juliaoceania
Posts: 21383
Joined: 4/19/2006 From: Somewhere Over the Rainbow Status: offline
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quote:
How do you feel about the the Star Spangled Banner? How about the Preamble to the Constitution? These are also things children are excepted to memorize. I recall a million things i had to memorize in school. Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance was the easiest... and oddly enough... has no affected my critical thinking skills, my desire to ask questions, to push for solutions or to be able to determine what parts of government, and society, i view as wrong. Has it affected yours? I wish kids recited the preamble to the constitution, or even different parts of the constitution, every year. That would make sense to me, the pledge IS a loyalty oath. I has nothing to do with the constitution. I understand that the government ran school has a right to make students recite loyalty oaths, but I do not support them. I have no emotional connection to the pledge nor to the Star Spangled Banner, which is a song about war... and I am a peacenik so I do not get emotional over that. It leaves me cold. Now the Preamble, that is a beautiful document. I love it. But the fact of the matter is that kids don't recite that document... instead they pledge to a symbol that is basically a war banner, that is what flags are, a standard for the military. Do not even get me started on the "god" portion of the pledge... If you look back on why the pledge was started, it was started by a socialist who was also a flag sales person. He wanted to drum up excitement for Flag Day, so he wrote the pledge and went to schools to sell flags with it... true story. What about that should cause me some emotional reaction? Why should you be emotionally impacted by it? Could it be that the tradition of reciting it for years had a brainwashing impact on you and now you cannot conceive of having kids NOT do it? Why the emotionality toward a series of words that have nothing to do with the founding of this nation? It reminds me of that story "The Box"
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Once you label me, you negate me ~ Soren Kierkegaard Reality has a well known Liberal Bias ~ Stephen Colbert Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt
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