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Date Posted: 15:27:35 07/11/02 Thu
Author: mt. healthy mountaineer
Subject: Re: The Pledge - some comments
In reply to: Adilbrand 's message, "The Pledge" on 17:45:58 07/10/02 Wed

I've been waiting for the flag issue to pop up, but have been unwilling to intitiate it myself due to work schedule and an economics unit I had to create for a summer class at IUPUI. Here are my thoughts (and I hope they are surprising to some) -

On the pledge in general, from a public school teacher's experience - I can count on all of my digits the amount of times I've led the pledge in a classroom in 12 years of middle and high school experience. This issue is not a reality for lots and lots of kids.


On the inclusion of the words "...under God..." -

I find this inclusion to be rather innocuous. They were intended to be as a public prayer by some, but they are mostly ignored in the Pledge, as is the meaning of the Pledge itself. We don't recite it very often so we don't study what it means.


My view of the pledge -

I find it very odd, in a free society, that we REQUIRE a person to pledge their allegiance to ANYTHING. Don't get me wrong - I am as patriotic of an American as the next guy - probably more than most because I actually believe in the ideals that the country was founded upon. I am a Jerffersonian at heart in that I believe that we were all endowed by God with certain inalienable rights and it is the primary duty of government to protect those rights. My loyalty to the United States goes as far as the United States is protecting the rights of its citizens. Thus, I find it strange and very un-American to require a loyalty oath - it falls in the realm of man's rights to not pledge his loyalty to anything if he so chooses.

Now, please don't take my comments to mean that I am all for traitors and spies and the like who would undermine the country from within - absolutely not! Those people would sell out my rights for an economic theory, such as Communism or the chance to limit the rights of others, such as the Nazis and the KKK who deny certain ethnic groups rights, or even a religion-based state which would deny the rights of men to choose who and who and whether to worship. Those are your inalienable rights, endowed by your creator - no one has the right to touch them! However, you do have the right to be a Nazi or whatever - it is your inalienable right to be a moron.

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