The Bell Curve:

If persistence and determination are the prime earmarks of statesmanship, we should lend Councilwoman Wendy Leece to the U.S. government to take on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Or put her on the trail of Osama bin Laden. Instead, Leece will be working the home front with “In God We Trust” marking the City Hall in Costa Mesa, where the motto will reside after a unanimous vote of the City Council (Where, oh where, were you, Katrina Foley?).

All of this took place Tuesday when Leece requested permission to introduce God to the Council Chambers. There were emotional speeches from the audience on both sides, from contesting display of the motto as a reincarnation of McCarthyism to the remembrances of a combat veteran from World War II. But the vote — as one speaker said — was a foregone conclusion.

There is some history and there are two voices that, I would suggest, Leece hasn’t consulted and that might have offered more clarity to the debate. The voices come from President Theodore Roosevelt and the U.S. Supreme Court. The history tells us that “In God We Trust“ first appeared on a 2-cent coin in 1864, put there by the order of the secretary of the Treasury — and later by Congress — in response to appeals from Christians suffering the agonies of the Civil War.

Use of the motto came and went several times until it bumped into President Roosevelt, who wrote in 1907: “My own feeling in the matter is due to my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins, or to use it in any kindred manner, not only does no good but does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege. It seems to me eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps or in advertisements.”

The issue didn’t surface again until 1955 when any suggestion to the left of Henry Ford was regarded as communism, and embracing God on our coinage, and, a year later, as the national motto of the United States, was regarded as a Cold War weapon against the Commies.

The Supreme Court took a dimmer view of all this with a kind of legal pat on the head for critics who contended that the motto’s placement on money constitutes the establishment of a religion or a church by the government and thus violates the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment.

In its ruling, the court upheld the national motto because it has “lost through role repetition any significant religious content and so-called acts of ceremonial deism that have lost their history, character and context.” In other words, c’mon gang, lets not kick this around any more. It’s not doing any harm.

As one of those critics, I’d like to take aim on the word “we.” Whether or not we believe in God and what form that takes has no real bearing on this issue — as our Supreme Court has pointed out. But the use of the collective pronoun does.

It says loud and clear that we’re all in this together, whether we subscribe to it or not. Some of us are uncomfortable at being dropped into a pot with associates whose views are quite different from ours.

But, as the Supreme Court says, it’s not a windmill worth tilting. And it won’t hurt, just irritate.

There’s one common aspect of both the Greg Haidl conviction and the football players from Corona del Mar High School who abused and threatened young women that both distresses and puzzles me: the involvement — or lack of it — by their peers. Put simply in both instances, there were three men taking on an unprotected girl. Those are tough odds for the girls, even against arrogant cowards.

Where were the fellow students? Were they watching? Ignoring? Or just writing it off as none of their business?

Have young people changed that much since I was in high school? Am I dreaming that my peers would have become involved with whatever force was necessary. Are football players and millionaires’ sons so intimidating today that they are beyond the reach of their peers?

These questions bring to mind the late papers I got when I was teaching at UC Irvine with the excuse that a roommate or near neighbor was playing music at such a deafening level that it was impossible to study. And when I suggested to my students that they ask, then demand, that the noise be turned down, recruiting others equally disturbed to help, if necessary, they were confounded with such suggestions. They just flat out didn’t want to get involved.

I got the same answer when I asked these questions of School Supt. Jeffrey Hubbard and teacher friends I respect. And so if any local high school teachers are looking for essay subjects to assign, I’d like to see how their students might tackle this one.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.