And why was there a law banning abortion at all? And why was it later allowed only in the first few weeks? Perhaps the religious beliefs of the legislators had something to do with it?
Our abortion laws were overturned despite any religous beliefs, because the Supreme Court found them to be in violation of the Constitution.
You have only asserted that religious subsidies could never influence a religion. Are the Jehovah’s Wittnesses subsidized? Scientologists? Mormons? The power to tax is the power to destroy. The way the US does it is to prevent any problems, not because there are guaranteed to be problems.
Jimmy Carter is far more religious than Bush - but he, properly, never let his religion interfere with his civic duty. No matter what you might think of him as President, he is a great example of how private religious beliefs don’t have to disqualify one for office. Bush is a putz, but his religion is hardly his biggest problem.
BTW, I lived in the Congo in 1961, right after the Belgians left. Read the history of the Congo some time. Don’t give me that Belgians can never do wrong - they can be and have been as evil or more evil than any other country, even America.
I disagree. In many schools, the pledge is a ceremony that the entire class participates in. Even if a student goes against the school and refuses to say the pledge, they are often subjected to ridicule and/or harassment. To say that they aren’t “required” to say the pledge is a technicality; they can’t be arrested for it, but they are commonly pressured to participate.
You may not have in your class, or even your school, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen elsewhere.
Of course we all messed up the words when we were kids, either purposely or out of ignorance (“invisible” instead of indivisible, etc.), but the objectionable part is not what is usually messed up, i.e. “one nation under God”. It’s simple, concise, and quite obviously a violation of the Establishment Clause. Even a kid knows what “one nation under God” means.
I was looking for more information on Supreme Court decisions at religioustolerance.com when I saw a short list of countries where religious freedom is declining. And guess what. Belgium made the list:
blowero, the only time I have heard about problems have been in the handful of court cases that have been filed about it. Unless you can provide more specific information from a reliable source, I must rely on my own observations as a teacher (and a student) and the profession literature on the subject.
I can understand making a few mistakes in the Pledge. But my students went to the chalkboard one at a time. One began writing the Pledge. He or she could keep going until a mistake was made and the next kid would take over. I went completely through the entire class and started over again before it was finally finished with “with liberty and gusto for all.” I gave up.
As for myself, I refuse to take the Pledge. I have never been harrassed.
The big issue is not whether children are forced to say “under God” or the Pledge itself. The issue is whether or not the words “under God” should be removed.
I am the person who did the research, and I did give a citation — look back at my original post on the matter. Here is the citation again: President Bush’s radio addresses.
As for President Bush’s press conferences, use the advanced search feature here. Search for documents that “must contain” “in the body” “the words” God, and “must contain” “in the title” “the phrase” press conference dated “on or after” 1 January 2003.
If court cases have been filed, then it’s obviously a problem. I’ll try to do some research on specific cases, but the SDMB is about to go dark, so it’ll have to wait 'til tomorrow. But I’m curious, how many times would it have to happen in order to be wrong? Things may have changed, but when I was a kid, we were not given the option of not saying the pledge. Everyone did it - period.
I agree that’s more important (although both are important issues). I was just responding to what you wrote. You said children aren’t forced to take the pledge, so I responded.
Yes, and I believe that many schools are now refusing to comply with that ruling. But, whether the pledge itself (rather than the “God” part) is a problem, is an entirely different issue, though.
Well, thanks for your helpful comments, but if you think I’m a jingoist, you obviously have a different definition than I do.
My objection to Aldebaran’s posts has nothing to do with his national origin or command of English. What does concern me is his habit of posting endless anti-American rants in GD, of asking ‘questions’ as an excuse to repeat those rants nearly verbatim, and his apparently deliberate ignoring of any factual meterial shows his opinions may be unfounded.
You know, if his English is not so good, that’s fine with me. I’d prefer to think that is the case, rather than that he might be just another troll with some time to kill.
You can relax now too. The train has already wrecked, several times over, and there’s really nothing more to say.
Free speech covers a lot of ground. If you’re looking for a line in the sand, it is somewhere between suggesting a course of action and implementing a course of action. Although I would consider posting something like “THE ten commandments” to be culturally insensative it is not implying a desire to convert people as they walk by. The US Supreme Court took considerable license when they interpreted the Constitution’s law invoking Church/State separation. If a ban on the mention of God was the intent of the founding fathers, I would expect it to be better spelled out. I fall in the catagory of those people who believe the Constitution was one of the most thoughtfully considered documents ever written. I give the writers considerably more credit (mentally) than the people in the Supreme Court today.
I am not thrilled with the monument in question because it is so culturally limiting in country that thrives on diversity. The 10 commandments by themselves don’t warrant the loss of free speech that the Supreme Court has ascribed to them. If I were decorating a court, I would post a history of laws to see where they originated from and how other cultures have adapted them. The 10 commandments could easily fall into such a display.
