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Pledge of Allegiance Ruled Unconstitutional
VUSE g-EE-k and entirely too many other people wrote in about an Appeals Court decision holding that the Pledge of Allegiance, as recited in its current form in various public schools (often by law), is unconstitutional. The court's decision (PDF) is available.
How are we going to pay you if you win?
It was Eisenhower who added the "under God" part of the Pledge of Allegiance. You can read about it here.
Background on the Pledge of Allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
And to the republic for which it stands
one nation, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all
The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a Christian Socialist activist in 1892. Heavily promoted by the magazine The Youth's Companion, at the time one of the largest weekly magazines in the United States (it was eventually merged into the magazine American Boy, which was owned by the Atlantic Monthly), which was also involved in a movement to place American flags over every schoolhouse in the country. By 1905, a majority of the non-southern states had passed laws requiring schools to fly the flag, and it was already customary at that time to require students to recite the pledge daily. Eventually, most states passed laws requiring the daily recitation of the pledge of allegiance. (In some states, students are also required to sing the national anthem).
The wording of the pledge was codified into US law by Congress in 1942; in 1954, the wording of the pledge was changed by Congress, which added the phrase 'under God', making the line 'one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." This modified phrasing was adopted by schools across the country, and has remained intact to this day.
Background on the case
Michael Newdow, an atheist living in the state of California, sued the state on the ground that the California Education Code requirement that each school day begin with appropriate patriotic exercises including but not limited to the giving of the pledge of allegiance, and the school district's requirement that each elementary school class recite the pledge of allegiance daily compels his daughter to "watch and listen as her state-employed teacher in her state-run school leads her classmates in a ritual proclaiming that there is a God," and therefore constituted a state establishment of religion, prohibited by the first amendment (and, by extension through the fourteenth amendment, to states and school districts, which are sub-units of the states). His petition asked the court to order the President to modify the pledge to delete the offending section.
The decision
The 9th circuit analyzed the law establishing the pledge of allegiance using three legal tests used in establishment cases. (The Lemon test, which has mostly fallen into disfavor but has not been explicitly repudiated, requires government conduct to have a secular purpose, neither advance nor inhibit religion, and must not foster government entanglement with religion. The "coercion test" requires that government conduct not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise. The "endorsement test" requires that government not endorse a religion and "send a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders".). The court ruled that:
- The inclusion of the phrase under God in the pledge is an endorsement of religious belief.
- Reciting the pledge as it is currently codified is to swear allegiance to monotheism.
- The pledge as currently codified fails the coercion test.
- The inclusion of the phrase under God was *explicitly* done to promote a religious purpose, and therefore the pledge as currently codified fails the Lemon test.
The court concluded that the 1954 act adding "under God" to the pledge of allegiance is unconstitutional, and that the school district policy requiring daily recital is as well.Future steps
The decision is only binding in the area covered by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - California, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii - but would require school districts in that area to cease reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. It is expected that the school district will appeal, in which case the decision will most likely be heard by the US Supreme Court sometime next year. A copy of the opinion is here.
...one Nation, under your choice of a single diety, a pantheon of dieties, or no dieties at all, indivisible...
Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
Besides, how can a 48-year-old amendment be "The foundation and tradition of our country"? Stop hyperventilating for a moment and re-read the decision. The amendment to the Pledge of Allegiance favors monotheism, the Semitic religions specifically. This is not the end of the world by any means, just a return to the Constitution.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
As an atheist, all I can say about this ruling is "Thank God!"
;)
For those non-Americans reading this thread, the pledge of allegiance goes like this:
I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag
Of the United States of America
And to the Republic
For which it stands
One Nation, Under God
Indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for All.
Interestingly enough, one of the early drafts went something like
...And to the Republic
For Which it Stands,
One Nation, Indivisible,
With Liberty, Equality, And Justice for all.
However, at the time (early 20th century), that version was rejected because of pressure from the pro-segregationists. Interestingly it wasn't only the fear of racial equality that was cited as a reason for rejecting that particular draft, but the appalling possiblity that it could be construed to imply the women should be considered equal to men as well. God forbid.
