Did you really have to? My two English sons are in US public schools and we have told them to stand respectfully, but not say the words. Of course, we are not there so we don’t know what they actually do.
My son tells me that if you do not stand up during the Pledge that you will most likely get yelled at and at the end get kicked out of the classroom. It’s almost morally reprehensible to sit down during the Pledge in the classroom. This is a problem. He tells me that absolutely no one in the room recites the Pledge nor even looks at the flag. (just stare at the wall next to it) I’d say nearly all students don’t give a hoot about it especially in high school where my son is a freshman. As far as I know the Pledge is absolutely useless and unneeded. Plus think of how disrespecting it is to say ‘Under God’ as well if your son or daughter is an Athiest or Buddhist who does not believe in the Judeo-Christian God.
Yes; sorry. To clarify, I did not mean that the pledge per se is fascist; rather, I meant that forcing people to say it seems somewhat fascist.
Well, actually, various Greek city-states were historically the first to institute a democratic system of gov’t. Apologies.
“…teachings and false senses of guilt or embarassment.”
Now we know about where a definition of morality is from:
ie) is it respectful to wear a hat in a house ?
"...to have a hat worn ~" (or not) is it your teaching (or not)?
It is you that are your morals. ('fairness' now is it of the one's wants is then the rule.)
All until one gets told something like this:
if in NOT telling you about "the hat" noticed you doing~ just as they practiced (believing)
~with respect to the hat (or not) shares,
'But know this, (to one following same practice , but on their own): flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but the Giver of morals did, and on this rock is built together all those called out by such of the Giver's revelation...
And now not so simple,
is it, such that when man sets himself as the 'moral'-giver and his own 'fairness'-definer,
then the next man can simply state
"that may be moral for you to call my senses false,
but for me, your judgement of my morality is false, and not my senses, nor my teachings passed down nearly 3500 years before the victorian era...
Same two views appear:
1) in want ~a person calls false morality within certain senses
what 2) a Giver (not a man) may have revealed for a person to freely choose and teach to others who freely choose to hear for to believe.
POLITELY ASKING:
Is their more 'right' sense in random chance-cooling of this Earth by rain on a hot mass, solidified with a protein soup of life from non-life goo, to be found as living-goo to-the-zoo and then: you , a person now judging what is morally a false sense of guilt?
Or is there more 'right' in a Giver-of-life's 'rights' by design , if chosen freely to believe and realize...?
You know: Is one's relativity REALLY TRUE, or just not absolutely true?
I think it can not be both, knowing what can be chosen in beliefs.Isn’t there some sort of SDMB rule about posting gibberish?
I can see from Geo’s post that I clearly did not drink enough beer tonight.
I agree with Early. I remember saying it every day and never once thinking about what it actually meant. Same with the prayers we said (I went to Catholic schools). I guess “Richard Stands” must be like “monks swimming” in the Hail Mary. “And blessed art thou, a monks swimming”. That’s what I thought I it was.
I’m not really keen on the pledge for school kids. Might be good for the military, but school seems overkill. But I think kids are smart enough, or inattentive enough, to not be duped into blind obedience because they recite the pledge. I don’t see any real harm. Less harm if we took out the “under God” part.
Does anyone have a suggestion for an alternative “ritual” to somehow develop a sense of civic duty in kids? Or is that just not necesary?
Blue: Do you really believe that something can be “somewhat” fascist? Is that like being “somewhat” evil? I don’t get it.
I didn’t really have much choice in the matter - I was a little kid, and had no real idea what the words meant, so didn’t object. I don’t think it occurred to the teachers that there was anything weird about it (My brother and I had quite sweet singing voices at the time, too, and he was selected to sing “My country 'tis of thee”, and I was chosen to sing “This land is my land”, at school assemblies). Though when I got to about eight, I apparently told my parents that when reciting it, because I was English, I didn’t put my hand on my heart, “I put it on the handkerchief in my top pocket”.
Slight hijiack, but I was bemused this last Christmas to get a bookmark made by my son at school bearing his picture and the legend “Proud to be an American” - all the kids in the class made them. Atlanta is a pretty cosmopolitan place; we are surely not the first non-Americans the teacher has come across. Or maybe it is a deliberate attempt to brainwash us.
That reminds me of the skit scene in Billy Jack where the kids beat other kids for not saying the Pledge. By the time they got to “and Liberty and Justice for all” the rebellious students were lying wounded in the floor. Beautiful use of irony.
During the Vietnam War, theater owners began showing a short film of Old Glory waving in the breeze while the national anthem was played. They finally cut it out because it caused a few problems. (See Billy Jack above.)
I had my high school students write the Pledge on the chalkboard. Each student could keep going until she or he made a mistake and the next kid took over. I think everyone made at least one pass at it. It was a riot! They finally finished with the words with Liberty and Gusto for all.
I don’t take the Pledge anymore. I can’t do it with integrity because there are things more important than my country.
But if I were subversive, I wouldn’t think twice about saying it! It would mean nothing to me.
I wonder if people would be so gung-ho about the pledge if they knew that it was originally based on the premise that it would encourage socialism. (In fact, it was originally going to be “liberty, justice, and equality” not just liberty and justice, but equality rubbed segregationists the wrong way.)
Almost every statement in the pledge is there not because of some generalized meaning that we take it be today, but is a reference to some particular ideological and historical conflict that the people behind the pledge wanted to simply bypass and supplant with their own ideology (no different than the addition of the “under God” bit). While the pledge isn’t meant that way today, the theory behind it is extremely suspect in a nation founded by old-school liberals.
