Raphael #fundie

Raphael #fundie rr-bb.com

[On a Massachusetts group apparently wanting to ban the Pledge of Allegiance]

If they were as smart as they think, they would simply legislate progressive changes:

"I pledge allegiance to the United States, and to the Republic for which it stands..."

"I pledge allegiance to the free peoples of Earth, and to this country, a fellow nation..."

"I pledge allegiance to the Global Directive, and to the economic and cultural control which it provides..."

"Hail Satan"

68 comments

old comment by Doubting Thomas

The group wanting to ban the pledge is partially right in that they claim it's close to McCarthyism. When some Jehovah's Witness children didn't say the pledge in school because of religious reasons about not making oaths, the other kids bullied them for not being patriotic enough. And when some atheist kids don't want to say "under God," they get bullied as well.

Personally, I agree with what others have said. Why do children need to repeat the pledge every morning? I would think that pledging allegiance once would be sufficient. I think that it's really a sneaky way for Christian school administrators & teachers to get kids to acknowledge God every day.

old comment by Philbert McAdamia

@ ScrappyB
I had to recite the pledge of allegiance every day in school from first grade through high school. The problem with requiring kids to say it so damn often is it becomes something with no meaning. It's just words you say because you're expected to say them, and you never think about the meaning behind the verses.
-----------
By the time I got to high school ('58) there were very few of us actually saying any of it out loud. Mumbled at best. And it was led on the loud speakers before class started, so we might be anywhere on campus, not looking at each other all in the same room, to see whether or not we were doing it. So one day in the Admin Building, when Zeke Slusser recited it real loud, and with a straight face, it was real funny.

It all reminds me of Joe Heller's Glorious Loyalty Oaths in Catch 22. Even if you''re in the active military, in a war, and you're taking the oath 4 times a day, you aren't as patriotic as the ones doing it 5 times a day.

old comment by Truth Sword

Western nations and Western Civilization have produced more liberty and more prosperity for more people than any other culture in History. Christianity is the foundation of the culture upon which Western civilization was built. A genuinely Christian populace will reject collectivism and support individualism. A genuine Christian populace will live moral lives and thus they will support governmental policy that encourages individual, personal, moral responsibility. A genuine Christian populace will reject collectivism and centralized government. A morally debauched populace will look to the government to support them and shelter them from their bad moral choices. Thus for the collectivist Liberal bent on imposing socialism upon a nation, Christianity is the number one enemy above all other enemies. Christianity must be eliminated.

Despite decades of spectacular failure in nation after nation, the Liberal clings to his collectivist dream because it is far more than a theory of government. It is a religion.

The Liberal seeks to dominate any institution that can interfere with, weaken or destroy individual parental rights. Thus you will note that Liberals completely control and dominate public schools, child abuse agencies, pediatric associations, welfare departments, social service agencies and all NGO's that feign concern for the welfare of children. Why? Because in order for Liberals to impose socialism upon a people, they must undermine the ability of the people to govern themselves according to God's moral law. To accomplish this they must weaken the main support of morality. Strong families are one of the greatest threats to the final goals of Liberalism. The total disintegration of the American family in recent decades among some ethnic communities has occurred as a direct result of the design and intention of Liberals. Feel the hate. Hate is good when directed at these demonic Liberals who are the avowed enemies of God, Family Values and freedom.

old comment by Dr. Shrinker

@ Truth Sword

<<A genuinely Christian populace will reject collectivism and support individualism.>>

You've never read Galatians, Corinthians or Thessalonians I see. Try it some time. Notice how these letters discuss issues for the community? Heck, the letters themselves are addressed to the communities, unlike the forged epistles of Paul like Titus and Timothy. That's because early Christianity put collectivism above individualism, as it describes in Acts (which, I am guessing, you have never read either).

As for the rest of your post, its just the standard Tea Party rhetoric: liberal = atheism = socialism = bad. You are clearly just repeating propaganda, without having expended a minutes' thought on it. If, as I assume you live in the US, you are taking the rewards of decades of liberal activism for granted. And when your conservative "saviors" follow through with their plans to take those rewards away from you, you will miss them.

But hey, you'll still have the ignorant, self-righteous jingos that you seem to think of as "Truth."

old comment by Angua

Requiring students to say the Pledge of Allegiance in schools is a violation of the First Amendment. It's also creepily nationalistic and mindless. I don't think we should ask children to pledge their allegiance to anything, but I'd at least understand where people were coming from if they wanted kids to pledge allegiance to freedom or democratic values or the like. But to pledge allegiance not to the values many Americans share, not to the ideals our nation was founded on, not to the values we aspire to, not even to the nation itself -- to instead, pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth -- it's ridiculous. We shouldn't be training our children to be mindless sheep.

That, and the pledge is a complete waste of time. The kids don't need to say it. Kids don't even think about what they're saying, most of the time, they just echo the words thoughtlessly because they're supposed to. You've wasted valuable class time and no one gets anything out of it. Sure, it doesn't take much time on it's own -- but just a few seconds, every day, from kindergarten till the end of high school, ultimately adds up to a lot.

Of course, I don't think it should be banned. I think that if a group of kids wants to say it at lunch or gather around before school at a flag pole to say the pledge, they should be able to do so. People should be allowed to say the pledge, obviously. But it shouldn't be something that schools require.

old comment by Anon-e-moose

@Truth Sword

Norway. Socialised healthcare. Welfare up to the eyeballs; cradle-to-grave. Social Democratic, politics-wise.

With the rest of the Scandinavian countries, it's one of the least religious countries in Europe (Sweden, just 5% of the population are regular churchgoers; less so in Denmark. PROTIP: According to surveys/polls conducted by the EU, the Czech Republic is the least religious country in Europe).

Guess which is the only country to have effectively emerged out of this Dumbya-created worldwide recession unscathed.

'Truth Sword', eh...?:

image

(*Loads Barrett M82A1 of Reason with the .50 cal. Depleted Uranium rounds of Atheistic Logic and Facts; racks back slide and chambers round*)

image

BOOM! Headshot!:

image

>:D

I live in the UK. We invented Socialised Medicine, via our National Health Service, in the late 1940s. We're still here. Oh, and many women here can have an abortion free via our NHS. Suck it, fundie. Left-wing Atheism - and secular democracy is more than infinitely superior, and you know it. Your God-Emperor of Fucking Up, George Dumbya Bush proves that.

Take it from someone who lived through the decade of Maggie Thatcher (*spit*) - the real Antichrist; not for nothing is she the basis of my more than infinite hatred of everything - and everyone - right-wing. She did more damage to my country - industrially, commercially, financially, politically and socially - than Hitler's Luftwaffe/V1s/V2s had ever done.

What more proof do you need - and not just via Dumbya - that the right-wing have the reverse-Midas touch. Everything they touch turns to shit.

Raphael #fundie rr-bb.com

68 comments

Confused?