Frankly, rulings like this restore some of my faith in the judicial process. As currently written, the plege should be ruled unconstitutional, as (to refer to another post) should the engraving of the words "In God We Trust" on our currency.
Neither reference to God in either context serves to enhance freedom of religion, and both serve to undermine the fundamental separation of church and state upon which the republic was founded, revisionist Christian rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
US currency says "In God We Trust". Now, if that means you don't believe in God, it simply translated to, "Trust No One". Perhaps an even better motto when dealing with large piles of cash :)
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I don't see how that is so certain. In the first place the current supreme court has rulled several times against school prayer.
The principal objection raised by the government was that the courts should not be concerned with trivial infractions. It would be very hard for the Supreme Court to claim that a case was important enough to consider and then rule that it was too insignificant to bother with.
The rest of the world finds the fetish the US makes over its flag somewhat peculiar. The scenes of schoolchildren making loyalty oaths to the flag every day remind Europeans such as myself more of the types of society that Stalin and Hitler tried to impose than the values of liberal democracy.
Finally the main objection to the pledge historically has been from religious groups, in particular the Quakers. For us the pledge of allegiance to a physical object is tantamount to idol worship which we have rather strong view against. Furthermore we don't make oaths by heaven for that is of God, nor by earth as that is his footstool.
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If you think about it, the entire idea of pledging allegiance to a FLAG, a piece of cloth, is pretty darn creepy. It's things like that that give people the idea to create a constitutional amendment to prevent burning a flag - as if that act somehow takes away freedom - it's the amendment that would be taking away freedom.
Repeating the pledge, every day in school, over and over, seems an awfully lot like an attempt to indoctrinate children, instead of educating them.
I harbor no special feelings for the flag, or toward the name of this county. My feelings are for the liberty and freedom themselves, as they're what is important, not some design on cloth.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I would much prefer that our citizens be educated in what's good about America and what's unique about being a citizen so they can fight to keep it a place they should be willing to defend. I'm talking about things like civil rights -- due process, free speech, etc. Our children should be educated in why these things are important even when they're inconvenient (there are a lot of seemingly educated people who don't get this at all).
Again, something that makes America worth the effort is the fact that we don't have to put up with the government telling us what to believe. The Pledge is just hot air, but our *rights*, the ability to exercise those rights and the defense of those rights is critical to our continuing existance as something special and worthwhile. Without those, we're just another despotic country masquerading as a republic. The world has quite enough of those.
Again, some people think this country is special because of symbols like the flag or the pledge or the anthem. Personally, what I love and fear the loss of are the rights which those things represent.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Because we all know how easy it is in grade school & high school to do something that clearly makes you stand out (like refusing to stand and recite the pledge). Especially in the current atmosphere of you must be patriotic or you are a terrorist.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Really, there's a difference between saying something every day before schoolchildren-- highly impressionable people whose beliefs and views of the world are not fully formed-- and making them feel all wierd, like they're not doing something they're supposed to do, if they don't say it along, and making them feel like outcasts, like everyone is different from them and there's something wrong with them, if they don't agree with the words
-- and printing a mention of God on some publicly distributed government items.
The first has an undeniable aspect of coersion. The latter, less so.
If a child sees "in god we trust" on currency, they walk away with the impression "i live in a nation more or less full of christians", which is more or less accurate. If a child has the pledge of allegience drilled into them every single day in their place of learning, they walk away with the impression "i am expected to be christian", which is wrong and a signal the government should not be sending.
I would expect 90% of the people who are upset over this decision are upset because they want the government to send the signal to children that they are expected to be christian.
The Federalist Papers is a book that contains the letters of our founding fathers during the writing of the constitution. In it there are many concerns of what "Seperation of Church and State" actually means.
Sep of Church & State was included, because at the time there were many countries that were actually ruled by the church elders, our founding fathers did not want this, so they added it to the constitiution. It was in no way meant to take all religion out of the government, it was included to ensure that the heads of the church would not rule the government.
