Godless American History 100 2003-10-15

Well, people are making a stink about the Pledge of Allegiance again. Specifically about that whole "one nation under God, indivisible" part.
Seems people think that it's a government endorsement of religion, and that reciting the Pledge everyday before class starts in many elementary schools is being manipulative of some very impressionable minds.

Now, I certainly agree with the first arguement, and while I agree in principle with the second, factually it's pretty much a load of crap.
Have you spent any amount of time with a group of kids these days? I'm just talking in general, now, and not specifically about your kid.
Kids these days, man oh man. If they haven't been drugged up to deal with ADHD (which I also like to call "Lack of Parenting" in most cases, though I think that it can be an actual problem, just not in the widespread sense that it is now), they've been raised on television and video games-- by a generation of people who resolutely refuse to take responsibility for their actions.
Kids these days have no respect for anyone. They talk back to their parents, their teachers, and store owners who are trying to kick them out for being a disturbance. They have worse language than sailors. Hell, they have worse language than me! They live moment by moment, never giving a thought or a care to what comes next. They live as if the world existed for the sole pleasure of pleasing them.

Now, do you really think kids like this are gonna give a fuck about what goes on in a classroom? About some pledge that generates about the same interest in them as a test? Kids are smart. They know that learning has no place in school. All you need to do is be able to mimic back to the teacher what they've told you. You certainly don't need to hold onto it after you've graduated. You don't need to learn it, you just need to get a good grade.

That being said (and please, pardon my earlier cynicism. See Disclaimer), I'm sure there are the few odd children for whom school is impressionable. If it is, then wouldn't home life be impressionable as well? If you are anti-God, and the school is pro-God (or at least promoting a Pledge that is pro-God), where does the kid stand? Your hackles raise at the idea that the school is impressing upon the child a God you don't believe in, that the school is not allowing the child to make a choice. But if the child is getting pro-God from school and anti-God from you, wouldn't the child be in the perfect position to make a choice? Seeing how he or she is getting both sides of the matter? And if you're pro-God, then you obviously have no problem with school being pro-God, and you don't really want your child to have a choice, since for you the choice is between heaven and hell, and you'll be damned if your child chooses hell.(Heh.)

So anyway, yeah, I don't think it matters whether the Pledge is said in schools or not. But the first argument-- well, let's just say that "under God" should never have been there in the first place.

And wouldn't you know it? When the Pledge was written in 1892, "under God" wasn't there in the first place. The Pledge wasn't even endorsed by Congress until 1942, and in 1943 the Supreme Court allowed it to be recited in schools, but said that it was by no means mandatory that children recite it.
It wasn't until 1954 that Congress added "under God" to the Pledge, and the reason they did so was to underscore the difference between America and all those godless Commies in Russia and China. So of course it passed with flying colors. Anyone who disagreed with it was presumed to be a Red, and in that era of McCarthyist politics, a Red was someone no one wanted to be. (See also: The Crucible. See also Elia Kazan.)

(Oh yeah, by Red, I mean Communist, for those lacking in American history)

So the next time you hear someone bluster and blow about America being founded on religon, and all of America's religious tradition, and how all the heathen atheist and homosexuals are trying to take God out of America, tell them the story of the Pledge, and how God was never actually in America. And if you want to really rub their nose in it, you can remind them that the Pilgrims were actually fleeing God when they came to America, preferring instead to worship in a manner of their own choosing.