"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.
Well, "under God" was not in the original Pledge. Does that mean that Americans who recited the Pledge before 1954 were less patriotic.
ReplyDeleteI have a post about this on my own blog. As an atheist with a son in kindergarten, my accomodation with society on this matter is to simply omit the words "under God." However, it has also recently occured to me that I could also substitute "under cod". They are so close phonetically that no one would be likely to notice.
I don't have a problem with people not saying "under God" when they say the Pledge. If I were an atheist, I'd probably do the same. But these kids take the freedoms they already enjoy for granted so much that they think the government hasn't "earned" their respect. Oh, the hubris of the young.
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