“…with possible liberty and different justice for all.”

Our Pledge of Allegiance says “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  You’ve probably heard that there are some disgruntled people out there who want to remove the “under God” part, but you may not be aware that there are others who have a problem with the whole ”one nation” thing, and the indivisibility idea, and who aren’t really on board with the “liberty and justice” parts either.  Believe it or not, there are people who’ve immigrated here who believe that they should be allowed to disregard our laws and instead follow the laws of their native countries/cultures, particularly when it comes to family issues (divorce, child custody, etc.).  As is the case with most groups of people, thankfully, this disturbing mindset appears to exist within a relatively small subset of otherwise law-abiding immigrants, but those who embrace it actually want U.S. courts to settle their divorce, property-division, and child custody issues by applying the religious or tribal laws of other nations.  Imagine the chaos that would ensue if we did that, not to mention the failure to provide people with the ”equal protection” of our laws as required by the Constitution.  In the past three weeks alone, I’ve talked on t.v. about two cases in which murders were committed here in the U.S. and were apparently justified by the murderers based on foreign cultural traditions that permit the killing of people who’ve “disgraced” their families.  Hopefully no one seriously wants to argue that these defendants should be off the hook if the murders weren’t “wrong” by their cultural standards.  While family courts may not deal with such life-and-death issues, the decisions that are made there have long-ranging and profound effects on the litigants and on their children.  Nevertheless, some European countries are actually starting to experiment with applying litigants’ religious and cultural laws rather than the countries’ secular laws in family courts, which I think is totally misguided political correctness that will prove disastrous for the legal systems of those countries.  I say let’s skip trying it here.  I don’t want “many nations, divisible, with possible liberty and different justice for all.”  I like the Pledge as it is.

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