I never thought it was mandatory anyway....aren't they just being attention whores?

DaShredda
That's my favorite "war poster redux"....thanks for posting it!

You can lead a voter to patriotism, but you can't make him/her pray...

I'm a bisexual social leftie fiscal rightie who is fond of the pledge. I don't feel forced to say it, but I can see how it could raise hackles. I do have an allegiance to this country. I find it, and the (very) general concept of an American culture, to be of great value to me. It helps me find a sense of peace as often as it gives me reason for outrage. I do believe that those who heckle or rebuke anti-pledge folks may feel justified, but do they feel that they are actively helping to acheive the stated goal of an indivisible nation?

/In responding to the 'Like it or move' argument, I always answer that I'm moving the country I live in toward the country I want, and I hope the arguer will be there when I and my friends are finished
//because I feel too mature right now, Bubblefart!

Conservatives, if you want to know how we centrist Democrats feel about douchebags like these, ask yourself how you feel about your fellow "conservatives" in the KKK.

What's that? You don't like being lumped in with bigots? You feel like they are more harmful than helpful to your cause? I can relate.

So What? News Max dredges for this shiat. College kids have always made asinine declarations like this. They always will. 5 minutes after graduation, they will have forgotten about it. The media sells adverts, that is how they get their living. Right wing whackos run to read News Max when it has headlines like these. Again - So What?

Finnley Wren

Agreed, Goth. Someone was trying to put my "all law is interpreted morality" to the test with the most ridiculous law they could think of.

The most ridiculous laws I can think of are the ones targetted towards homosexuals, ie the (former) sodomy laws, anti-homosexual adoption laws, and the current movement to ban homosexuals from marrying their partners. These laws serve no purpose beyond creating a new group of second-class citizens.

Jaywalking laws, on the other hand, have an actual purpose (assuming the roads are actually busy, otherwise they're a waste of ink). They keep traffic flowing smoothly, prevent property damage, and reduce the amount of city resources spent on accident scenes.

If I do say so myself, the theory stands up pretty well.

Not really, no. You tried to use "natural law" as a justification for legislating bigotry against something natural (not just natural, but beneficial to social groups as well).

I agree with Tatsuma here if you don't like thje pledge or don't like to pray simply don't. But don't ban anyone else's right to say it. I personally don't like either myself so won't say them but I fully repect anyone else's right to say them if they like. Stop being a farking ass just because you don't like something. Banning it is as bad as forcing people to say it.

Get out of America, then.

Kurland said:

I agree with Tatsuma here if you don't like thje pledge or don't like to pray simply don't. But don't ban anyone else's right to say it. I personally don't like either myself so won't say them but I fully repect anyone else's right to say them if they like. Stop being a farking ass just because you don't like something. Banning it is as bad as forcing people to say it.

But no one "banned" anything.

A group simply decided to no longer use the pledge before their meetings.

People are still free to wander around the campus randomly saying the Pledge of Allegiance to their heart's content. They can say the pledge in their dorm rooms, in the hallways, on the stairs, in the cafeteria, out in the middle of the quad, or anywhere else that they feel like saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

No one "banned" anything.

The entire article from Newsmax (and Rueters) was phrased poorly, and phrased in such a way as to create a polarizing reaction. A "troll", if you will.

SkinnyHead said:

Did you say the current movement to ban homosexual marriage? Ain't that been the law since just about forever?

Actually, no.

There were laws against "Sodomy" in many places... but the social norms were such that most places never thought they'd NEED to actually have a law on the books making homosexual MARRAIGE illegal.

So... the current conservative/homophobe movement is working to try to quickly get actual laws on the books banning Homosexual Marraige specifically.

And... in the long run, they'll all be overturned, just as the Miscegenation and "race mixing" laws were all eventually overturned.

Then the "conservatives" will find some new group to hate, and the cycle will begin again.

;)

Hang the traitors. Pussies.

