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Imagine it said "One nation, under Odin, with liberty and justice for all".
I am so saying that tomorrow morning!
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Quoth Drysart:
Right, like they did when the Patriot Act was passed, which allows the government to lock up dissidents without reason and to hold them indefinately without charges or appeal.
...oh wait...
You think that was passed in spite of popular opinion?
Luckily for us, many legislators are starting to think about the repercussions, and there are several moves afoot to hamstring the act.
Oh, and for those who somehow have the impression the military is a bunch of Stormtroopers who don't think twice about their missions: grow up and lay off the Orwellian thrillers.
We swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to do whatever we're told. It's also, if anyone knew their law, illegal to use the military domestically except against a foreign invader or armed rebellion--we can't be used to enforce oppression, even if tyranny should somehow make it through the bureaucratic jungle.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
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Burger had this to say about John Romero:
If the US government decided to throw citizen's rights out the window, you'd have a VERY angry, VERY armed citizaenry demanding that they be restored.
That sounds like an armed rebellion to me. I may be mistaken but isn't a law considered constitutional untill it is ruled otherwise?
It has been ruled previously that, even if something is optional, having school administrators lead something creates an environment where people feel pressured to follow their lead. Since the Pledge contains reference to God, it promotes at the very least a monotheistic deist religious stance, and thus may be considered government sanctioning of religions following that stance - since the Pledge is optional, yet still run by and sometimes still even spoken by administrators.
The general method to solve it, while keeping the pledge as a morning ritual, would be to make the statement "under God" optional for people to INCLUDE rather than optional for people to exclude. There will still be a large number of people who do say that phrase, and it's not like they will be punished for doing so. Just the administration won't be able to say that phrase in the actual leading of the pledge.
That said, I disagree that the Pledge of Allegiance should be a part of a school ritual. The best teachers I ever had never turned on the "Morning 2 News" our school had, instead using the time to teach their material. I personally never even bothered thinking about what the Pledge stood for until middle school - just said the thing blankly. They could've legislated a requirement that I say aloud the Oscar Meyer bologna jingle every morning, and it would've had just as much impact. And the point at which I recognized the meaning of it was about the same time I recognized it was optional, thus winning myself an extra minute or so to do last-second work.
Teaching kids moral values - patriotism, sharing, or the good feeling of a job well done - is not the domain of schools. They have enough to try and force down the throats of unwilling kids without having to take time out for moralism. Parents need to teach their kids what they wish them to learn in the ways of behaviour; if you wish your child to be patriotic, say the thing with them yourself. There's no need to go "my kids should do this," and then look at the public education system and go "get to work on it."
Although, personally, I think it just KILLS the rythym structure of the work to take out the second article in a triple-statement run. The brain makes note of the missing item with a feeling of "something should be there," and it makes reading the piece a lot less smooth.
