For all the drama inside the Supreme Court yesterday as the justices to hear what kind of pledge a nine-year old girl is invited to say at school, the comments we found ourselves reflecting on were those that the plaintiff, the young girl’s father, Michael Newdow, made to reporters after the session. Mr. Newdow had argued his own case before the justices in a performance that — win, lose or draw — will be remembered for years. He had brought the case involving his daughter even though she is in the custody of the girl’s mother, to whom Mr. Newdow isn’t married and who is a religious Christian. As Mr. Newdow stood before the justices, speaking in an almost conversational tone and without faltering or equivocation, he asserted that the government should not interfere with his effort to teach his daughter that there is no God. “Every school morning my child is required to stand up, face the flag, put her hand over her heart and say that her father is wrong,” Mr. Newdow told the court.

After the hearing, he urged reporters to focus on the family law side of the case, how the courts treat fathers, and to investigate why he lost joint custody of his daughter, which he said he later regained. He said he once let his daughter use the bathroom in an airport while he stood outside. He said “some idiot evaluator expert” decided that this was child neglect. Mr. Newdow declined to say what his daughter has said to him about the case and about the pledge.

But he asserted that his daughter “will be very proud of her father.” It made us realize that the case of Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow et al can be seen as a constitutional primal scream.

And it reminds that one of the glories of America is a constitutional system where the highest court in the land comes to rapt attention over the passions of a parent fighting, right or wrong, for the respect of a child.