A few knuckleheads in the MN legislature doth not a police state make. No mandatory POA law would withstand review by the Supremes, even with the right-wing majority we have now. It’s flat-out unconstitutional.
R-i-i-i-i-ight. Yeah, and UN black helicopters will replace yellow school busses.
gobear: Of course I agree with you that the mandatory pledge laws are unconstitutional. Problem is that there’s been a time or few in the past when unconstitutional laws have survived review by the Supremes.
The more unsettling thing is the fact that the politicians advancing these asinine laws know they’re unconstitutional but are grandstanding so they can get people to vote for them “becuase they’re obviously patriotic.” Silly me: I think it’s quite UNPATRIOTIC to push through a freaking law one knows is unconstitutional.
we are dealing with the socialization process here.
we are talking about brainwashing kids. mostly in grammar school.
the word alliegance is related to liege as in liege lord.
YES my liege, NO my liege, WHERE DO YOU WANT ME TO YOUR ASS my liege.
this is psychological conditioning to be subservient to authority. O’Riely is an authoritarian and expects everybody else to be.
get the Rocky Mountains to pledge alleigance. they were here long before America existed and don’t give a damn.
Dal Timgar
Here in Virginia we have the pledge, and the minute of silence. Rather, THEY have the pledge/minute. I used the minute to draw pantagrams on the board, as it fell under the heading of “prayer, meditation, or other silent activity.” As for the pledge, I remain seated. It is a matter of personal pride to me that the effort of standing up unnecessarily is a worse fate than being singled out in the class.
Oh, well, in two weeks it won’t be my problem anymore.
I love the way these politicians think they honor the USA by violating the very foundations of it.
sigh
Coool!
:kicks the ground:
Man, all I ever got to ride was the dumb old yellow bus, though. We never got to do anything fun back when I was a kid.
I was being sarcastic, well semi-sarcastic/semi-serious, but they don’t have a smiley for that.
Yet.
There was a time when we were proud to say the Pledge in class. I wonder whatever happened to that? Have we now gotten so many freedoms that we can feel free to snub the symbol of our nation if we just don’t feel like standing up and taking the time to say the simple lines? Is it going to take another bloody war to bring back the patriotism?
Someone once said that the Liberty Tree needed to be watered by the blood of patriots from time to time.
Could this actually be true?
So, to show our appreciation for our freedom of speech and freedom of religion and all-around freedom of conscience, we should insist on infringing on those freedoms for others?
I mean, no one is holding a gun to your head forcing you or anyone else not to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
Yep.
Oh. You mean that as a bad thing, right?
If someone doesn’t want to say the pledge of allegiance, what does it matter? And what does it say about our “freedoms” if they’re forced to do so anyway? If you intend to pay your respect to the flag by standing and saying a few lines every now and then, by all means, go right ahead. Personally, I think protecting the freedoms of the people is a much better way to show one’s respect for the ideals of this country than repeating the same sentances everyone else does.
Could someone please explain how patriotism is a virtue in and of itself. We’ve come a long way from a time when blacks were slaves, women were men’s property, and all other minorities had to live in ghettos. We didn’t get here by saying “Gee willikers, this sure is a super country - let’s all repeat how great it is over and over”. The ability to question authority is precisely what makes this country great.
And I’m sure many people still are proud. But when I was in school it was “I plead alignment with the flakes…” My mother remembers a similar version from when she was in school in the 1950s - and I have a textbook from the 1920s with some other creative interpretation written in the front cover. I doubt there was ever such a time where everyone was proud to say the pledge and no third grader dared to mangle it.
chula wrote:
I thought it was what Bilbo Baggins became whenever he put on the ring of power.
Really? I’m 53 and can remember saying the pledge just about every day in elementary school. I was never proud to be saying it, but neither was I unproud (if that’s a word) or anything else. It was just something that was done much like taking roll. Like most of the other kids I just mouthed the words along with the teacher.
My parents are in their 80’s. When they were in school they never said the pledge nor did they have a morning prayer or anything else. Yet they and their classmates became “The Greatest Generation” with all those qualities that reciting the pledge and morning prayers are supposed to imbue us with.
And you are saying, … what? That this is good that kids mangle the pledge that that parents should not allow them to say it if they do not want to, that no form of patriotism should be encouraged in the schools? It seems to me that similar leniency has gotten us into the mess where we are today with kids where Generation X, Y, or Z suddenly feel that they can do what they want, when they want and for whatever reason they want with impunity.
So, removing the Pledge is a good thing? Have you no pride in your nation? Have you no respect for those soldiers who have gone on before you to make sure that you can freely run your mouths and eat hamburgers and fries? Is it such a big thing? What is next? Telling your kids that if they do not want to go to school, that they do not have to, regardless of the law of the land?
I’m a member of Generation Y. I said the pledge every day in school for six years. For four of them, I even knew what all the words were and what they meant.
The words rapidly lost all meaning. When I hear the Pledge of Alliegence nowadays, I don’t think of the patriots who fought and died so that I could be free. I think of Mr. Andrews’ class, and how I used to occupy myself by memorizing the Periodic Table during the moment of silence. I think of that girl who sat beside me in 5th grade, who I used to sneak glances at out of the corner of my eye. I think of the hum of flourescent lights.
The Pledge should mean something. To people who’ve repeated it every school day of their lives, it won’t.
What I’m saying, Omnivor, is that patriotism does not benefit from having kids robotically repeat a bunch of words no matter what they are. My parent’s generation did not recite the pledge of allegiance, yet no one questions their patriotism or the sacrifices they made for their country.
My generation - the hippies - and subsequent generations have been required to recite the pledge over and over yet by your own admission they are the ones showing a lack of patriotism.
The only pattern I can see here is that the more you force patriotism on someone the more likely they are to pull away from it.
I agree that it was a few years before I realized what the Pledge was, but I hold no grudge for being required to say it. It was just another requirement of going to school, one of many things I had to learn in order to know that I was not going to get my way whenever I wanted it and that in order to fit in with society, that I often would have to conform. Sometimes, I felt some pride in saying the Pledge, knowing through history classes what a great nation we were and how America was the best place to live in the world.
I don’t know, but I’m old school and I see stopping the pledge as just one more bit of necessary control being dropped from teaching our kids not to be little animals. I see it as being a further weakening or taking for granted of our great nation and the symbols which glorify Her.
I see it as contributing to the greater dumbing down of America.
Saying the pledge over and over by rote at a scheduled time every day doesn’t make one a patriot any more than saying the Our Father over and over by rote at a scheduled time every week makes one a Christian.
If you’re concerned about that, shouldn’t we not waste time on non-educational nonsense like moments of silence and pledges of allegiance, and teach kids some math during that time or something?
I am struck by the variety of arguments against a mandatory POA
– POA in general is OK, but this one is just big words about a piece of cloth.
– Any POA is wrong; would be merely symbolic.
– Patriotism = Jingoism = bad.
– Patriotism is good, but the POA is the wrong way to teach it
– Group rituals are bad – breed conformity
– All rituals are bad
– Mentions God.
– Infringes Freedom of Speech
– Infringes Freedom of Religion
– Slippery slope – Brainwashing; Nazis; Stalinism; soldiers with M-16’s.
– POA is silly, pointless, meaningless to the kids
– POA is good for kids, but should be voluntary, not compulsory.
IMHO there is something to all of these arguments, but none of them is particularly strong. The wide variety of weak arguments suggests that the POA is simply out of style today (at least for most Dopers.) Posters are stretching to find reasons to justify conforming to current thought.
(No doubt their conformity was engendered by being forced to recite the POA as children. 
)