From: nerdland.net
I have been searching for the words to say this for a while. This is great.



I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. However, I do not pledge any allegiance to our current government which, over the past few months more than ever, has trampled upon the very rights and freedoms which allow this nation to exist. I pledge allegiance to the republic defined by the constitution, where there is liberty and justice for ALL, not just the majority.

It is the document without which black people would still toil in fields as slaves, without which women would not be able to vote, and without which there would still be two schools in every town, two sections to every bus, and two drinking fountains in every hallway. These examples represent the triumph of a minority over a government which was violating its own laws. People who contradict these decisions today are called bigots. People who contradicted the same type of ruling yesterday were called heros.

If the government wants to change the rules - to eliminate or modify the establishment clause of the first amendment - let them do so the legal way, with a twenty-eighth amendment. I would like to see two thirds of the House, two thirds of the Senate, the President, and three fourths of the United States as a whole come together and state unequivocally that the United States believes in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and that no other religions matter. I fervently hope that there are not enough bigots in this country in this day and age to do that.

People seem to lack the skill of empathy - putting oneself in another's shoes. If you are a Christian, you have no objection to you or or children pledging to or affirming the existence of your god. But how would you feel if every morning in school, your child had to pledge to someone else's god? I suspect enrollment in parochial schools would increase dramatically. There are a lot of deeply committed Christians in this county who would be offended at such a thing. But they seem to forget about all the deeply committed Hindus, Agnostics, Buddhists, Atheists, Taoists and others who are just as offended at the way things are now. If it's only correct because it's your god, you obviously aren't thinking about the constitutionality of the statement, only about your personal beliefs.

People try to justify these prejudices by claiming that this country was founded on a religious basis, and that our founding fathers had intended this nation to be Christian. I hate to break it to all of you, but most of our founding fathers were Deist, not Christian. God is not mentioned once in the Constitution. The motto "In God We Trust" and the "under God" portion of the Pledge of Allegiance were not added until the mid 1950's during the height of McCarthyism, and after a strong political push from a Catholic activist group. Anyone who says that these phrases are cultural and not religious is just fishing for justification for their own religious biases.

I'll tell you what ideal this country WAS founded on, though. Freedom from the tyranny of the majority. Anyone who has had a basic American History class in High School remembers the Great Compromise, during the constitutional convention, which created the Senate. It was to help protect smaller states in the minority against being subjected to the will of the majority. It is for this same reason that the electoral college exists. Remember, when you recite the Pledge of Allegiance, you are pledging allegiance to a nation with liberty and justice for ALL, not just the majority.

Whenever establishment clause rulings are handed down, many parents are cast into an uproar under the false assumption that this ruling can stop your child from professing his belief in his or her religion in school. Following suit with the government today, these people seem to have forgotten about how the first amendment works. The state cannot dictate what your child says in school. They can only dictate what their agents, the teachers, instruct the children to say. Teachers should not be able to instruct children to affirm the belief of god any more then they should be able to instruct children to deny it.

No one is trying to kill Christianity; all anyone is asking for is tolerance and neutrality, and for the government of this nation to follow its own rules laid down years ago by the very forefathers whom people like to attribute their religion to. No one in this nation has the moral high ground over anyone else. Have we forgotten the Declaration of Independence's key statement, "All men are created equal"? Not just white people, not just males, not just heterosexuals, and certainly not just Christians.

With how popular tolerance has become recently, why is it still okay to hate polytheists, atheists, and agnostics simply because of their religious views? Certainly no politician would publicly state that Jews were not real United States citizens, or that Asian Americans were not real United States citizens, and yet, George Bush Sr. can say the very same thing about Atheists and no one minds.

Other than trying to rationalize that this country is a Christian nation, which it most certainly is not, I have heard two other arguments against striking such things as "under God" from United States Code. The first is the argument that because references to God are used in the congress, in the judicial system, on money, and in many other places in the government, that it is okay. No, it is not okay. In fact, that is just a list of more places where the government is violating the constitution. Would it be okay to violate the thirteenth amendment, as long as we place a lot of people into slavery? Or to violate the sixth amendment, as long as many trials were kept secret? Or would murder be okay, as long as one killed in many different places? The fact that something wrong is common does not make it right.

The other argument I hear is that the entire thing is frivolous, and that people are just looking for a reason to feel persecuted. I've already argued the importance of keeping the government playing by the rules above, however even if you don't believe that, its frivolity is not the issue. I don't care if people are persecuted by or against their will. The fact that they can be persecuted is the serious problem. If I can look for and find a way to be persecuted by the government, then, do we truly live in a place that can be called "the land of the free"? No, we live in a place where we can still be ridiculed by the government, in public, for our personal beliefs. We live in a place where minorities are still demonized and ignored by the government in the twenty-first century. We live in one nation, under bigotry.





THANKS NERDLAND!