Posted on 01/25/2013 4:10:57 PM PST by hoagy62
PHOENIX -- Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would give Arizona high school seniors the option to recite a loyalty oath before they graduate.
Originally, House Bill 2467 would have made the oath a prerequisite for graduation from any public high school in the state. The Arizona Capitol Times reported the change Tuesday.
"To me it's not a Republican bill, it's not a Democrat bill, it's an American bill," said Rep. Steve Smith of Maricopa, one of the bill's sponsors. "People feel that our high school kids that will be adults should understand their role as an American citizen."
(Excerpt) Read more at ktar.com ...
Atheists are protesting, saying that they either have to refuse to say the oath and face not graduating, or say it and lie, which they also don't want to do.
Is this even legal or constitutional?
I also saw that the language of the bill changed, saying that it was now an option.
That’s just stupid and accomplishes nothing
Some of the graduates may not be US citizens for a variety of reasons. If the parents have a legal L-1 or H1B visa, or even a green card, it is perfectly possible that they are citizens of another country, and plan to return there.
It says it’s optional, so who gives a crud?
Two problems I have with this. Firstly, why do we occasionally pretend oaths still matter in our contractual/egalitarian society? Secondly, why would we have to pledge allegiance to anything, including the Constitution, if the people are sovereign? I understand if you’re serving as an officer of the constitutional government. But since when did being a good citizen require allegiance to scraps of paper? Those laws are to pen in the state, not us.
They are atheists...what do they care if they lie about it?
I believe we all ought to commit ourselves, privately or openly, with or without formal oaths, to bearing "allegiance to scraps of paper". Those "scraps of paper" are all that stands between us and tyranny.
Ping
Exactly. Liberals don't mind lying and will still betray our country even after taking an oath. Conservatives are already loyal to America and to freedom. The oath is unnecessary in this situation. An oath for soldiers and vows for marriage (the real thing, not gay "marriage") are worth doing, for a ceremony marking a major transition and acceptance of new responsibilities, but not for a graduation that mainly signifies having sat in a chair enough days each year for twelve years.
Regarding the constitutionality of requiring the oath, there are no constitutional prohibitions with the states making such requirements per se. However, sadly, if AZ doesn’t make the reference to God optional, then AZ deserves to fall flat on its face with this bill because of inevitable 1st and 14th Amendment issues imo.
Next, are AZ schools actually teaching students the Constitution as the Founding States had meant for it to be understood, or is this oath pure theater like DC lawmakers give us? Otherwise, AZ is unthinkingly requiring students to essentially swear to protect and defend PC interpretations of the Constitution that they get from radical teachers; students might as well get the Constitution from the streets.
This is good enough:
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
You assume everyone wishes to defend the Constitution, which isn’t in evidence. Obviously if we want to keep it we must actively defend it and not rely on hollow legislate. What really killed the Constitution, assuming as I do it no longer has the force of law, though, was an ideological shift from relative laissez-faire to progressivism. So it was not the scrap of paper itself, no, but how people esteemed it, or didn’t.
This points rather to Natural Law as what to which we must pledge our allegiance. Pledging allegiance to the Constitution stinks to me of idolatry. Should we wish to hold politicians to the Constitution, it might be better to do so through promoting Natural Law, partly which the positive law of the Constitution embodies.
By the way, when I asked why we occasionally pretend to still be an oath taking culture, the answer I believe is social control. Oaths are necessary for hierarchical societies. Your betters, ones in a higher caste, pledge to defend you, and you pledge to obey them. This arrangement persists in certain aspects of our civilization, for instance the family, churches, various clubs, etc. But it has nothing to do with the relation of citizen to government in the contemporary U.S.
You assume everyone wishes to defend the Constitution, which isn’t in evidence. Obviously if we want to keep it we must actively defend it and not rely on hollow legislate. What really killed the Constitution, assuming as I do it no longer has the force of law, though, was an ideological shift from relative laissez-faire to progressivism. So it was not the scrap of paper itself, no, but how people esteemed it, or didn’t.
This points rather to Natural Law as what to which we must pledge our allegiance. Pledging allegiance to the Constitution stinks to me of idolatry. Should we wish to hold politicians to the Constitution, it might be better to do so through promoting Natural Law, partly which the positive law of the Constitution embodies.
