Quote:
Originally Posted by DFINITLYDISTRUBD
From grades k-12 children and young adults are required (forced) to swear allegience to the U.S. (there are penalties for noncompliance)
There have been many controversies and lawsuits over this in the last decade or so, but for the wrong reason I'm less woried about god being in The Pledge of Allegiance than of the fact it is not optional (what happened to freedom of speach first of all, and second of all this is a binding verbal contract with the government. how many children do you know that fully understand this concept?). Speak or act out against the government you are officially guilty of breach of contract and treason. Why? because you swore to be loyal to them!
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I think the states are still sovreign in this respect. Yes, everybody, we do still have a republic. The Rehnquist Court, which strongly supported states' rights (except in Bush v. Gore), reverted in the Elk Grove case I cited in my previous post.
The Wiki history,
Pledge of Allegiance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, matches dates and case histories I was able to find from other sources, and is a lot less work.
But listen: when I was in a one-room country school, we didn't pledge allegiance, we didn't pray, and we didn't read the bible (in the heart of the Bible Belt). In fact, there wasn't a bible in the school, because all that stuff was taken care of
at home and in the Church. That ideal of a bible in every schooldesk and requiring allegiance to country and God in every frontier school, that myth, is the creation of people who weren't there at the time. Dont let them tell you about the mythical American frontier. They don't know and they don't care.
Tolerance is truly an American value, however constantly besieged it might be.
--lemit
p.s. Sorry to those of you unfortunate enough to live in other countries. Our country, America, is much more important and powerful than yours. But you already knew that, didn't you? "It is only the powerful who can't see the mechanism of power at work."
