Alexandra: Oh, just scrap the Pledge and say "Heil Bush O Glorious Leader." Short and to the point.

I prefer a hearty "Hail Satan", myself.

Finnley Wren: Setting aside the fact that they should never have injected the words "under God" into it, I think it worthwhile that schoolchildren continue to say it.

Yes, it's indoctrination, but civics and duty and citizenship are still important.

It never instilled any sense of civics or duty into me. It simply did nothing at all besides take up a minute of my time.

A much better approach is how high schools are requiring community service to graduate nowadays. I think that can go a lot further towards showing kids how important civic duty is.

Hey let's give these guys the benefit of the doubt here. They just don't want to say it publicly because they do it all the time at home in private.

What? They don't? Who are these assholes?

zippyZRX
Our fore-fathers believed in freedom but would hang you for treason or being a traitor. Refusing this oath is paramount to being a traitor.

I think you meant tantamount.

/sorry for being a grammar nazi
//but come on, if you are gonna troll at least get the vocab right

Vangor:

The problem with that is that the pledge was not created to pledge allegiance to any governing body. The pledge was created shortly after the civil war in an attempt to reunify the nation. Thus, it specifically does not pledge allegiance to a governing body as that would not help bring the north and south back to a unified nation because the south would never pledge allegiance to the northern government. To pledge allegiance to the flag is to pledge allegiance to the nation. How can someone live here and reap the benefits of being here without pledging allegiance the the ideals of this nation?

Also, would you rephrase the second section of your message, because I have no idea where you were heading with that because it makes no sense...


"As well, this is the same discussion many always have, nothing gives me the right, the nation does not, soldiers do not, a deity does not, the constitution itself is worth toilet paper if everyone knew what the hell equality was, and it gives nothing to you."

I'd love to argue your point, but I'm not exactly sure where you were headed with that...


BTW, Kudos to 3boys message to Mekongcola... lol

I was over in Australia, and everyone's like: "Are you proud to be an American?" And I was like, "Um, I don't know, I didn't have a lot to do with it. You know, my parents farked there, that's about all."

I hate patriotism, I can't stand it. It's a round world last time I checked.






/sorry, but the comedians seem to be making the most sense...

Any one remember when loyalty was a good trait? WTF happened?

Programmer Cat
"That's what egoism is for: I stand for myself, and I only fall for brunettes with sexy accents who wear black stockings."

You left off hostess cupcakes.

Who gives a crap?

Any one remember when loyalty was a good trait? WTF happened?

Loyalty has ntohing to do with pledging allegiance to a god

SchlingFo: A much better approach is how high schools are requiring community service to graduate nowadays.

If I was still doing time, I'd refuse this community service on principle; it's bad enough that I was forced to attend school, but to do "volunteer work" in order to get free of school? To Hell with that; I'd rather just drop out and get my GED. I'm glad I got out before this community service shiat became widespread; it used to be a punishment for minor criminals, and now it's a burden imposed on students.

"Yes, it's indoctrination"

Nice to see facism alive and well...

fibber: You left off hostess cupcakes.

On purpose. They're nasty.

3boys: Any one remember when loyalty was a good trait? WTF happened?


Well, there was that group of asshats who were loyal to Hitler to the bitter end. They did cause a little bit of trouble...

3boys

Any one remember when loyalty was a good trait? WTF happened?

Loyalty has never been a good trait in this context. Loyalty is only beneficial in friendships, as it simply represents a refusal to assess the current situation as it is, and instead work off past conditions.

3boys: Any one remember when loyalty was a good trait? WTF happened?

People started realizing that men are not dogs. If you feel the need to be loyal, be loyal to people who have helped make your life better. Be loyal to your lover, your family, and your friends. Don't waste your loyalty on demons or governments; what have they ever done for you?

SchlingFo:

It never instilled any sense of civics or duty into me. It simply did nothing at all besides take up a minute of my time.

I can't argue with your experience. My experience was different.