By the way, when I asked why we occasionally pretend to still be an oath taking culture, the answer I believe is social control. Oaths are necessary for hierarchical societies. Your betters, ones in a higher caste, pledge to defend you, and you pledge to obey them. This arrangement persists in certain aspects of our civilization, for instance the family, churches, various clubs, etc. But it has nothing to do with the relation of citizen to government in the contemporary U.S.
You forget Communist Goal Number 13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
Such a move is one in the right direction.
I would propose that they actually teach courses on the constitution in schools.
No, I don't.
I do wish to defend the Constitution; I took an oath to do so, and meant it. It was required for me to embark upon my chosen voluntary employment, but contained little that I had not, from my extreme youth, already determined to do. There are more than a couple other people who agree with me in this.
...assuming as I do it no longer has the force of law...
Enough of it survives that the President still felt compelled to campaign for re-election on schedule, and probably would have felt compelled to leave office had the vote count gone the other way. Enough of the Second Amendment survives that the would-be tyrants among us are still talking about so-called "reasonable control" rather than door-to-door SWAT-led confiscation. I could go on, but won't.
This points rather to Natural Law as what to which we must pledge our allegiance.
Please point to where the "Natural Law" is written out and everyone agrees on what it is, reather than being a nebulous construct (Like a recipe for hash) that is whatever a person says it is. For me, "Natural Law" is the "law of the jungle"-- the strong devour the weak.
...pretend to still be an oath taking culture...
Perhaps you pretend. Others, including myself, do not. I dismiss, without malice, the remainder of that paragraph.
Amen that is enough, and it is not required for graduation and should not be.
In NAZI Germany they had to say a pledge to Hitler. This is not Nazi Germany.
Consider what happens when the Marxists, socialists, and Communists succeed in using massive vote fraud to subvert the U.S. Congress and state governments to repeal the Second Amenddment and other key protections in the Constitution, and you have already demanded U.S. Citizens to take an oath of allegiance to the altered Constitution? Without the oath of allegiancee to the perverted constitution a Citizen might be denied the right to vote, hold political office, hold a firearms permit, possess firearms, hold a driver’s license, receivee equal protection in public healthcare insurance programs, receive food stamps, receive social security benefits, travel on airlines or passeenger trains, serve in the amred forces, serve in any public employment, own real estate, maintain financial accounts in a public bank, and worse. These kinds of consequences occured in Hitler’s NAZI regime, and the oath of allegiance to the person of Hitler was used in part to implement such measures. Enemies of the present U.S. Constitution could do so as well by altering the Constitution and then demand the oath of all U.S. Citizens. A precedent of sorts already esicts to some extent with the Pledge of Allegiance.
The Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892. Bellamy was a socialist who also played a role in the socialist subversion of the American educational systems and socialist indoctrination of young students. Much of the Marxist, socialist, and communist destruction of the culture of the United States is attributable in part to the efforts of Francis Bellamy. He designed the Pledge of Allegiance to be a means of reddirecting loyalties away from the the loyalties betweeen the band of brothers protecting and defending the personal liberties of each other to a loyalty towards a government, a flag, and a constitution that could become perverted against its original purposes.
Be careful, my friends, lest you ultimately get far more consequences from an oath of allegiance or pledge of allegiance exactly contrary to what you thought you had bargained for. Remember always, any tool efffective for a good purpose can be perverted to use for an evil purpose by evil minded people.
First, there has probably never been anything upon which all persons could agree. So, arguments based upon universal agreement are inherently impossible to accomplish and a falsee argument to pursue.
Secondly, natural law is by its origins a philosophical origin rooted in deductive reasoning. The Founding Fathers relied upon a number of works and the practical experience of prior governments such as the Estates General of the Netherlands to implement certain principles of natural law in the development of the U.S. Constitution and the state constitutions.
It can be argued that natural law is in conflict with ecclesiatical law, feudal law, absolutist monarchial law, and more. Nonetheless, the natural law treatises have been given real world application in the American constitutions with great success. The problem now is discriminating between beneficial natural law and false claims of natural law such as though propounded by the Marxists, socialists, and communists. Remember the author who wrote in the introduction of his book a recognition of Lucifer as his example.
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