Thursday, November 09, 2006

Banning the Pledge

Some students at a California college have banned the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of their meetings.

"That ('under God') part is sort of offensive to me," student trustee Jason Bell, who proposed the ban, told Reuters. "I am an atheist and a socialist, and if you know your history, you know that 'under God' was inserted during the McCarthy era and was directly designed to destroy my ideology."

Good God (oops! there I go again) I can certainly understand why reciting the pledge would destroy a person's faith in...atheism? Oh well, these protests just aren't what they used to be.

Bell said the ban largely came about because the trustees didn't want to publicly vow loyalty to the American government before their meetings. "Loyalty ought to be something the government earns through performance, not through reciting a pledge," he said.

It's interesting that Bell thinks the government owes him something to get his loyalty. I guess the fact that he lives in a country that guarantees his right to not recite the pledge ("freedom of conscience") isn't enough.