Haven’t you ever heard of the Bill of Rights ? No matter how many people vote against it, a right is still a right, the Constitution is still the Constitution. If 70 % of the population vote to allow slavery, does that make it legal ? Nope.
Besides, minorities are included in “of the people, by the people, and for the people”. You have no right to ram your beliefs down me or my ( hypothetical ) children’s throats. Just because you think religion is a good thing doesn’t make it so, nor does it mean everyone agrees.
One always hears about how “free” America is, but somehow “free” always seems to mean you are “free” to agree with the majority, whether you like it or not. If “Freedom of religion” doesn’t include freedom from religion, I fail to see how it qualifies as freedom at all.
Of course not. But you have yet to prove that reciting the pledge is equivalent to saying “God exists”. The teacher is not stating anything as fact-- he or she is reciting a text prepared by our government as a ceremonial patriotic act. You would have a stronger case if the pledge were mandatory, but it isn’t. And the reason it’s optional is precisely because we accept that some people do not believe in God, or do not want to pledge allegiance to anything.
Ninety-two percent of the world believes there is a God. There is evidence that
Neanderthal man believed in God through the cave paintings and the fact the dead were buried with their tools indicating a belief in the afterlife.
There is no society in the ancient/modern world that doesn’t believe in God/Gods.
The reason they do is experience not faith. Now if you think you are going to change that and separate all religious expression from this country’s government, or any government, good luck, you are going to need a lot of it.
After you get the words “under God” removed you can start on removing all prayer from government meetings, and don’t forget to get rid of those chaplains in the services. When in Rome, or at least tolerate Rome. Someday you may discover something exciting through experience.
Then they’re relying on peer pressure and a kid desperately not wanting to be an outcast or feel like he’s not as American as the rest of his class when he sits it out.
Repeated recitals of a pledge in which a child claims to belong to ‘one nation, under god’ sure as hell seem like indoctrination to me. I don’t believe I live in a nation ‘under god’ of any kind. Does that mean that I’m unAmerican and shouldn’t be able to pledge my allegiance to my country?
A nation cannot be ‘under god’ unless a god exists. Therefore, in order for the statement to be made that we are a nation under god, one would have to take it as a fact that god exists.
Well quite frankly, I think I should be able to pledge my allegiance to my country in the officially stated manner without having to imply that I accept the existence of god as a fact.
The problem here is that because the Pledge of Allegiance assumes the existence of a god in order to claim that the United States is one nation under god, you have created a dichotomy wherein people who are atheists are in the same league as people who are unwilling to pledge allegiance to their country. Why should my lack of belief in a diety mean that I have to back out on the Pledge of Allegiance? Dropping the words ‘under god’ would make the Pledge inclusive of every American.
First, the Neanderthals were Stone Age subhumans; the fact that they believed something hardly makes it true. Besides, we have no evidence that they believed in gods of any kind. Finally, IIRC the cave paintings are by Cro-Magnons, not Neanderthals.
The fact that so many people are religious doesn’t make it true, nor is it due to experience. No one, anywhere in all of history has had a verifiable “experience” with God. That’s why all religion is based on faith, not rationality whether you choose to admit it or not.
I would love to see all references to religion removed from our money, eliminate prayer at state sponsered/ governmental events and eliminate military chaplains. I don’t expect to happen; not because I am wrong, but because America is sliding towards theocracy.
There are no known Neanderthal cave paintings and no Neanderthal burial cites with tools in them. Speculation about Neanderthal beliefs in an afterlife are based purely on a few Neanderthal burials. But the practice seems to be sporadic.
Just want to clear up some factual inaccuracies on that point.
Peer pressure is a concern, and teachers have to be sensitive to that. But there is no consitutional guarantee to be free of peer pressure. The most probably outcome of repeated recitals of the Pledge is that it becomes an empty exercise devoid of any meaning at all. See below for a response to your last two sentences.
OK, I’ll concede that point. But that’s really a side issue. The real question is whether or not an optional, ceremonial reciting of the Pledge = “teaching desim”.
I do, too. But that’s not the question. The question is: does the constitution forbid the government from including “God” in any of its official pronouncements? I don’t think it does, and neither does the SCOTUS. Your concern would be valid if you were ever REQUIRED to recite the Pledge, or if you were FORBIDEN from reciting the Pledge w/o saying “under God”.
It’s certainly possible to interpret the establishment clause as forbidding any governmental mention of God. But the text is vauge enought that it doesn’t have to be interpreted that way, and in fact requires quite a stretch in order to do so.
You might take some solace in what would happen if we were considering rewording that clause today. In all likelihood, it wouldn’t be quite so vague-- it would explicitly allow “ceremonial deism”, as the Court calls it.
I agree that dropping that phrase would make it more inclusive. I agree that adding the phrase in in the first place was bad public policy. But we cannot assume that “bad public policy” = “unconstitutional”. The legislature is free to set public policy within the boundaries of the constution.
You state that the pledge, as it is, lumps atheists into the same category as those unwilling to pledge allegiance to the country. But you need to prove that, not just state it. The Courts have explicitly upheald your right to Pledge in any manner you feel appropriate. The “unAmerican” argument is something you made up. There is no government policy anywhere that would discriminate against you in any way if you refused to say the Pledge or simply omitted the “under God” part. In fact, even if your employer threatened to fire you for not saying the Pledge, you could take him to court and there is no doubt you’d win.
