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Posted on 07/05/2002 11:38:32 AM PDT by ChiefsMan
Pledge for the Workers
My daughter, who is 11, and I were delighted at the California court decision omitting the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. She and I have always been uncomfortable saying the pledge, not only because of the religious imposition, but because it seems very strange to pledge loyalty to a scrap of cloth representing a corrupt nation that imposes its will, both economic and military, around the world by force. So she inspired me to rewrite the Pledge.
Imagine schoolchildren every day reciting the following:
ledge allegiance to all the ordinary people around the world,
to the laid off Enron workers and the WorldCom workers
the maquiladora workers
and the sweatshop workers from New York to Indonesia,
who labor not under God but under the heel of multinational corporations; I pledge allegiance
to the people of Iraq,
Palestine and Afghanistan,
and to their struggles to survive and resist
slavery to corporate greed,
brutal wars against their families,
and the economic and environmental ruin wrought by global capitalism; I pledge allegiance
to building a better world
where human needs are met
and with real liberty, equality and justice for all.
The original pledge does not include or represent us godless radicals. The backlash against the California decision shows just how thin our democracy is.
Dana Cloud Associate professor Communication studies
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Dana L. Cloud (PhD, University of Iowa, 1992) specializes in the analysis of contemporary and popular and political culture from feminist, Marxist, and critical anti-racist perspectives. She teaches undergraduate classes in persuasion, social movements, speechwriting, and rhetorical criticism, as well as graduate courses in rhetoric and the public sphere, rhetoric and ideology, rhetoric and feminist theory, and rhetoric and popular culture. Dr. Cloud's areas of current research include the critique of therapeutic discourse, feminist and Marxist theories and politics, rhetoric of "family values," and the rhetoric of the U.S. labor movement.
Source: University of Texas - F A C U L T Y : research & teaching
WWW HomepageAddress
http://www.utexas.edu/coc/speech/faculty/DCloud/
Dana Cloud lives in Austin with her daughter, Samantha, who enjoys reading, soccer, and playing the guitar. In her spare time, Professor Cloud enjoys dancing, playing flute in an informal chamber music group, and agitating for social change. She is a longtime member of the International Socialist Organization and supports a number of other organizations against racism, sexism, and war. She also promotes gay and lesbian rights and workers' power at the University of Texas and in the Austin community.
OK. Normally I could understand an 11 year old girl feeling this way. Perhaps having had her thinking manipulated by some radical college student.
But apparently here it is not a radical college student but her own mother. Any women old enough to have an 11year old child should be old enough to have out grown this leftist idealism and come to see the world as it is in reality.
But perhaps this women can be forgiven because she is apparently a college instructor. An instructor who has spent her prime development years isolated in the rarified air of a college campus were reality is filtered thorough the far left idea sieve which ensures that any ideas seated in reality are stopped at the gates of the campus.
On the campuses of this democratic republic ideas must conform to the strict rules of Political Correctness.
These PC ideas must not acknowledge that other nations commit acts of agression against the United States.
These PC ideas must not acknowledge that the United States enjoys the greatest amount of personal freedom in the world.
These PC ideas must acknowledge that PC truth is superior to the truth of reality.
These PC ideas must acknowledge that the United States is always wrong.
That's the problem with these idiots; I never knew a leftist that actually had any constructive ideas about how to change society for the better. All they ever do is bitch, bitch, bitch. I have come to think of it as "sour grapes". They have picked a profession which doesn't pay too well because they really don't want to work very hard. Then they complain about the fact that those working in the private sector make a lot more money, and the way to "fix" that is to give them their "fair share". (Just like Marx, incidentally, who lived off the largesse of his friends for his whole life.)
The Chinese under Mao and the Red Brigades fixed these losers by making them work in the rice paddies for six months out of the year. They called it the "cultural revolution". Its just the kind of thing this "professor" needs. The irony is that that is exactly what she would get if her Marxism theory was put into practice. She is a living example of the idea that one can be "educated into imbecility".
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