I pledge allegiance...

I have no time for this pledge. I am an atheist...a PROUD atheist, so you can stick your idea of a omnipotent sky god, which both dangerous and illusionary.

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The whole pledge? Just because of that one phrase?

I'm an atheist too, but I just omit that part. Nothing wrong with the rest of it.

Is a rote patriotic ritual that I for one find kind of creepy. It is simply not that old, and the wording has been tweaked over the years to keep various groups happy (and piss off others).

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Well I guess the same could be said for the amendments also????

so you can stick your idea

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Great thats very high road

No, not the whole pledge. Take out the god part and I think it's fine. On the other hand, I believe in doing right by my friends, my family and my country in my everyday actions. I need not pay lip service to a flag with a quasi-forced pledge when I'm willing to sacrifice everything to support the ideals this country represents.

I'm an etheist too. I doesn't bother me to say "God" in the Pledge. It's doesn't bother me that God is printed on our money. I have much more important things to worry about.

I also seem to be one of the few, religious or not, that understand the concept that Freedom OF religion doesn't mean Freedom FROM religion. The two groups that need to learn that the most seem to be the Atheists and the Jews.

As far as the National Anthem, well, we've played it into the ground. People treat it like an inconvienience because it is an inconvienience. You want a baseball game to get started, you have to wait through a horrible rendition of it. Want to watch the race, again you have to wait through another horrible rendition of it.

Why is it bad to burn the flag but perfectly acceptible to sing our national anthem and crappy way you please. Maybe if the singers had more respect for it, the people listening to it would too.

Well I guess the same could be said for the amendments also????

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Could be, but it'd be inaccurate, to say the least.
The Bill of Rights merely enumerates certain INDIVIDUAL rights which exist independent of them. They do not demand that you prostrate yourself to the government. Rather the opposite, as these Amendments are meant to limit that government's ability to violate those rights. Of course, they've been shot to hell... but at least we still have kids chanting the Pledge, so everything's OK.

I say all of this as a Christian.

The phrase in the pledge also perpetuates the myth of America originating as a "Christian nation". Frankly, that ridiculous notion (the majority of the founding fathers were Deist as were their influences) is responsible for a lot of the division in modern American society as our own brand of religious fundamentalism comes into conflict with rational and pragmatic secular ideas.

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Thanks for pointing that out, 357. The United States was not founded on "Christian principles," though Christianity certainly benefitted from the freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution. Notice that our founding documents reference a Creator and Providence, but make no mention of Moses, Abraham, Jesus, or any other specific figure. Those ambiguous terms appear in documents that are otherwise vers specific due to the influence of the Deists, who left the name, nature, power and involvement of diety up to each believer to decide. Also, why would Christians need to leave Christian Europe to practice Christianity in some new pagan land?

The phrase "under God" was designed to condition the person repeating it every morning to associate the power of Almighty God himself with the government of men. "In God we trust" appears on a fiat currency that cannot be trusted in any way. Incidentally, the Bible spicifically states that gold and silver are the currency of God, and that the creations of man (fiat, paper currency) are worthless... but how can that be when God put his name on the one dollar bill?

If Thomas Jefferson were to write a pledge of allegience... well, he WOULDN'T! If someone forced Jefferson to write the pledge, it would go something like this: I pledge my appreciation to the Republic of several States, as represented by this flag, and my appreciation of my rights, as granted to me by my Creator, and enumerated for posterity within the founding document of this Republic. I pledge my appreciation for the individual rights which I enjoy, and to the divisible nature of our Republic, which allows for the secession of the several States if the republic shall attempt to infringe upon the liberties of its Sovereign Citizens.

RKBABOB wrote:-

I pledge my appreciation to the Republic of several States, as represented by this flag, and my appreciation of my rights, as granted to me by my Creator, and enumerated for posterity within the founding document of this Republic. I pledge my appreciation for the individual rights which I enjoy, and to the divisible nature of our Republic, which allows for the secession of the several States if the republic shall attempt to infringe upon the liberties of its Sovereign Citizens

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+1 on the MOST ELOQUENT and concise statement of what this nation should be about. Less than 100 words and absolutely to the point.

My compliments SIR!!

why did you have to go edit that part out?

why did you have to go edit that part out?

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Since you liked it so much, I put it back.

I am an atheist...a PROUD atheist, so you can stick your idea of a omnipotent sky god, which both dangerous and illusionary.

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What's there to be proud of? Atheism's as much a religious belief as any other. You look at the grandeur that is this planet, examine the many layers of order that must come together to form the whole system, come to the conclusion that all exists simply because it does, and billions of events occured in just the proper sequence by chance to form the world as it is today. THAT is truly a leap of faith.

If Thomas Jefferson were to write a pledge of allegience... well, he WOULDN'T! If someone forced Jefferson to write the pledge, it would go something like this: I pledge my appreciation to the Republic of several States, as represented by this flag, and my appreciation of my rights, as granted to me by my Creator, and enumerated for posterity within the founding document of this Republic. I pledge my appreciation for the individual rights which I enjoy, and to the divisible nature of our Republic, which allows for the secession of the several States if the republic shall attempt to infringe upon the liberties of its Sovereign Citizens.

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Nicely done.

was asking if there were a connection between lack of reverence for time honored traditions, and the lack of respect for the 2nd amendment.

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To some extent, I think you've gotten the answer. When you indoctrinate youth by having them recite a pledge of allegience (especially given the history of it with post civil war politics) that they don't even understand at the time, why should you expect them to see the value in the 2nd amendment? To many of us, these seem to be conflicting messages. Perhaps that is part of what has led us to where we are today.

+1 Soy.

These kids are taught that the USA=Government, and that their allegiance is to same, and that whatever is handed down to them must be right, because it is
The Law.
The thing we've lost has nothing to do with a pledge. Just the opposite. It has to do with folks not thinking for themselves anymore.
They're taught to hand over their lives to some collective of political elites, and a lot of folks yell "Hurray!" because it's all wrapped up in a pretty flag.

Your Wish . . .

Not sure how this got sidetracked, but the mods are free to close it as far as I am concerned.

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. . . is my command.

Thread Closure

I've been asked to re-consider my closing of this thread.

And so I have read every post in it and considered that.

There is one post on the first page that sums up my reason for leaving it closed.

Not gun-related.

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And so, it stays closed. This is precisely the kind of thread that belongs over on Armed Polite Society.

So, I encourage those whose passions have been kindled by this thread to take the discussion over to APS and continue it there.

Unless, of course, there's just not enough passion to warrant discussing it in the hall next door.