I don't know when the press or lawyers or whoever construed it into what it is today. Anyway, don't take my word for it, actually read the book at Project Gutenberg
"The next thing you know it will be illegial or unlawful to utter the word 'God' in public"
The same law that prohibits the government from promoting any religion, prohibits the government from censoring any particular religion
"So much for the founding fathers with their Christian beliefs"
The founding fathers were not Christian:The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians
The Faith of our Founding Fathers
Is America founded on a Christian Tradition?
The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians
Notes on the Founding Fathers and the Separation of Church and State
State-sponsored pledges of allegiance are propagandistic, and exist to inspire collective feeling. That's not what America is about. It's not the "under God" part that bothers me, but rather the conscious attempt to instill loyalty in the young.
State-sponsored pledges are attempts to form state-sponsored beliefs. The pledge of alleigance is not essentially different from the mandatory pledges of loyalty that are taken by the soldiers of various totalitarian regimes. We decry their pledges as propaganda, yet we require our own.
I would rather see the pledge go by the wayside. The only expression of patriotism that is inspiring to me is one that is genuine and spontaneous.
I like what Eisenhower said. I think it made a lot of sense -- and it is true -- America has grown to be very arrogant over the years, in many ways that i will not be listing here.
... one nation under the principle of tolerance and forgiveness ... ?
At the mean time -- the pledge of allegiance, added with such a phrase, really does put stress on, i am sure, many people's minds. I, for one, dreaded those occations while in middle school. However, what is more worrisome is not necessarily the people who are made to say it when they do not want to -- they can just "watermelon" under their breath after all; it is, rather, the minds of children coaxed into the belief of God that way -- without ever knowing what it is like to be free to choose one's own religion(s).
side note -- this will have some serious consequences -- all of the bills we've got have "in god we trust" written on them. i highly doubt the new rainbow series (discussed before under "Greenbacks no more") will do without them.
But back to the Eisenhower thing. I think it is implemented in the wrong way. His intentions are good, but since then, the phrase has all but lost its meaning, because if it did not, my thread's parent will not be modded to 5:informative. In this vein of thought, i support taking "under God" out of the pledge. put somethig more... abstract in there, if they really wanted (words like "president", "dignity", "humility", "cheeseburgers", etc). maybe run a contest or something, like Maxim's caption contest. Winner gets a chance to go in a ring for a one on one to beat up Bin Laden whenever we capture him (or designate somebody like The Rock, for example. you guys figure it out).
Last piece of ramble: The most demoralizing aspect of this whole ordeal isn't really about what goes into a pledge, whatever. it's rather the fact that we have so little tolerance for eachother. For "land of the free," it is really hard to be "free" now-a-days without somebody complaining that you doing what you wanna do is violating their freedom in some fringe ways. maybe it should read
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Why? Because it throws gasoline on the fire of the paranoid delusions of many Christians in this country that they are somehow a persecuted minority squaring off with an evil govenrment committed to state-enforced atheism.
The Pledge of Allegiance has such enormous emotional and social weight behind it, especially post 9/11, that it makes a perfect rallying point for "the lengths to which the atheists will go." This decision is just begging for a major political backlash and reeastablishment of the Christian Right's morality in our national political dialogue.
It will contribute to the alienation of atheists and other non-Christians as "unpatriotic" in a time when that equates to "terrorist enemy" and constitutional protections are weaker than they have been in 60 years.
ARRRGH. What HORRIBLE timing.
i'm in california -- but if anyone wants to use the verbiage:
As someone who cares passionately about issues involving the separation of church and state, and a member of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (au.org), I was overjoyed to see that the 9th District Court today upheld the intentions of the Constitution in declaring the addition of 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance, a pledge many schools force children to say, as unconstitutional.
My joy was quickly soured when I heard reports of the reactionary and nasty resolution passed by the Senate today, chastising the District Court which made the ruling.