A much better approach is how high schools are requiring community service to graduate nowadays. I think that can go a lot further towards showing kids how important civic duty is.

I think requiring community service defeats the purpose entirely and are in fact mutually exclusive, but we can agree to disagree

pwhp_67: I was over in Australia, and everyone's like: "Are you proud to be an American?"

If their tone is anything like I imagine it to be, that was a real dickhead question to ask someone.

I'd probably have just asked them if they were proud to be Australians.

Orange Coast College......Orange Coast College....

Can't WAIT to throw their resumes in the trash :)

Arrogant ignorant little twits.

Finnley Wren: I think requiring community service defeats the purpose entirely and are in fact mutually exclusive, but we can agree to disagree

Yeah, I think from some of the responses, my opinion is the definite minority :)

Well, I'm off to work now. Y'all have a good one!

cchris_39
Orange Coast College......Orange Coast College....

Can't WAIT to throw their resumes in the trash :)

Arrogant ignorant little twits.

So you will be biased against the majority because of a minority?

Oh wait your American. It's what you do.

Militant Athiesm, weird.

Damn straight. Antitheism.
The sooner our planet as a whole stops believing in imaginary friends, the better. Delusional, the lot of ya. :)

serpent_sky

SchlingFo:
A much better approach is how high schools are requiring community service to graduate nowadays. I think that can go a lot further towards showing kids how important civic duty is.

Community service is what they give people as a get out of jail, but not free, card. Ugh. That's horrible to force anyone to do just to get out of high school.

Ugh. I'm so glad I didn't have to deal with that crap to get out of school.


Agreed.

They tried to start this my senior year of high school, but I guess it didn't happen until after I left. That would have sucked. I didn't do anything wrong... why should I get a criminal's punishment?

If you want to serve the community, that's cool, but not by force (unless you are one of the above mentioned criminals).

/Anyway, back to the pledge thing.

"I'm no more an American then I am an Aries or an uncle. It's just something you called me when I showed up."

/Stanhope makes sense to me.

serpent_sky: Why, do you require employees to recite a pledge before work or something?

Maybe he works for a Japanese company where all the workers sing the company anthem before clocking in and after clocking out.

3boys: Any one remember when loyalty was a good trait? WTF happened?


Loyalty is something that is demonstrated, not professed. Words are meaningless. Forcing someone to recite a loyalty oath daily only serves to diminish the meaning behind those words.

Again, words are meaningless and actions should be what counts. That Haggard guy in CO went off every day about how evil fags were and that they were all going to burn in hell and they should be removed from society or they would turn all of our kids teh ghey. Words, words, words....His actions? Banging Male Hookers while doing meth in hotel rooms. How much did his words really mean, then?

Well, there was that group of asshats who were loyal to Hitler to the bitter end. They did cause a little bit of trouble...

Lets just forget about all those who were even more loyal and aligned with their country and stopped them. I thank God for them, you should thank them too, or where would you be now?

Harry Freakstorm: So what are they using for money? Doesn't the coin of the realm say something like "in God we trust?" I'm not sure. I don't have money.

It says "In God We Trust" because the government expects everybody else to pay cash.

Thanks for the link, SchlingFo. Interesting how this article makes the students seem much more level-headed about their decision. The NewsMax article makes it sound like the students were threatening to shoot anybody who said the pledge.

CANKERSNORE'S BRILLIANT ANALYSIS OF THE ARTICLE:

"Student leaders at a California college have touched off a furor by banning the Pledge of Allegiance at their meetings, saying they see no reason to publicly swear loyalty to God and the U.S. government."

- The article is inaccurate here, using the term "banning" when a more appropriate word would be "dropping."

"The move by Orange Coast College student trustees... has infuriated some of their classmates -- prompting one young woman to loudly recite the pledge in front of the board Wednesday night in defiance of the rule."