Why the crap should they have the right to ban the Pledge of Allegiance on the basis of it being religious, when the government has forced any colleges receiving government funding to accept gays? Seems to me that the latter far outweighs the former.

If you don't like the pledge, move to a different country. Refusing to say the pledge is far more un-American than it is non-religious.

Though his mind is not for rent
to any God or government
always hopeful yet discontent
he knows changes aren't permanent
but change is

/Rush fan

those great minds at orange county community college. the upcoming leaders of this country...

j0ndas said:

Why the crap should they have the right to ban the Pledge of Allegiance on the basis of it being religious... ?

They don't and they didn't. No one "banned" the Pledge of Allegiance.

Despite the inacurate phrasing in both the NewsMax article, and the Rueters article, nobody "banned" anything.

They simply freely chose to stop saying the pledge before their meetings.

j0ndas said:

If you don't like the pledge, move to a different country. Refusing to say the pledge is far more un-American than it is non-religious.

If you don't like Freedom of Speech, and if you don't appreciate people having the freedom to chose whether or not they wish to take pledges, then you are un-American.

Perhaps you should move to a place like North Korea, where such things as loyalty oaths and pledges of devotion to the "dear leader" are MANDATORY.

Sounds like you'd fit in there.

Captain Tripps said:

those great minds at orange county community college. the upcoming leaders of this country...

I doubt that community college kids come from families wealthy enough to bail them out of a string of failed oil bussinesses, and I doubt that they are from families rich or connected enough to get their DUIs and other criminal acts expunged...

...so our upcoming leaders will probably come instead from the Skull and Bones fraternity at Yale University.

Like usual.

macdaddy357: The Pledge is a loyalty oath, which is something despots force upon their subjects. Compulsory loyalty oaths and free society are incompatible. It came from the reconstruction era after the Civil War, and was intended to root out unrepentant confederates who believed in a voluntary union of sovereign states, which could secede, not "one nation, indivisible."

Excellent work! But, as shown in DaShredda's capture of the first printed version of the Pledge, there was no comma in "One Nation Indivisible." This is not mere semantics. It's quite important (as is the capitalization).

Instead of going away by 1900 like it should have, this anti-confederate loyalty oath was still around in the 1950s to have "under God" added to it, making it an anti-communist loyalty oath. The cold war is part of the past. The pledge should be, too.

There's another reason "under God' was added, and it's directly relevant as to why the comma and capitalization are significant, and not merely semantics. Read on....


Mouser:

macdaddy357: The pledge makes you swear to a symbol. That is idolatry. The symbol doesn't have to be a golden calf. It is no different than bowing down before a statue. It is hard for me to believe that only a few "fringe groups" among Christians like the Jehovah's Witnesses get that.

That's why they added the "under God" part in the 1950s. So that, unlike the athiest Commies who demanded their people worship the State as their god, Christian Americans could in good conscience pledge allegance to a Republic that recognized it was under a higher power.

Partly true, but there was an ulterior motive. It wasn't just to add a mention of God. For that, they could just as easily and grammatically correctly have altered it to say, "One Nation Individisible, under God, with Liberty...," but they didn't.

It was also to placate the Southern congresscritters who really, really resented the fact that the Pledge had all along been an anti-Confederate pledge, forcing generations of good ol' Southern kids to swear to "One Nation Indivisible," as a distinct and cohesive phrase, with no commas nor breaks of any kind. These were people who still sang, "Keep yo' Confederate money, boys: the South's a-gonna rise a-gin!" Now that McCarthy had a new enemy to turn America against, and even Northerners had finally forgotten for the most part that they wanted to punish the former Confederacy, they finally had an excuse to break up and thus weaken that hated "One Nation Indivisible" phrase. They refused to vote for the addition to the Pledge unless it was placed there, to break up and weaken that phrase.


elmo2525: How does the pledge establish a religion again? "Under god" does not define God in anyway. It does not even encourage people to act in a certian way. The only thing it does is describe the United States. You english language gurus please explain the usage of "under God" as used in the pledge. Does it require you to pledge to and God? It would establish a religion if it said pledged to the "Lutheran God" or to "Allah"...

