Moby Grape wrote:
Quote:
School Officials in Mass. Town Won't Let Students Recite Pledge of Allegiance
Fox News, by Todd Starnes
When Sean Harrington entered his freshman year at Arlington High School, he noticed something peculiar: There were no American flags in the classrooms, and no one recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
So Harrington enlisted the aid of his fellow students, and now, three years later, they have succeeded in getting flags installed in the classrooms. But the pledge still will not be recited.
The Arlington, Mass., school committee has rejected the 17-year-old's request to allow students to voluntarily recite the Pledge of Allegiance, because some educators are concerned that it would be hard to find teachers willing to recite it, according to a report in the Arlington Patch. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/29/ma ... llegiance/ The Pledge of Allegiance was written by an avowed socialist. You should be jumping up and down rallying against this socialist pledge. Even it's original publication was nothing more than a marketing ploy. The owner of the magazine that published it also owned a company that manufactured flags. It was part of a campaign to put flags into every classroom and government office in the country.
Even the Cato Institute sees irony of the conservative support of the issue ......
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3296Quote:
But any conservatives so inclined should think about what they're defending. What's so conservative about the Pledge?
Very little, as it turns out. From its inception, in 1892, the Pledge has been a slavish ritual of devotion to the state, wholly inappropriate for a free people. It was written by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist pushed out of his post as a Baptist minister for delivering pulpit-pounding sermons on such topics as "Jesus the Socialist." Bellamy was devoted to the ideas of his more-famous cousin Edward Bellamy, author of the 1888 utopian novel Looking Backward. Looking Backward describes the future United States as a regimented worker's paradise where everyone has equal incomes, and men are drafted into the country's "industrial army" at the age of 21, serving in the jobs assigned them by the state. Bellamy's novel was extremely popular, selling more copies than other any 19th century American novel except Uncle Tom's Cabin. Bellamy's book inspired a movement of "Nationalist Clubs," whose members campaigned for a government takeover of the economy. A few years before he wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, Francis Bellamy became a founding member of Boston's first Nationalist Club.
After leaving the pulpit, Francis Bellamy decided to advance his authoritarian ideas through the public schools. Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance for Youth's Companion, a popular children's magazine. With the aid of the National Education Association, Bellamy and the editors of Youth's Companion got the Pledge adopted as part of the National Public School Celebration on Columbus Day 1892.
Bellamy's recommended ritual for honoring the flag had students all but goosestepping their way through the Pledge: "At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the Flag the military salute--right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it... At the words, 'to my Flag,' the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, towards the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side." After the rise of Nazism, this form of salute was thought to be in poor taste, to say the least, and replaced with today's hand-on-heart gesture.
Login
FAQ
Search