I don't know what your personal religious beliefs are, but I hope that you can recognize that making children declare that the United States is a nation under God is an infringement of their free exercise of religion if they are not religious, or do not believe in God. Such an infringement is inherently contrary to the letter and spirit of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
I am incredibly thankful that there exist checks and balances within our government, so that wrongs perpetrated by one branch of the government can be righted by another. As a Democratic Senator in a time of a Republican administration, I am sure you see this value everyday. It was therefore doubly distressing that the resolution passed should have been personal argumentative as well as constitutionally indefensible.
In these days of increasing governmental restriction of personal liberty at the hands of an Executive branch that dreams of a dictatorship, even the most minor victory against improper legislation and decisions should be resoundingly celebrated. That the Senate failed to celebrate this decision is saddening and a reflection that it is easier to go with the majority than to stand for what is right.
Hoping you can convince me that I'm wrong,
Yours, etc.
go get it
I was born Jewish, broght up athiest, then on my own began following the teachings of Buddha, and yet through all that, "one nation under God" and "in God we trust" never really bothered me.
Would someone please explain, in plain cause-and-effect, end-results, bottom-line, what would happen if kids continued to say that? Can't parent's just tell their children "Well Billy, when you start school today you're going to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and part of it says 'under God,' because the people who wrote that believed something we don't, and they aren't wrong, and we aren't wrong, and..." blah blah blah..
_______
2B1ASK1
Dooo Daaa Dooo Daaa! Pascal's Wager sing 'dis song oh doo daa daaaaayy!
Inplicit in your posts is the idea that only your belief system contains the key to moral and ethical behaivor. Everybody else must be on a greased slicky slide to Hell. The dilemma you are posing is a form of Pascal's Wager.
The most common form of Pascal's Wager goes thusly: If you believe as I do then will reward you or least refrain from punishing you. If you don't believe as I do then you risk terrible consequences for being wrong. You have nothing lose and everything to gain by converting to my beliefs. It is a false dilemma because we might both be wrong. It may actually be the case that Zeus is pissed as Hades at losing all of his followers and that we all walk around in danger of being used for lightning bolt practice.
The key phrase is "Without a set of morals based on something" "Something" most certainly isn't limited to "be a Judeo Christian or else!!!" That isn't a basis for morality anymore than being conditioned with puke-up drugs strapped down in a movie theater is (Clockwork Orange). Come to think it, the character that saw through it was a hellfire and brimstone pastor. In both cases, the motivation for "good" behaivor is avoiding pain either gagging or hellfire. I've known plenty of ethical atheists and unethical theists (and vice versa to be fair). The more thoughtful theists tend to acknowledge non theists can be ethical or even "moral".
The problem here is an implicit assumption. That assumption is "Only God is fit to decide what is good." If God suddenly decided that it's your moral duty to commit a murder a month would you do it? This is not as silly as it sounds. God is commonly held to be omnipotent. This includes the ability to reverse the meanings of "good" and "evil". If God does not define what is good and evil then those meanings are accessible even to those who are not Judeo Christians. Again, most Christians seem to grok this. I've even sat in sermons that made the point that morality requires the exercise of judgement.
If I shared your viewpoint I could logically conclude that atheists/agnostics are all homicidal libertines who just haven't been caught yet. If you don't believe this then you're engaging in some rather confusing philosophizing. Since atheists are no more murderous or larcenous than anybody else then what do you suggest keeps them in check? I think they'll take some exception to "afraid of getting caught".
The point is that what she's hearing is the government telling her that there is a God. It's not telling her that there are people who believe in God or gods; it's telling her that the U.S. government supports the idea that there is a God, and that we are somehow beneath him. This is harmful because it violates Newdow's right to direct his daughter's religious education: the government is teaching her about religion, and that is not its place. That's WHY we have the Establishment Clause.
Nobody's complaining (well, nobody sane anyway) that private individuals don't have a right to preach their religion to people they run into. They have as much right to preach at me as I do to ignore them or preach right back at them. Newdow's daughter will, undoubtedly, encounter myriad religious symbols in her life, but there is no law saying that private individuals cannot wear religious symbols or promote religious belief. There IS, however, a law saying that the GOVERNMENT can't do it.