You said it yourself: it describes the United States as being "under God." To those who don't believe in God, they also do not believe that there's a God for the United States to be "under." This is strongly implying that such people cannot be citizens, a violation of the First Amendment.

Ditto "In God We Trust" as our replacement National Motto, which replaced "E Pluribus Unum" in the 1950s, right when the Pledge was also changed, and the new Motto first appeared on coinage and paper money continuously from then to today (it had appeared on some coinage in short spurts from Reconstruction until the 1950s, but not continuously, and never appeared on paper money until the 1950s, and of course was not the official Motto until then [Francis Scott Key and his "The Star-Spangled Banner" poem which became our National Anthem notwithstanding]).

"E Pluribus Unum" is Latin for "Out of Many, One." It's inclusive. It was designed to say that anyone in America could become an American citizen, regardless of beliefs, ethnicity, or any other such differences. "In God We Trust" is just the opposite: In God We Trust; "We" meaning Americans. Therefore, anyone who doesn't "trust in God" is not an American, by that Motto. That's exclusive, not inclusive.

What does it matter? How about having the President of the United States (George H. W. Bush) tell you to your face that atheists should not be considered citizens?

The goverment's job is to do what the people tell it to. No more, no less. Would you pledge allegiance to your dog? Or to a monkey? The government and all its minions should take time every day to pledge its allegiance to us. So they won't forget whose biatch they are.

Godwin'ed faster than any thread I've read yet.

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

"That's the third time the writer has used the word "ban" without substantiation."

You fail at reading comprehension, cankersnore.

Wow, this thread is still going?

All because a tiny group of college students decides to DROP (not BAN!!! drop, as in no longer make it part of their routine) the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance from their meetings.

NewsMax can play some of you people like fiddles.

CrazyFatLady said:

The goverment's job is to do what the people tell it to. No more, no less. Would you pledge allegiance to your dog? Or to a monkey? The government and all its minions should take time every day to pledge its allegiance to us. So they won't forget whose biatch they are.

That's the most insightfull and intelligent thing that has been said in this thread.

In fact, I'm going to steal your post, and use it at every opportunity.

:)

I hate the "a" in biatch though, which I didn't write. Because, you know, I'm not 12 years old, fark.

SkinnyHead said:

But according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions, same-sex unions were outlawed in Europe in 342 AD.

Sort of. Same-sex unions were banned by the Catholic Church in 342 A.D., and by the rulers under their control.

The reason that they needed to ban them through the use of a formal law, was that the societal norms throughout Europe were not hostile to homosexuality. In fact, some parts of Europe had long had strong traditions of bisexuality among males.

The laws passed by the church against homosexuality were designed to curb that widespread activity and to change the societal norms.

By the time that America was founded, over 1400 years later, the pre-Catholic animistic and polytheistic traditions of Europe had largely been eradicated. By fire and the sword where neccesary... and the level of taboo against any sort of sexuality that deviated from the norms demanded by the Catholic Church was high enough that actual laws on the books weren't really neccesary.

SkinnyHead said:

The article also states that same sex unions before that were pederastic relationships. Pederastic? Where have we heard that word lately?

Before 342 AD? Of course. Homosexual relations closely followed the model of Heterosexual relations that existed in 342 AD.

Assuming that a female wasn't born into slavery, and assuming that she hadn't been carted off by sea raiders pillaging the coastline for slaves and plunder, and assuming that she wasn't taken as the spoils of war after the sack of a city, or the conquest of a region.... then she'd have beeen married off within a year or two of her first menstruation to a male who had enough standing and wealth in the community to support a family.

That is to say, married off in an arranged marraige somewhere between 12 and 16 years old, to a male who was at least 17 or 18. If the female in question was a member of the nobility, and there were noble bloodlines and property rights at stake, then her husband could concievably be much much older.

History. Unlike the Hollywood versions of history that you see, the people from an eon-and-a-half ago weren't just like modern-day Americans, but in homespun clothes and carrying swords.

