so i've been reading a nausiating amount of stuff in the paper about the case in front of the supreme court involving the guy in California suing the school district to remove the phrase "under god" from the pledge...he feels that it is a violation of separation of church and state...the school board feels it is not, and that saying the words in not mandatory...everyone from the white house down has their opinions as well, including my favorite, as if, supreme court justice, Scalia, who had to recuse himself, having publicly state that he thought the suit was stupid.
so here is my take on all this:
first off, i can't believe that a supreme court justice, even one as incompetent as Scalia, would shhot his mouth off like that...he just keeps demonstrating what a huge mistake his appointment, and confirmation was.
the phrase definately violates the concept of church and state...it refers to a singualr god, which immediately puts any person who is not a monotheist in a position of being ostracised if they refuse to speak words that go against their beliefs, or must speak them to fit in, and be compromising their principals.
the phrase was not even part of the original pledge.
reciting the pledge is a bunch of nonsense anyway...somehow we seem to have timewarped back to the ugly part of the fifties here...you know that good old McCarthy era loyalty oath bullshit...i, and others like me fought to not be forced to recite the damned thing every day...i realized back in 8th grade, that i could not in good faith, speak words i did not believe...that it's absurd to pledge to a piece of cloth...that the whole concept is kind of fascist, and totally violates the core principals this nation was founded on...like faith, should be expressed through actions, not public mouthing of things you profess to believe, but never follow.
the most offensive thing about all this to me is this attitude that not wanting to participate in the pledge is unpatriotic, or unamerican...dissent is very american...it is what this country was founded on...so shut up.
Posted by Angstman at March 30, 2004 04:01 AM | TrackBack