The interesting thing is all this history and conflict is now forgotten, and people take the words in the pledge to have very general and bland meanings. I think kids would learn a lot more not by repeating the pledge everyday, but by studying why a particular set of people at particular points in our nation’s history argued for having a pledge. In a large part, the motives were xenophobia and the dream of a socialist state.
Some trivia questions:
How did Americans use to do the flag salute prior to WWII?
What was the original wording of the pledge, before it was nationalized (it’s a very different set of words)?
AAAAAAAAAhgh! Such intemperate Language!
The juxtaposition of the words “fascist” with the “pledge of allegiance” is antithetical. All rational men worth their ration stand agast at this unabashed sacrileage and demand an immediate re-incantation.
Is it not widely known that an oath to a flag is a unifying ritual that serves to give meaning and a collective purpose to intra-acting social units?
Pray to God that you live in a culture that has as a focal point “liberty and justice for all”, because if you malcontents lived in a cannibalistic society and you refused to put a bone through your nose as the tribal unifying symbol you might be the first one et.
And it would serve you right. (So to speak)
AAAAAAAAAhgh! Such intemperate Language!
The juxtaposition of the words “fascist” with the “pledge of allegiance” is antithetical. All rational men worth their ration stand agast at this unabashed sacrileage and demand an immediate re-incantation.
Is it not widely known that an oath to a flag is a unifying ritual that serves to give meaning and a collective purpose to intra-acting social units?
Pray to God that you live in a culture that has as a focal point “liberty and justice for all”, because if you malcontents lived in a cannibalistic society and you refused to put a bone through your nose as the tribal unifying symbol you might be the first one et.
And it would serve you right. (So to speak)
AAAAAAAAAhgh! Such intemperate Language!
The juxtaposition of the words “fascist” with the “pledge of allegiance” is antithetical. All rational men worth their ration stand agast at this unabashed sacrileage and demand an immediate re-incantation.
Is it not widely known that an oath to a flag is a unifying ritual that serves to give meaning and a collective purpose to intra-acting social units?
Pray to God that you live in a culture that has as a focal point “liberty and justice for all”, because if you malcontents lived in a cannibalistic society and you refused to put a bone through your nose as the tribal unifying symbol you might be the first one et.
And it would serve you right. (So to speak)
AAAAAAAAAhgh! Such intemperate Language!
The juxtaposition of the words “fascist” with the “pledge of allegiance” is antithetical. All rational men worth their ration stand agast at this unabashed sacrileage and demand an immediate re-incantation.
Is it not widely known that an oath to a flag is a unifying ritual that serves to give meaning and a collective purpose to intra-acting social units?
Pray to God that you live in a culture that has as a focal point “liberty and justice for all”, because if you malcontents lived in a cannibalistic society and you refused to put a bone through your nose as the tribal unifying symbol you might be the first one et.
And it would serve you right. (So to speak)
Sorry…the damn machine wouldn’t cut off.
There is nothing “antithetical” with juxtaposing a ceremony which has been frequently used as an d hoc loyalty test with fascism. It is quite possible that the PoA is not fascist* and that it may even serve a legitimate purpose, but there is nothing intrinsically antithetical in putting that action in terms of that political movement. The fascists were, indeed, strong supporters of "unifying ritual"s “to give meaning and a collective purpose to intra-acting social units.” In fact, that would be a notable hallmark of both fascist and socialist authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Having removed religion from the lives of the citizens, each group used civil ritual to reinforce their “collective purpose.”
Now, why rational men limited to a fixed supply of goods or food would then call for there to be a second (or is that reverse?) conjuration laid on anyone through the act of singing, (or especially why it should be an immediate need), I am not sure.
- (I find the frequent use of fascism as a(n ahistorical) term of rebuke for every political action emanating from the Right with which one disagrees to be utterly silly–just as hurling the epithet “Communist” at every political action emanating from the Left with which one disagrees is foolish.)
Tom, it is good that you find the word “fascist” overused as a pejorative term that is designed to cast dispersions on the political beliefs of the right,
so then,
how do you yourself compare a pledge that openly declares **“liberty and justice for all.”**with the self-edifying mouthings of Mao, Castro, Saddam, Stalin, Hitler and the rest of this poor world’s mudering tyrants?
Uh…my remark about rational men being not worth their
ration was a silly play on words. Sometimes no one shares my petty amusements… oh well.
And yes. I expect a re-incantation by those who compared the Pledge of Allegiance with the oaths required by tyrants.
And “re-incantation” means for them to apologise and to re-think their poorly-thought-out remarks. So there.
I don’t bother comparing the pledge to any they may have used. I merely note that the same pledge was recited (under compulsion in many cases) while a significant portion of the U.S. population lived with the barest nod of liberty and no justice under Jim Crow laws and while thousands of other citizens were detained and placed in concentration camps with no trials and without presenting any evidence that they had even contemplated any crimes, and that the phrase “under God” was inserted in a blatant attempt to go “nyah, nyah, nyah” at the “godless communists” (while effectively marking every non-theistic or polytheistic citizen of the country as being not under the fancy phrase about justice at the very same time that thousands of other citizens were being denied liberty or the pursuit of happiness based solely on their interest in a certain philosophy when they were in college).
Without actions, the words are simply empty rhetoric and, in light of the actions of this nation, they have gone beyond empty to hypocritical. (Have you ever noticed that the majority of the Marxist states included “democratic” in their formal names? I see little difference.)
Now, I am not opposed to saying the Pledge. I believe that it can be an act to inspire citizens to strive for the goals that it claims for this country. I simply see claims that it cannot be fascist (or authoritarian or totalitarian or whatever), simply because it includes some much ignored phrases, to be silly.
(And an incantation is a magical spell. A re-incantation would seem to be either a repeated spell or a reversed spell.)
Democracy and the Republic are entirely seperate entities.