaken a Creator and a theistic worldview—and in the process have seemingly transferred onto the government the divine qualities of omniscience and omnipotence. For centuries people have tended to blame God for not preventing everything bad that happens. In fact, Freud (and others) posited that God is merely a human invention created to explain and possibly to blame for those phenomena that cannot otherwise be rationally explained. Many now blame the government because they presume it should possess the divine foreknowledge and requisite power to protect citizens from all harm.

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February 2005, Vol. 49, No. 2