Getting rid of prayers to open government meetings is probably a good idea. The prayers are usually either so specific as to be offensive to particular believers or so banal as to be offensive to all believers.
Chaplains in the military provide a service to individuals within the military who are removed from their homes. As long as there is no compulsion to follow any faith in the military (although the Navy and Marines traditionally did offer only the “choice” of attending chapel or cleaning quarters), I have no problem with that service being provided. (Interstingly, when the Army has tried to provide Wiccan chaplains, it has been good Christians (like George W. Bush making disparaging remarks and various congresscritters calling for investigations or suspension of funds) who have opposed the idea. The people calling for the “freedom” to place “god” in the Pledge don’t seem all that concerned about religious freedom for others.)
This providing a service for people who cannot attend their own religious services because they have been called away from their communities is a different thing than standing up a group of kids in a classroom and ordering them to pledge allegiance “under God” with the clear knowledge that any kid who tries to sit it out is going to be abused for being different by his classmates (when he is not being abused directly by the teacher).
I think you need to quit espousing programs that have historically led to violence with the acquiescence of pacific people such as yourself, so I guess we are at an impasse. As long as you promote the trampling of minority rights, an activity that has demonstrably led to violent persecution, I will point out the ways in which your ideas are a flouting of both American and Christian ideals.
I thought that we were in agreement that utterances can be other things than “fact” and complete, utter falsehoods. The Pledge is one of those annoying “Ceremonial Deism” utterances that the Courts have in the past held not to be “an establishment of religion.”
To Saint Cad’s comment, I’d like to point out that the reason that we have a variety of laws including age-of-consent laws is that children and adolescents are commonly known to be easily influenced by authority and peer pressure. “Coercion” to a seventh grader is not the hold-a-gun-to-his-head sort of thing it would be to a self-assured adult; it can be ridicule for not adhering to group thought, or the standards other children have been taught.
Therefore, the courts have held that “voluntary” participation is in fact coercion.
It didn’t seem to have much meaning to people who would recite “One nation, with liberty and justice for all” every day and then grow up to enact Jim Crow laws, not allow women to vote, and put Japanese in internment camps.
Amen I grew up as a devote protestant and went to school in a pre-dominantly Roman Catholic city. Every day we said the Lord’s Prayer out loud at the start of the school day. The protestant and Catolic versions are slighty different and I had to decide whether to say it the “right” way and have everyone look at me funny, or say it the “wrong” way and dis-please God. It sounds strange, but that was a really tough thing for me. I was really happy when prayer was out-lawed.
Students? That’s who we’re talking about. The assertion was made that if kids recite the pledge over and over, that is a form of indoctrination. I was replying to that. Do you think most school kids ponder the meaning of the Pledge every morning when they say it, or do they just mumble the words without giving them much thought? I think the latter is more likely. But it’s not central to the debate we’re having-- I was just commenting on the statement that **catsix **made.
It’s incorrect to call Neanderthals “subhuman”. We don’t know that they were any less human than we are-- only that they were a different form of human. They were a separate branch of the genus Homo, contemporaneous with us and not ancestral to us. But even if they were ancestral to us, “subhuman” wouldn’t be an accurate term to use.
(Note that I agreed with the rest of your critique of lekatt’s post in my previous post.)
Cite? And if the Pledge in school is unconstitutional in California because of “under God”, would it be legal in Michigan?
Constitution of Michigan of 1963
Article VIII - Section 1
Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.
The U.S. Constitution trumps the state constitutions where they disagree (someone probably has the Texas State Constitution provision that is obviously discriminatory stashed somewhere; it’s unconstitutional, and not enforced).
At present, the Pledge is not unconstitutional; requiring that it be uttered in a public school is unconstitutional only in the Ninth Circuit (California, Nevada, and perhaps a couple of neighboring states) pending SCOTUS ruling or cases in other circuits. It’s therefore still legal in Michigan, until a decision holds otherwise … subject to the 1941 ruling that says it cannot be mandatory.
Requiring it be uttered in a public school has been unconstitutional for some time. What the 9th circuit ruled unconstitutional in this case is any recitation of the Pledge in public schools.
To correct my last, that’s what the 9th circuit said the last time before it was reversed by the Supreme Court. Reciting the pledge in public schools is currently allowed in the 9th circuit, except for the schools affected by the judge’s order.
Are you sure? I thought this ruling was that a mandatory recitation was unconstitutional. Mandatory in the sense that the schools must lead it, not in the sense that students must say it.
Would this disallow the recitation before a HS football game (ie, something the school chose to do, but was req’d by law to do)?
Your rights are not being violated in any way. If you don’t want to say the pledge then don’t, if you don’t want to hear the pledge carry a pair of ear plugs or go to a private school that don’t say the pledge.
I grew up as a devote protestant and went to school in a pre-dominantly Roman Catholic city. Every day we said the Lord’s Prayer out loud at the start of the school day. The protestant and Catolic versions are slighty different and I had to decide whether to say it the “right” way and have everyone look at me funny, or say it the “wrong” way and dis-please God. It sounds strange, but that was a really tough thing for me. I was really happy when prayer was out-lawed.