Whether you believe in God or not, whether you believe that we really are "one nation under God", it is inappropriate for the government to take that stance.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I'll be in a minority with this comment, and that's okay ...
...
...and every year we have to have the FBI come out and sweep the place for bombs.
... But keep it out of our government and allow others the same "respect" you would ask when dealing with the government.
...One Nation Under Satan? How about One Nation Under Shiva? ...
I've been a person of an "other" faith just about all of my life. I've taken offense every day to things like: the house and senate chaplin
Now I'm not saying that our senators don't need some moral guidence (I know several that do!) -- but I strongly resent 110,000 a year for his salary, plus another couple hundred grand for his office.
I similarly resent the chaplin for my state legislature.
I also resent "In God We Trust" written on our money.
...and I have since the age of 5 always resented the words they added to the pledge of allegence in *1953* "Under God".
Seperation of church & state is the one thing I have going here that they haven't completely taken away in the Bill of Rights. Every day my faith IS under attack from right wing extremist christians. The very freedom which allows minds to explore other ideas is under attack in Overland Missouri. Every year for the past 10 years there has been a bomb threat (from the same right wing wackos who pass ordinances like the one in Overland) when we get together for our new years festival
So, Yes, I do mind. I do take offense. I don't want to live in "Pat Robertsons America" any more than I want to live under the Taliban. You want to worship? Fine. Do it in your home, our and about, do it in your church, your cicle, your temple, what have you
Christians would take just as much offense to the words "In Goddess We Trust" being on the dollar. Or how about "In The Gods We Trust".. Or better yet
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
> In its ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a 1954 act of Congress that inserted the phrase "under God" after the phrase "one nation" in the pledge. <
It is disappointing that so many of the TV news accounts this evening ignore the 1954 amendment, and falsely state that the pledge has contained the "Under God" wording for more than a century.
I have always been uncomfortable -- at least since the seventh grade -- saying those two words. More recently, as someone educated in the law (yes, I am a lawyer) and as someone who has taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, I do not believe that our Constitution places our country "under God" but expressly separates church and state. There were earlier cases prohibiting schools from compelling students to recite the pledge or salute the flag if it conflicted with their religious beliefs (for example, some religious groups refuse to salute the flag because they view the flag as a "graven image" (false idol) prohibited by the Second Commandment).
This case, like the school prayer cases, revolved around the implied endorsement, pressure, and stigma involved when the pledge and its "under God" language are recited in public classrooms.
To be honest, I've never understood why anyone thinks it is appropriate to demand that school children (many of them non-citizens), pledge allegiance to the "flag," as this helps reinforce the belief that if someone is waving the flag, we must blindly follow them, and criticizing the flag-waver is somehow "un-American." Even in this "revolutionary" ruling, the court did not prohibit schools from having a flag-salute ceremony that includes reciting a "pledge of allegiance to the flag" without the "under God" language.
Unfortunately, there is little doubt among legal scholars, or in my mind, that an "en banc" panel of the 9th Circuit will reverse this ruling, or if they do not, then the U.S. Supreme Court will gladly reverse it. As my former Constitutional Law professor (Boalt Hall's Jesse Choper) said in several TV interviews today, the Supreme Court will certainly view this language as "too small" to be worth ruling invalid -- oddly enough, arguably consistent with the Court's repeated hints that in order for Congress to prohibit flag-burning, it must first decide if the flag will be the "one thing" that they will prohibit desecrating (and Congressmen have too many sacred cows that they won't sacrifice to that trivial issue).
The most disappointing thing about the "person on the street" interviews I saw on the news today, is that the questions posed by the newspersons were about "making it illegal for children to recite the pledge of allegiance," which is not what the ruling said. Why can't people understand the difference between censoring people who want to recite the pledge without state compulsion (free speech) and the state compelling someone to say something that they do not believe, in direct contradiction to the "establishment" and "free exercise" clauses of the first amendment -- or regulating people's beliefs or speech (which is what Congress was really trying to do in 1954, to oppose the "Godless communists" and reinforce the widespread belief that you must believe in "the One God" to be a "real" American)?
