Posted on 06/26/2002 11:36:43 PM PDT by Boucheau
My reaction to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on the Pledge of Allegiance is a little different than most of those you will read or hear elsewhere.
Is it a correct ruling? No.
Is it a ruling that has anything to do with the Constitution? No.
Is it unexpected? Not by me. To me, it was just a matter of time.
Let's remember that in 1962 and 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prayer in the schools was unconstitutional. The fact that it took nearly 40 years for the other shoe to drop is something of a surprise.
You see, there are people in America – some of them in positions of significant power – who want to remake America in their own image.
The trouble is, America is the first country in the world to be created in the image of a godly nation. The founding fathers studied the Bible to see what it revealed about the way men should govern themselves. There was never a thought in their minds about creating a country divorced from God.
Over the years, extreme secularists, materialists, socialists and others have chipped away at the American creed – at the Constitution, at the Declaration of Independence. They have tried to convince us those documents don't really mean what they say. They have tried to persuade us that they are archaic and in need of updating. They have tried to explain that these statements are actually "living documents" subject to interpretation and re-examination under changing circumstances. They have even tried to suggest that these men, despite their words and deeds to the contrary, were not really Christians.
These activists have brought government into every aspect of our lives – despite specific constitutional prohibitions against overreaching federal power.
Now, the architects of that unconstitutional way of life tell us we must conform to their ungodly standards. We must do nothing to offend them.
We can yell and scream about this all we want. But it won't change the direction of this country. I say it's time to call their bluff – and make their whole unconstitutional system fall of its own dead weight.
What do I mean? Every American outraged by this ruling should not even raise a whimper of protest. They should not argue. They should not complain. Instead, they should remove their children from these ungodly, hostile government schools. They should do it now. They shouldn't wait until the situation gets any worse. Home school is the best option. For those who can't do that, choose a worthy private institution. It will be the best choice you ever made for your children. There are 10,000 reasons for making this choice.
I say let the atheists have the government schools. Let the homosexuals have them. Let the socialists have them. Let them fight out the curriculum issues with the Muslims. Jews and Christians should get out now.
What will they have? Not much. Meanwhile, your children might actually get educated.
If responsible Christian and Jewish parents did this all over America tomorrow, it would set off a revolution in this country. Gone would be the multi-billion-dollar Department of Education boondoggle. Gone would be the condom education. Gone would be the sexual propaganda and the moral relativism. No way tens of millions of parents are going to continue to be soaked in taxes for schools they don't use. Not only will your children be liberated, the whole country would be.
It will be like the collapse of the Soviet Union – hundreds of millions of people freed overnight.
That kind of revolution would spread. Freedom would soon be breaking out all over America.
The alternative is the kind of pathetic protest I expect to see. If you act like a doormat for 40 years, expect to be treated like one. If you invite abuse, expect it to continue. If you act like a slave, be prepared to be treated like one.
This ruling may or may not stand the test of an appeal. That doesn't really matter. Either way, the schools are no longer your schools. You know that.
It's time for action, not words. It's time to be a part of the solution rather than part of the problem
Pull your children out.
This is the way parents should have responded 40 years ago to the U.S. Supreme Court rulings. They should have picked up their kids and gone home. Instead, they succumbed. Instead, they adapted to the changing morality. Instead, they did what they were told.
Get your children out, and don't look back.
The "under God" phrase was inserted into the Pledge in 1954 by an act of Congress because of a pressure campaign that was hyped by the powerful Hearst newspapers media chain. At that time, people were afraid to object to this insertion of regilion into a non-religious patriotic pledge, because they were afraid of being labeled a Communist by Senator Joe McCarthy if they did object. The "under God" phrase was seen as a counter to 'godless Communism'. If they had just left it alone and hadn't turned it into a prayer and made it a matter of law, we wouldn't have this silly controversy now.
Here's a little more historical background on the Pledge of Allegiance:
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The Pledge of Allegiance: A Short History
Francis Bellamy (1855 - 1931), a Baptist minister, wrote the original Pledge in August 1892. He was a Christian Socialist. In his Pledge, he is expressing the ideas of his first cousin, Edward Bellamy, author of the American socialist utopian novels, Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897).
Francis Bellamy in his sermons and lectures and Edward Bellamy in his novels and articles described in detail how the middle class could create a planned economy with political, social and economic equality for all. The government would run a peace time economy similar to our present military industrial complex.
The Pledge was published in the September 8th issue of The Youth's Companion, the leading family magazine and the Reader's Digest of its day. Its owner and editor, Daniel Ford, had hired Francis in 1891 as his assistant when Francis was pressured into leaving his baptist church in Boston because of his socialist sermons. As a member of his congregation, Ford had enjoyed Francis's sermons. Ford later founded the liberal and often controversial Ford Hall Forum, located in downtown Boston.
In 1892 Francis Bellamy was also a chairman of a committee of state superintendents of education in the National Education Association. As its chairman, he prepared the program for the public schools' quadricentennial celebration for Columbus Day in 1892. He structured this public school program around a flag raising ceremony and a flag salute - his 'Pledge of Allegiance.'
His original Pledge read as follows: 'I pledge allegiance to my Flag and (to*) the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.' He considered placing the word, 'equality,' in his Pledge, but knew that the state superintendents of education on his committee were against equality for women and African Americans. [ * 'to' added in October, 1892. ]
Dr. Mortimer Adler, American philosopher and last living founder of the Great Books program at Saint John's College, has analyzed these ideas in his book, The Six Great Ideas. He argues that the three great ideas of the American political tradition are 'equality, liberty and justice for all.' 'Justice' mediates between the often conflicting goals of 'liberty' and 'equality.'
In 1923 and 1924 the National Flag Conference, under the 'leadership of the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, changed the Pledge's words, 'my Flag,' to 'the Flag of the United States of America.' Bellamy disliked this change, but his protest was ignored.
In 1954, Congress after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, added the words, 'under God,' to the Pledge. The Pledge was now both a patriotic oath and a public prayer.
Bellamy's granddaughter said he also would have resented this second change. He had been pressured into leaving his church in 1891 because of his socialist sermons. In his retirement in Florida, he stopped attending church because he disliked the racial bigotry he found there.
What follows is Bellamy's own account of some of the thoughts that went through his mind in August, 1892, as he picked the words of his Pledge:
It began as an intensive communing with salient points of our national history, from the Declaration of Independence onwards; with the makings of the Constitution...with the meaning of the Civil War; with the aspiration of the people...If the Pledge's historical pattern repeats, its words will be modified during this decade. Below are two possible changes.The true reason for allegiance to the Flag is the 'republic for which it stands.' ...And what does that vast thing, the Republic mean? It is the concise political word for the Nation - the One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove. To make that One Nation idea clear, we must specify that it is indivisible, as Webster and Lincoln used to repeat in their great speeches. And its future?
Just here arose the temptation of the historic slogan of the French Revolution which meant so much to Jefferson and his friends, 'Liberty, equality, fraternity.' No, that would be too fanciful, too many thousands of years off in realization. But we as a nation do stand square on the doctrine of liberty and justice for all...
Some prolife advocates recite the following slightly revised Pledge: '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, born and unborn.'
A few liberals recite a slightly revised version of Bellamy's original Pledge: 'I pledge allegiance to my Flag, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with equality, liberty and justice for all.'
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I find it quite ironic that this patriotic pledge that never originally mentioned God at all was written by a Socialist and Baptist minister.
IMPEACH THE ENTIRE 9TH CIRCUIT COMMUNIST.
OUTRAGED CITIZENS AND VOTERS
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