my take on the pledge of allegiance thing
Jun. 26th, 2002 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strangeanimal... you know, the whole "Under God" being unconstitutional bit...
... and as a preface here, i'm canadian. but moving to the USA quite soon. and not terribly religious. just so y'all know where i'm coming from.
i'm personally surprised that this even got as far as a federal appeals court. it's two words, which some people have issues with, ergo they must try to get Someone In Authority to agree with them. since opinions always carry more weight in the court of public opinion if Someone does.
which they did. for now, until it's appealed to a higher court. who will probably overturn this ruling. costing the taxpayer untold sums of money in the process.
net result: nothing. people who believe in God (or a god) will likely insert "under God" when they recite the Pledge, whether it's kept in the text or not. and it's their right to.
likewise, people who choose not to say it, can, and given the whole "freedom of speech" article, should be able to not say those two words, or replace them with the Higher Power of their choice.
which, IMHO, people could/should be doing anyway. nobody is forcing anyone to believe in the presumably Judeo-Christian God in the Pledge. and it's the good old U S of A, where nobody's going to drag you off to jail for choosing not to say a few words, or believe in a different deity. it may ruffle a few feathers, but really, what doesn't ruffle feathers these days?
ultimately, cases such as this will almost always end in a stalemate. if you placate one side, you piss off the other. so then you either hug the fence, or reverse the decision and change nothing.
which sounds pretty much like your standard democratic multi-party system to me, but anyway.
i just hope that common sense in people's capability to make their own decisions will prevail, trusting people to voice their worship, or lack thereof, if they so choose, and that citizens and governments will find more important issues to concentrate on than this... debating two words in the Pledge of Allegiance doesn't put food on the table or medicine in the sick.
... and FWIW, "O Canada" mentions God... "... God keep our land, glorious and free". and i'll defend anyone's right to have the choice to sing that line, or not to.
... great quotes from the above story, from the judge on the panel who voted against the ruling. for it or agin it, they make you think about the potential impact.
Circuit Judge Ferdinand Fernandez, who agreed with some elements of the decision but disagreed with the overall opinion, said phrases such as "under God" or "In God We Trust" have "no tendency to establish religion in this country," except in the eyes of those who "most fervently would like to drive all tincture of religion out of the public life of our polity."
"My reading of the stelliscript [majority ruling] suggests that upon Newdow's theory of our Constitution, accepted by my colleagues today, we will soon find ourselves prohibited from using our album of patriotic songs in many public settings," Fernandez wrote.
"'God Bless America' and 'America the Beautiful' will be gone for sure, and while use of the first and second stanzas of the Star Spangled Banner will still be permissible, we will be precluded from straying into the third. And currency beware!"
... and as a preface here, i'm canadian. but moving to the USA quite soon. and not terribly religious. just so y'all know where i'm coming from.
i'm personally surprised that this even got as far as a federal appeals court. it's two words, which some people have issues with, ergo they must try to get Someone In Authority to agree with them. since opinions always carry more weight in the court of public opinion if Someone does.
which they did. for now, until it's appealed to a higher court. who will probably overturn this ruling. costing the taxpayer untold sums of money in the process.
net result: nothing. people who believe in God (or a god) will likely insert "under God" when they recite the Pledge, whether it's kept in the text or not. and it's their right to.
likewise, people who choose not to say it, can, and given the whole "freedom of speech" article, should be able to not say those two words, or replace them with the Higher Power of their choice.
which, IMHO, people could/should be doing anyway. nobody is forcing anyone to believe in the presumably Judeo-Christian God in the Pledge. and it's the good old U S of A, where nobody's going to drag you off to jail for choosing not to say a few words, or believe in a different deity. it may ruffle a few feathers, but really, what doesn't ruffle feathers these days?
ultimately, cases such as this will almost always end in a stalemate. if you placate one side, you piss off the other. so then you either hug the fence, or reverse the decision and change nothing.
which sounds pretty much like your standard democratic multi-party system to me, but anyway.
i just hope that common sense in people's capability to make their own decisions will prevail, trusting people to voice their worship, or lack thereof, if they so choose, and that citizens and governments will find more important issues to concentrate on than this... debating two words in the Pledge of Allegiance doesn't put food on the table or medicine in the sick.
... and FWIW, "O Canada" mentions God... "... God keep our land, glorious and free". and i'll defend anyone's right to have the choice to sing that line, or not to.
... great quotes from the above story, from the judge on the panel who voted against the ruling. for it or agin it, they make you think about the potential impact.
Circuit Judge Ferdinand Fernandez, who agreed with some elements of the decision but disagreed with the overall opinion, said phrases such as "under God" or "In God We Trust" have "no tendency to establish religion in this country," except in the eyes of those who "most fervently would like to drive all tincture of religion out of the public life of our polity."
"My reading of the stelliscript [majority ruling] suggests that upon Newdow's theory of our Constitution, accepted by my colleagues today, we will soon find ourselves prohibited from using our album of patriotic songs in many public settings," Fernandez wrote.
"'God Bless America' and 'America the Beautiful' will be gone for sure, and while use of the first and second stanzas of the Star Spangled Banner will still be permissible, we will be precluded from straying into the third. And currency beware!"
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Pledge
Date: 2002-06-26 09:31 pm (UTC)Re: Pledge
Date: 2002-06-27 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-06-27 06:41 am (UTC)net result: nothing. people who believe in God (or a god) will likely insert "under God" when they recite the Pledge, whether it's kept in the text or not. and it's their right to.
The net result is people are talking about it. The net result is we've made progress in taking "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. It's not like it's going to be gone in one fell swoop. Baby steps. The phrase was put there in 1954 because of our fear of "those godless Communists". It's not like it's a phrase that was always there. It doesn't have some great, long, wonderful tradition. Both of my parents are older than that phrase.
debating two words in the Pledge of Allegiance doesn't put food on the table or medicine in the sick.
No but insuring religious freedoms is one of the things that makes this country appealing to immigrants. It's our mix of people from all over the world that makes us strong. Even in these economic hard times, we are better off than the majority of the people in the world when it comes to people being feed and the sick having medicine and our economy is a direct result of our political freedoms. So maybe debating two words in the Pledge of Allegiance doesn't put food on the table or medicine in the sick tomorrow, but it does provide food and medicine for several generations to come by insuring our political and religious freedoms. Life is not a zero-sum game, it's more complicated than that.
Re:
Date: 2002-06-27 03:48 pm (UTC)(is this our first political debate?) :)