Under God in the Pledge

So while reading the school paper yesterday I came across an opinion article written by one of the more liberal writers for the paper (typically the antithesis of Mr. Long). Well apparently in West Texas even the liberals are pretty freaking conservative. The article (found here) discusses why the "under God" portion of the pledge should not be removed. Originally I was going to break this down point by point but the commenters on the article did it pretty well already so I will just address one thing that drew my ire more than the rest. After discussing how the pledge was originally written to be used by any country that wanted it he says this:

Still, identifying with Christian beliefs myself, I’m sure some of you who do not are saying, “Well of course you see it that way.” My response to those people is quite simple: At any time you are free to leave the United States.

Despite my religious views or those of the next man, I think some have failed to realize this isn’t an issue of religion; it’s an issue of patriotism. The pledge was not designed to pay tribute to God or any other higher power. It was adopted with the intentions of its use being to express pride and support of our country. When the pledge is said, we face a flag, not an alter [sic].

This issue is far from an issue of patriotism. I love this country and am always grateful to those who have sacrificed so I can live here in peace and drink excess of coffee and do what I want, to a certain extent obviously. But your God and my God may very well difference this country was founded on freedom of religion (regardless of what the Texas School Board thinks). In fact the First Amendment to the Constitution in what we call the Bill of Rights says this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;[...]

There have been court cases to back this up since then including Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet, 512 U.S. 687 (1994) in which the Justice David Souter when writing the opinion of the majority said, "government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion." Even as recently as 2007 court cases have supported this, see Inouye v Kemna. So Mr. Irby if you would prefer to live in a country that has an established religion then you are currently living in the wrong one. This is a democracy as you point out but we have rules in place to prevent:

Nor should a country founded on the basis of democracy be made to deny the wishes of the majority given that accommodating these wishes hurts no one, but denying them is in essence denying our country’s foundation and principles upon which it was built.

We have these rules to prevent this majority or mob rule from interfering on the rights of the minorities!