It is immoral to teach and encourage children to lie. Urging them to lie every week is worse. The pledge of allegiance has been a lie since it was written. Consider the last phrase, “… with liberty and justice for all.” The U.S. Constitution still contains the clause that prohibited Congress from restricting the slave trade before the year 1808. The 13th Amendment legalized slavery in all U.S. states and elsewhere in the empire. Just ask the roughly two million slaves in the U.S. how much “liberty and justice” they got. Read the Bible and you’ll see that Jesus commended hypocrisy worse than other sins. Among the 100 plus politicians flocking into Madison every two years are many proclaiming their faith in “local control.” Then they prohibit “local control” with their state laws that prevent local politicians from protecting local residents from criminals using hand guns, putting revenue caps on school districts statewide, forcing multiple achievement tests on all public school students and teachers and recently forcing feeding jingoist lies into their ears and brains while mislabeling it as pat-ROIT-ism.
Ron Renkoski, Madison resident
To Stephen and Trudy, and others who love to rant.
I am slightly unclear what you were talking about. “Some folks are willing to attack the traditions and symbols of our great nation” is a bit ambiguous. I have not heard of any flag burnings in the United States, nor have I noted anyone shooting down bald eagles for years. Or maybe you are disgruntled about the recent Senate decision to trample on, if not the First Amendment, then at least the Fourth Amendment right “of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” You are altogether correct that this 200-year-old tradition should not be changed.
But looking closely, I now notice that you write in response to the pledge ban controversy. You are absolutely correct. It was a travesty that after 150 years of adhering to the First Amendment ? which, for those of you with short memory, says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” ? America chose to abandon it.
To add the words “under God” to the pledge was indeed an attack on the tradition of separation between church and state, as well as an attempt to sully the meaning and beauty of the symbolic nature of the Pledge of Allegiance. I feel your pain and anger. When I realized what had been done 50 years ago, I went into a rage. I understand it was probably out of fear of, as my AP U.S. history teacher called them, the “Godless Communist Maggots.” The attempts in the ’50s to be politically correct on the subject of religion were appalling, and must be undone immediately.
I too hate political correctness.
Lillian B. Cheesman, UW junior