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that whole pledge thing...
Jun. 28th, 2002 03:43 amI need to go to sleep in a few minutes, but first...
I was watching the news this morning and the local news station (all news! all the time!) had this congressman on who is from an Orlando district. I remember thinking what an inexperienced jackass this guy was when he was running two years ago... he looks like fucking Pugsley Addams all-grown-up, and prattles on about how pro-life he is and how he wants to bring religion back to government. Whatever, dude. His campaign ads made me want to live in his district, just for the opportunity to vote for his opponent... but I digress.
Anyway, he was on the news griping about how the Pledge of Allegiance decision (something I had figured out for myself many and many a year ago, yo) was made by "the WORST and MOST LIBERAL judges, out there in that San Francisco court! Their stuff ALWAYS gets overturned by the Supreme Court!" (uh, the one loaded with heavily partisan Republicans, you mean?) He went on and on to complain about how they're interfering with civil rights (?!?) and are partisan and blah blah blah. The anchor was having a lot of fun with him... basically mocking him the entire time and pointing out how full of shit he was (there is nothing more partisan than a conservative Republican trying to force as much religion into civic life as possible)... and it was refreshing.
The Pledge of Allegiance is entirely a 20th-century thing. It was written in, IIRC, the 1890s. "under God" wasn't added until the *1950s*... this is not the very backbone of the country being broken. Remove that phrase from the Pledge, and while it's still a sneaky little thing, it's no longer unconstitutional. My cousin does not even stand up for the Pledge in school (his parents have requested that he not say it), and I used to either say "watermelon watermelon watermelon" through the whole thing, or do the Bart Simpson version, or the abbreviated Bart (which is to replace the religious bit with "one nation, underpants"), or just not say that part. At any rate, religion does not belong in school: part of free religious rights in the US is the right to not have a religion, and compulsory saying of the Pledge of Allegiance as it currently stands interferes with that.
Sometimes it's just so embarrassing to be American.
I was watching the news this morning and the local news station (all news! all the time!) had this congressman on who is from an Orlando district. I remember thinking what an inexperienced jackass this guy was when he was running two years ago... he looks like fucking Pugsley Addams all-grown-up, and prattles on about how pro-life he is and how he wants to bring religion back to government. Whatever, dude. His campaign ads made me want to live in his district, just for the opportunity to vote for his opponent... but I digress.
Anyway, he was on the news griping about how the Pledge of Allegiance decision (something I had figured out for myself many and many a year ago, yo) was made by "the WORST and MOST LIBERAL judges, out there in that San Francisco court! Their stuff ALWAYS gets overturned by the Supreme Court!" (uh, the one loaded with heavily partisan Republicans, you mean?) He went on and on to complain about how they're interfering with civil rights (?!?) and are partisan and blah blah blah. The anchor was having a lot of fun with him... basically mocking him the entire time and pointing out how full of shit he was (there is nothing more partisan than a conservative Republican trying to force as much religion into civic life as possible)... and it was refreshing.
The Pledge of Allegiance is entirely a 20th-century thing. It was written in, IIRC, the 1890s. "under God" wasn't added until the *1950s*... this is not the very backbone of the country being broken. Remove that phrase from the Pledge, and while it's still a sneaky little thing, it's no longer unconstitutional. My cousin does not even stand up for the Pledge in school (his parents have requested that he not say it), and I used to either say "watermelon watermelon watermelon" through the whole thing, or do the Bart Simpson version, or the abbreviated Bart (which is to replace the religious bit with "one nation, underpants"), or just not say that part. At any rate, religion does not belong in school: part of free religious rights in the US is the right to not have a religion, and compulsory saying of the Pledge of Allegiance as it currently stands interferes with that.
Sometimes it's just so embarrassing to be American.