I would agree with El_Kabong, Alderbaran has consistently posted extremely negative posts against President Bush. I’m not trying to interfere with free speech, I’m just pointing out his agenda.
I’m not sure if he deliberately ignored my response to his quest to learn what others think the word “Islam” means or if it subconsciously stuck in his craw. My response was “fundamentalism”.
I again make the premise that Aldebaran does not understand the meaning of the word Fundamentalism and why it is used in the media to denote a religiously zealous person.
Zealous practice of a religion, ** ANY** religion, makes it easier to subvert the devoted follower to do things that are not considered part of the religion. I think, based on his earlier statements, that Alderbaran would agree with this.
Alderbaran quote: (snip)
Islamic terrorists can’t exist since nothing what any terrorist can ever do can be called Islamic.
These are the facts. All the rest is fantasy.
This implies that Alderbaran would find the actions of Mullahs who call for “the death of America” to be blasphemous and will result in the damnation of all who follow.
I didn’t have time last night, but I went to the White House site that Walloon linked to, and did a little searching of my own. I searched “speeches and remarks” for the word “god”.
624 results found
I’m curious why, if you are trying to make a point about how often Bush refers to God, that you would entirely leave out his SPEECHES in your analysis.
That’s bad enough, but for El-Kabong to repeatedly say in a smug, arrogant, and condescending tone that Walloon has proven the point, and that the OP is refusing to acknowledge it, even when the OP said this:
Well, it’s just downright embarassing for you, isn’t it?
Walloon, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you just overlooked Bush’s speeches, and didn’t deliberately exclude data in order to give a false impression, but IMO, it’s pretty sloppy research.
By the way, if you search the whole site for God, lord and almighty, you get:
God - 953:eek:
Lord - 415 (could have other meanings though)
Almighty - 124
Even if you discount the references to “Lord” that aren’t religious, we’re still averaging about one reference to God a day for this administration.
Three things, then I really am done with this mess, promise:
I think you’ve got your sequence a bit out of whack there. My main complaint was that A had clearly ignored Walloon’s rebuttal to his claim that Bush refers to God “constantly”. It would appear that he only acknowledged that this rebuttal even existed after being prodded several times, then claimed that the information was wrong, despite the citation. If I gave the impression I was still claiming lack of acknowledgement, sorry; I was referring to the OP’s overall and persistent habit of ignoring rebuttals in favor of restatements of claims already dealt with.
Likewise, my apologies to all if my remarks have come off as smug, arrogant or condescending. One would think that if such a label could be applied to any of my responses in the thread, they could be equally applied to many of the OP’s remarks, and certainly prior to my joining the discussion. But, like, whatever. Despite what anyone may think, I don’t want to pick fights, but I do object to having my leg peed on and being told it’s raining.
Blowero, I really don’t know who you are are, but if you’ve a serious problem with my 'tude, feel free to launch a Pit thread on the subject. My guess is you’ll get some agreement.
But, I don’t think I can call that “religious fanaticism” (or even fanatism). To me, a religious fanatic has to talk about their religion excessively and act upon their religion excessively.
I know, that leaves me defining “excessively.” I’d say Bush qualifies as someone who talks excessively about his religion: He interjects religion into discussions where I feel religion isn’t warranted.
But, and this might just be me, that isn’t enough for me to call someone a fanatic.
But it was wrong, or at least misleading. I’m not agreeing with everything the OP says, or defending his caustic style; I’m just saying that you’re wrong on this particular point. He did not ignore Walloon’s rebuttal; in fact he responded at least a couple of times. He plainly stated that he was not talking about press conferences and weekly radio addresses only, which was what Walloon’s response was about. Bush does talk about God a lot, as even a cursory look at his speeches clearly shows.
Apology accepted.
I never said the OP wasn’t being condescending, but then he’s already getting ganged up on pretty well, so there’s not much left for me to say on the subject. But just because you don’t care for his tone, and it insults your sense of patriotism, it doesn’t give you the right to continue to espouse misleading information about the Bush Administration. In this case it really is raining; you just thought your leg was getting peed on.
I’m just a fighter of ignorance.
Nah, no need for that. I just thought you were coming on a bit strong on this one point, and I felt like I needed to inject a little reason into the discussion. The guy had already responded; I just wanted you to stop browbeating him.
I limited the time period to 2003; you’re drawing from 2001-2003. If you search on “speeches and remarks” and limit the results to 2003 (as I did also for radio addresses and press conferences), you get 131 uses of the word God by President Bush (5 additional are from speeches by the vice president and his wife), out of about 285 speeches and remarks.
If you look even closer, you find that most of those uses are boilerplate closing lines to his speeches, e.g., “Thank you for coming, and God bless.”
Searching for almighty among “speeches and remarks” finds 26 uses, but virtually all of those are from the phrase Almighty God, and thus are already included in the 131 uses above.