- Again, the article has not established that there is a "rule" against reciting the pledge. The writer seems to be purposely misrepresenting the story to win "outrage" points among NewsMax readers. In any case, this image -- of a woman loudly reciting the pledge to be defiant -- makes her seem just as kooky as anybody else in the story.

"America is the one thing I'm passionate about and I can't let them take that away from me," 18-year-old political science major Christine Zoldos told Reuters."

- That's a goofy quote. How is anybody taking away her passion for the country by removing the pledge from a college meeting? Scarier still is the fact that she's a political science major. Ummmm....you might want to re-take those 100-level courses, Ms. Zoldos.

"The fact that they have enough power to ban one of the most valued traditions in America is just horrible," Zoldos said, adding she would attend every board meeting to salute the flag.

- This is an asshat statement. The pledge is not "one of the most valued traditions in America." It's just a school ritual. Does anybody really enjoy it? The best thing I can think to say about it is that it provides a formal start to the school day, getting kids into "serious" mode before learning. I suppose one could make a strained argument that it reminds the children of immigrants that they should consider themselves a part of the U.S. more than of the country their parents are from.

"The move was lead by three recently elected student trustees, who ran for office wearing revolutionary-style berets and said they do not believe in publicly swearing an oath to the American flag and government at their school."

- Granted, the berets are a bit much. (Funny how the same hat that represents tough Marines can also convey an image of radical Socialism.) I have no argument with them regarding their lack of a belief in the value of the oath, though. At this point in the article, their asshat level is still far below the young woman who proclaimed her passion for the pledge.

"One student trustee voted against the measure, which does not apply to other student groups or campus meetings."

- Funny how the NewsMax writer buries this important detail several graphs down. It's just one campus meeting. So they stopped saying the pledge. It's really no big deal. The very fact that people chose to make a "furor" over this says something about their poor judgment in choosing battles.

"The ban follows a 2002 ruling by a federal appeals court in San Francisco that said forcing school children to recite the pledge was unconstitutional because of the phrase "under God.""

- I agree with this. The "under God" part does violate the separation of church and state, and it is antithetical to the melting-pot values of the country. This alone is a strong reason to reject the recitation of the pledge.

""That ('under God') part is sort of offensive to me," student trustee Jason Bell, who proposed the ban, told Reuters. "I am an atheist and a socialist, and if you know your history, you know that 'under God' was inserted during the McCarthy era and was directly designed to destroy my ideology.""

- Bell overreaches a bit here with the "designed to destroy my ideology" bit, but he's basically right. They added "under God" to make a political statement, not really caring whether it was appropriate or in line with U.S. principles, which it isn't.

"Bell said the ban largely came about because the trustees didn't want to publicly vow loyalty to the American government before their meetings. "Loyalty ought to be something the government earns through performance, not through reciting a pledge," he said."

- That's the third time the writer has used the word "ban" without substantiation. Nowhere in the article is it made clear what that means that the "ban" is merely a decision to stop making the pledge part of procedure. This is why NewsMax is crap.

All in all, I have no idea why any of this makes people upset. Tatsuma, your early posts on this matter are particularly idiotic, and your "don't force it, don't ban" it view makes no practical sense whatsoever.

Programmer Cat

So you dont believe this nation has made your life better? Have you been kept in the basement you whole life or what?

So if another country offered you $ to do something against this country you would because after all you have no loyalty to the US.

Why is loyalty automatically assumed to be the kind of blind loyalty the germans gave the nazis?

SchlingFo: If their tone is anything like I imagine it to be, that was a real dickhead question to ask someone.

I get the idea that other nations don't make such a fuss about Proud To Be ___________ as Americans do.

No?

Tyee: Lets just forget about all those who were even more loyal and aligned with their country and stopped them.

How do you figure they were "more loyal and aligned with their country?" Nazism was pretty much the apex of nationalistic fanaticism. They indoctrinated from youth to think that Germany was destined to rule the entire planet.

