just like old times

http://www.startribune.com/nation/18800444.html?page=1&c=y

What amuses me most about this story is not the suspensions. It's the comments by readers who imply that a person who doesn't say a pledge is unpatriotic, and that they should be suspended for this, even expelled from the country. It is true that someone can and should respect the sacrifices of veterans.. though I'd argue that there are many others who have done much to preserve freedoms without picking up a rifle or sailing around the globe. I don't believe this means that we should require any citizen to pledge their allegiance. I think it is actually a denigration of freedom to make such impositions.

In any case, I never said the damn thing either. I don't recall us having some sort of punishment for not doing so, and quite frankly I fail to see how it warrants a suspension from school. A pledge made under duress is worthless. A real pledge is made to examine and learn about the nature of our freedoms and then to fight politically, militarily, or culturally, to maintain them. Much as with people's religion, 'conversion' under the sword is worthless. Here compelling people to stand up, disregarding their freedom to protest peacefully should they choose to do so, is a compulsion of considerable weight. In a school with impressionable minds, we're telling children that their rights come after the government's. Sorry, I cannot agree. The zinger of the story, as usual buried at the bottom, was the fact that court law holds that students who decline to participate in the pledge cannot be punished for that.

I also do not see any explanation of why these students did not pledge. I have known some people with religious reasons (god before country), and people with anti-religious reasons (under god). And more simply, people who are annoyed with the logic that they should do what their country asks of them rather than as they please and can avail themselves of. Aside from this last rationale, I disregarded the validity of the pledge because the premise was changed (during the height of McCarthyism) to 'under God'. Not only was this somewhat annoying as an atheist, but it really seems rather presumptuous. I find it very tiring to have people of all walks of life telling me what 'god' wants or favors. I find it decidedly unlikely that God favors any nation, regardless of the faith they hold in high esteem.

Irrespective of this, I found that it was generally some social compulsion from other students that suffices to shame people into standing for a pledge. As a social misfit, I was plenty happy to ignore this shameful practice, even reveling in my newfound status as an outcast. More to the point, other students or faculty do not typically inquire to the individual students' reasons for protesting or at worst, declining to participate. This I think is probably the most damning problem with requirements to do so. I find it rare that a student doesn't do so because they are being 'unpatriotic'.