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Scarecrow Akhbar said:Very well, I slightly mis-interpreted your post. Happens to everyone. Won't fight over that.
No. The United States Constitution not bounded by any state constitution. Quite the reverse. Nor is it necessary to demonstrate the lawfulness or lack thereof of any or all state constitutions to show that a federal act is in violation of the federal Constitution. Your harping on state constitutions is totally irrelevent and quite the stylish non sequitur.
If it is illegal to recite the Pledge in school, it certainly is illegal to study the your state constitution that acknowledges God in a much more specific way than does the Pledge. This is why I bring up the state constitutions that are NOT illegal to teach in school. You will have to do better than that to prove to me that the Pledge is unconstitutional.
It establishes the religion that God exists.
It refers to any God, or all gods.
It teaches that there is a god, and the the United States is subservient to It.
And how does it do this? Show me the specific phrase that spells that out. My teachers and my kids' teachers taught the significance of each part of the Pledge and what it meant. Did your teachers not do that? Did your teachers not teach you what metaphors are or symbols or icons? Did your teachers not teach you to decipher the imagery of poetry and how words can have different meanings and purposes? If your teachers did not teach you all that, you should sue for malpractice.
It requires all forms or worship, or none. That is irrelevant. I just now invented a religion that establishes worship by saying the word "god". He's the Pledge God. The Pledge God will arrive on Earth when his name is said a trillion trillion times. Every failure to utter His Holy Name delays the day of his arrival.
I can invent a religion as easily as Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Joseph Smith Jr, Charles Manson, L. Ron Hubbard, and Pat Roberston. I just did.
The reward of the Pledge God is one's satisfaction that one's complied with Federal Law and brought the day of His arrival that much closer.
The consequence of not worshipping the Pledge God as ordained is guilty knowledge that you have failed Him and delayed the day of His Coming.
Really. All that from two little words representing the historical and cultural background of our nation's development. You'll excuse me if I think that is overreaching just a whole big bunch.
The utterance of the Holy Word in the Pledge is now part of a religious faith.
Unless the 'holy word' is intended and taught to be symbolic of the religious history that is a fact of the development of this country and should not be ignored.
It can't be a voluntary patriotic excercise when the form of that excercise is defined by federal law.
Unless the law specifically says it is voluntary. Which it does.
That's an easy one. My child is harmed because while I'm trying to teach her to use her mind, and she has a most excellent and sharp mind; while I'm trying to teach her to deal with the real world and understand how the real world operates, she's receiving conflicting signals from persons in authority she's been instructed to respect, her teachers.
Thus she recieves, every morning at school, indoctrination from the government that God exists. So instead of teaching her about the right way to get the Charizard to battle the Pikachu on her Ninentdo, I have to take time to explain to her that God is no more real, but a lot less fun, than a Togepi.
Now, you may not consider that teaching my child how best to defeat imaginary monsters is a good use of time. I could be spending the time teaching her about trees, or improving her dodgeball skills, or whatever, that's not the point. It's not your time. It's my time. It's her time.
And any time lost because it's wasted by superstitious belief, is time lost forever, and that's harm. That's real, measurable, harm.
Sure, I have to deprogram her from because she gets infections from her friends who are victims of their own parents superstitions. There's absolutely no reason why I should have to also fight the federal government, not when the federal constitution forbids exactly that kind of establishment.
There is no requirement that you put your child in a school that is not teaching what you consider to be acceptable for your child. But if your child is being warped, damaged, corrupted, indoctrinated, or having her time usurped by two little words in a Pledge of Allegiance, you have far greater problems that two words in the Pledge. I wonder why all the children of parents who don't take such an interest are not speaking in tongue, or preaching on the playground, or rushing to tent meetings after such indoctrination? Come on. Get real. I have had to explain to my children many facts to correct information that their teachers taught that I knew to be erroneous, and I was able to do that without undermining the authority of the teacher. You have a lot more time with your kids than those teachers do. I recommend you pay attention to everything they are learning and worry less about two little words in a Pledge.
And that's because I said so. It is MY time.
It's everybody else's time too. And if the majority enjoys it, who are you to deny them that small pleasure? And if it is so offensive to you, why don't you make other arrangements for your child so you can be sure he/she is never exposed to anything that makes him/her think or that s/he never has to learn tolerance for anything? Exposure to more than one point of view is not a bad thing in itself.