Finnley Wren: I think requiring community service defeats the purpose entirely and are in fact mutually exclusive, but we can agree to disagree

So, you think that compulsory community service defeats the purpose of community service, but you *don't* think that a compulsory loyalty oath defeats the purpose of loyalty oaths? That's quite an interesting way of looking at things...

The Homer Tax: That's quite an interesting way of looking at things...

And quite an interesting way of interpreting something that I never said!

3boys: So if another country offered you $ to do something against this country you would because after all you have no loyalty to the US.

I have no loyalty to my neighbors. That doesn't mean I'd accept money to kill them. Not wanting to risk going to prison is plenty of disincentive.

MARK MY WORDS

In the MSM, the greenlit threads/articles/stories will now shift back to California for the goofy news crap.

Better make a Cali tag now.

No one should be forced to do anything, and by force I also include social "you must fit in" as well as "it is the law".

So there is nothing wrong with NOT saying the POA, and there is really nothing wrong with not be blindly loyal to your government.

The other side of the coin is that if you WANT to do these things you should be permitted so long as no one is hurt.

Ok, it gets sticky when folks want to celebrate the Nazis or other horrid types, but what can you do? You cannot have it both ways. My reason is if your an idiot you have the right to be an idiot, and I have the right to call you an idiot if you do something idiotic. You have the right to ignore me.

cankersnore: Why do you agree with his Boobiess? They're just puffed-up, angry nonsense that don't even make sense if you read the article or think about the situation for more than 3 seconds.

Boisterous, impassioned rhetoric often attracts more support than reason.

Guy
Ask them, they were so committed they were willing to give their lives. Spend a little time with WWII vets while you still have a chance to find some.

I can say that the ONE good thing about growing up as a Jehovah's Witness was that I never HAD to stand up and say the pledge in elementary school. I still did (for fear of be "different" and somehow ostracized, like most kids are that age) but it was nice to have the choice protected by my religious freedom.

3boys: So you don't believe this nation has made your life better? Have you been kept in the basement you whole life or what?

I don't believe that the government has done anything to make my life better. You see, back on my home planet, our people distinguish between society (which is the sum of individuals interacting with each other) and government (which is a few people trying to boss around the rest). We're OK with society, but we view government as a parasite.

Unfortunately, with a few exceptions (such as Thomas Paine), you humans have yet to learn that society and government are not one and the same.

3boys: Why is loyalty automatically assumed to be the kind of blind loyalty the germans gave the nazis?

Because it's accompanied by a compulsory daily oath? One that if you resuse to say it because you find it insulting, you get reamed out as being a "Traitor," some who would even suggest punishing you by death?

They're just words, forcing people to say them removes all meaning from them. Loyalty and devotion is something that is demonstrated, not recited...why do words mean so much to you?

Im quite dissapointed that this many posts into a newsmax article no-one has posted the guy farking the floor that the liberal media doesnt want republicans to score with teh hot chixx.

Still, ive got firefox, so there is a chance they stopped showing them and I never noticed....

good for them

3boys: So if another country offered you $ to do something against this country you would because after all you have no loyalty to the US.

You humans sure do like to jump to conclusions. No, I'm not loyal to the US government. On the other hand, I have no reason to war against my neighbors. They've done me no harm.

Tyee
Lets just forget about all those who were even more loyal and aligned with their country and stopped them. I thank God for them, you should thank them too, or where would you be now?

Do you not understand its about loyalty?

Hitler's soldiers were blindly loyal, doing evil things. People around the WORLD united to stop them.

It's not Loyalty 1 vs Loyalty 2. This is Mortal Kombat: Loyality. This isn't a loyalty contest. MY LOYAL IS BIGGER THAN YOURS

Finnley Wren: And quite an interesting way of interpreting something that I never said!


My bad, I interpreted the "mutually exclusive" thing incorrectly. I think it's a pretty valid point, though. Requiring Community service removes the meaning from community service much like requiring a loyalty oath.