Note that I have no objection that members of my local Rotary Club recite the pledge (including the "under God" language) and one of our members is asked to say a prayer each week -- I can respect the decision of the majority of a private club's members on these points, though that when we recited the pledge during a visit by two dozen guests from our Mexican "sister city," some of our guests were visibly uncomfortable. (For a year or more, our Rotary Club had a humorous running debate about how long the pause should be before "under God.") Some weeks, the prayer is expressly Christian, once it was explicitly Muslim, most weeks it is quite generic, and occasionally, it is a non-religious statement or "thought.")
On another list, someone wrote:
> The founders of this country -- or whoever -- were quite right not to include that phrase in the "Pledge of Allegiance" originally. <
The reference to "the founders" jarred me, because I had thought the Pledge of Allegiance was created after the civil war (hence the "indivisible" language).
Apparently, we were both wrong: according to "A Short History of the Pledge of Allegiance" ( http://www.vineyard.net/vineyard/history/pledge.ht m ), the pledge was written (apparently by a Socialist, no less) in 1892. Of course, that's just what someone said on a web page. See also http://www.google.com/search?q=+history+%22pledge+ of+allegiance%22+under+God+indivisible
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
The first problem is why say this at all? Why make it a semi-compulsory ritual to begin with?
Kids say this pledge literally thousands of times throughout their life to the point that it becomes a meaningless string of phonemes. The Pledge reminds me of listening to fellow Catholics recite the Profession of Faith on Sundays when I was a kid. So repetitious was it that no one even consciously knew what it was they were saying anymore. You could tell by the emotionless drone; it made the several parishes I was a part of sound like some religious cult under deep mind control. (In reality of course it was a bunch of people trying to stay awake).
Its not just the "under God" part I object to. It's the whole thing.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.
Well, what if immoral, sadistic acts are being committed under the name of that flag? The Klan flies that flag. The flag was on the uniforms of soldiers during the My Lai massacre. I don't think that the flag is evil, but it certainly is subjective and few can agree on what the flag means. Flags, like bumper stickers, are blunt objects that can mean a multiplicity of things to different people. If you're talking about the principles of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and so forth, well, yes, I have a personal allegiance to those moral and political principles. If you're talking about our corrupt Congress and increasingly spooky President and what he's doing supposedly in my name and yours as the figurehead of our Republic, then no. Americans in particular seem to have a weird fetish for these kinds of symbols, and it is something which seriously distracts from the very real principles we ought to be talking about.
And to the Republic for which it stands.
Someone pointed out that the the flag represents the Republic. Well, if so, then this is redundant. Strike the "pledge allegiance to the flag" part and just pledge allegiance to the Republic. But even this is problematic. What if you feel the Republic is corrupt? I often do (I often believe as a nation we do many good things, but it is certainly a mixed bag). I have no issue with the "as written" principles this country was founded on, nor even honest business and capitalism, but that this Republic honestly represents these principles consistently is more than questionable.
One Nation
Well, I believe that we are one nation, and that nations can and should be diverse and built around broad principles of civic morality. Tolerance, freedom, and standing up both for your own rights and those of your neighbor. Others may be into sedition. I don't know. I prefer to connect myself to the world and others in the contexts of honesty and mutually beneficial community, but I respect the rights of those who don't and want to live up a mountain in Montana somewhere.
