Lou Dobbs: The Pledge of Allegiance controversy

by Secular Human

The Americans  United for Separation of Church and State have indicated students should be able to opt out of the pledge.

Recently, the Fox News Channel rang up the Rev. Barry Lynn, AU’s executive director, to discuss what he thinks about reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.

Since they asked, he answered.

“The Pledge of Allegiance creates a constitutional problem,” he said. “You have to tell students they can opt out.”

Since 1943 the Pledge of Allegiance has been optional based upon a Supreme Court case.  Jehovah's Witnesses objected to the pledge because they believed it put the US above God.

Americans will here a lot of right wing noise about the pledge because the GOP loves symbolic and social issues like this.

Wikipedia has an excellent history of the plege. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855-1931), a Baptist minister, and a Christian socialist. The pledge was used in a campaign to sell American flags and American nationalism to public schools.

Bellamy's original Pledge read, "I Pledge Allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all."

The original pledge was given with the Roman salute that the Nazis also used.

The "one Nation under God phrase wasn't adopted until the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s and is controversial.

On January 3, 2005, a suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on behalf of three unnamed families. On September 14, 2005, District Court Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled in their favor. Citing the precedent of the 2002 ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Karlton issued an Order stating that, upon proper motion, he will enjoin the school district defendants from continuing their practices of leading children in pledging allegiance to "one Nation under God".

In 2004, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg criticized the addition of "under God" for a different reason. The original supporters of the addition thought that they were simply quoting Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. However, Nunberg said that to Lincoln and his contemporaries, "under God" meant "God willing" and they would have found its use in the Pledge of Allegiance grammatically incorrect.

Rightardia's position is the pledge should be optional and the phrase "one nation under God" is inappropriate and should not be recited in public schools.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance

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