They were absolutely, *completely* different in their outlook, their attitudes, and their societal norms.

I_C_Weener said:

Nothing worse than a jaywalker. Nothing.

Double-parkers. On busy streets. During peak commute hours.

The fark righties (I'm not talking normal, cool, regular righties here) love these threads. They likey don't recite the pledge everday (unless they're still in junior high), but it certainly gives them a chance to show that their e-penises are bigger than everyone else's.

How often does anybody even say the pledge of allegiance? Seriously, I've never actually heard anybody recite it who wasn't in an elementary school.

Some silly college kids decided not to say the pledge and this is news?

They must be farkin' LOVING this.

Eh, suck it conservatives.

I most certainly owe no allegiance to an imaginary God. I'm with them on that. For the most part, I don't have a whole lot of allegiance to America either, but what they don't realize, and I do, is that America has done a LOT for them, including, most likely funding the school they're doing this in. If there is one thing I've learned, it's don't bite the hand that feeds you. So while I'm not a mega patriot that would loudly recite the pledge in a meeting like a complete dipshiat, I'm also not stupid enough to forget where my freedom, and a lot of the things I take for granted come from. So yeah, I have my problems with America, but I'm not going to sh*t on it either.

Sweet! That's MY COLLEGE, biatches! I am sort of on Fark( kinda, by proxy...ish)! And I completely agree.

You know, if they just removed the "under god", which was only recently inserted in the 50's, I, and just about everyone else opposed to it, would have no problem.

Finnley Wren

My own belief is that human beings are born with a certain innate sense of morality.

Spoken like someone who does not have children. >:)

Tatsuma: Finnley Wren: Isn't morality the very basis for all law?

No, the Golden Rule is. My rights end where yours begin.

No, you're both wrong.

The basis of law is Property.

Check out the Code of Hammurabi, the oldest known body of law.

The darn thing is almost entirely about the enforcement of contracts!

Take a look at the English Common Law, the basis of American Statutory Law.

It's almost entirely about the transfer and retention of property. So much so that crimes against The Person were conceptualized and refered to as Trespasses! I punch you in da nose, that was a trespass against your body.

Essentially the whole notion of wrongs (both criminal and civil) against others was based on cencepts of Property.

Now the whole Lord's Prayer makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? "Forgive us our trespasses..." in the language of the day, meant forgive all of our misdeeds against others.

Religious types can claim all day the law is based in various formulations of the Golden Rule/Second Commandment, whatever.

They are simply wrong.

Property, biatches.

(hope somebody already handled this, in this very long thread)

Some kid wont say the pledge of allegiance?

His parents will be given 30 lashes each, next to the play ground, at recess, a public demonstration to show what happens to bad parents.

Second offense, execution. Should any country choose to accept your non-American ass as theirs, you will be deported.

If you or your kids are too supid to move your mouth on behalf of your own country, you too will be shown the error of your ways.

You can talk crap about your country, you may even be allowed to espress your stupidity by burning its flag, but you will not refuse allegiance and remain a citizen.

You will teach your children to love their country, or you will be shown hard love.

As far as God goes, you know damn well this existance came from somewhere, the basic argument has not been and will not be settled. You may believe this God plays a major role or a minor one in your life, that is up to you. But you will profess your belief in a God while saying the Pledge and when swearing in as a witness in court, or you are simply too stupid to speak, and will be cast into the after life, if there is one, very quickly.

This matter is settled.

Are we allowed to question their patriotism yet?

SkinnyHead: COMALite J: In God We Trust; "We" meaning Americans. Therefore, anyone who doesn't "trust in God" is not an American, by that Motto. That's exclusive, not inclusive.

In Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984), all of the justices of the US Supreme Court expressed the view that "In God We Trust" as the national motto was constitutionally permissible.

And about a dozen decades earlier, the justices of the US Supreme Court expressed the view that slaves were property, not persons. Didn't make it right then, either.