Under God,
I don't think God has anything to do with it. For example, I seem to remember a passage in the Bible about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. We are a capitalist country, and frankly, I have no problem with the honest, productive accumulation of wealth through honest trade and productivity. But depending on which part of the Bible you conveniently choose to follow today, it's questionable that God has anything to do with this. As an agnostic myself, I am not offended at all by other people saying this pledge (or praying silently to themselves in public places - even government buildings, or putting up Christmas trees in parks), but why must it be institutionalized in this instance? It's not a matter of having a problem with the Pledge of Allegiance, it is the problem of forcing others to say it as well. That strikes me as very, very, unAmerican. I've said the Pledge thousands of times, and saying Under God doesn't freak me out, but it is wholly unnecessary. Those who support the compulsory pledge, should they consider themselves quote-unquote Real Americans, ought to have no objection to this being purged in a nation supposedly founded on freedom of - and from - religion. I don't understand psychologically what makes it so important to compel others to swear allegiance to their particular God. It sounds rather...Taliban...to me. Or suggests a kind of self-doubt and paranoia allayed only by consensus, the assuredness of hearing many others pledge allegiance to a God you have some kind of doubt about. I don't understand the motivation here.
Indivisible Well thank God this nation divides when our government is perpetrating one atrocity for another, whether it be slavery, institutionalized racism, immoral, meddling wars abroad, or blatant Nixonesque authoritarianism. Unity is only a value when it is attached to a kind of tolerance and moral consensus, not when compelled through the kind of propaganda we're dealing with right now where our own congress is afraid to do anything other than indulge any authoritarian whim our President has. Division, however much it lulls us out of our stupor and worries us enough that we can't be satisfied drooling at stupid sitcoms at night, is healthy. Division is cultural, moral, and political dissonance; it insists that we weigh our actions and values as a nation. What good is unity if it is under the auspices of jingoism, groupthink, and collectivism? Division ought not be a permanent state but I'm really thankful that people are willing to stand up and say, "I will not support this; not even in the context that we are both countrymen and this is being done in our collective name." How often did our founding fathers make statements about how a revolution every so often is a healthy thing? We ought to be able to sustain reasonable differences and remain united, but there must be a limit to this. Otherwise, there is nothing worthwhile about our freedom, or our Republic.
With liberty, and justice, for all
Well with tongue in cheek, it's kind of fun to say this line with a heavy dose of irony. As noble as this sentiment is - and it is perhaps, in its honest, untarnished form, the most noble part of the Pledge of Allegiance, it...well...doesn't apparently apply to many classes of people including foreigners, pot smokers, hackers on trumped-up charges, anyone serving a draconian mandatory minimum sentence for a petty crime, dozens of political criminals from the Nixon years still in jail and denied new hearings, trials, or parole. People in internment camps. And so on.
The justice part doesn't apply much to the wealthiest and most powerful who buy their way out of justice and wind up serving sentences at federal country clubs. Celebrities also don't seem to go to jail very often for the things the rest of us do. Victims of right-wing regimes we've propped up in the past are excluded here, obviously. And so on and so forth. The point is, if anyone should be forced to take this pledge, it is our *leaders* and people in the justice system. Justice applies not only to the poor and downtrodden who often get screwed by the System because they don't have the money to hire a decent lawyer, but also to the rich and powerful who rarely pay for their crimes.
I don't think anyone should be forced or compelled to take any pledge. It ought not be part of any compulsory institution like our public education system (itself arguably a huge waste of time and money). But if there must be a pledge, it should be something more along lines of:
I pledge to be honest, to criticize my government when commits crimes or supports those who do. I pledge to uphold and fight for the values enshrined in our Constitution. I pledge to protest and throw my own weight against the eternally grinding gears of authoritarianism wherever I may find them. I pledge to respect and protect the values, practices, and expression of those who are different from me, even though I may find them objectionable, provided that those practices do not infringe on the freedom of others. I pledge to question authority, recognizing its legitimacy only when it serves the rational values of of liberty and justice. I pledge honesty, honor, respect, and civility in ordinary discourse and human interaction (This of course would be problematic among most Usenet users, but that's a different rant.) I pledge loyalty only to principles, and not the symbols, individuals, and collectives by which those principles are corrupted. I stand in opposition to hypocrisy, dishonesty, and the use of violence except as a last resort in legitimate retaliation or self-defense to solve disputes.
To me, this is a far more American pledge.