Is It Time To Remove Under God From The Pledge?

North Korea would be more appropriate I think.

I don't know; I get the feeling North Koreans aren't so much nationalistic as much as scared for their god damn lives.* In Nazi Germany, the USSR, and Chairman Mao's China there were a lot of people who bought into the rhetoric and propaganda, for a variety of reasons, some quite reasonable at the time.


*see what I did there?

All public schooling is indoctrination. By design. Because of the Germans (technically Prussians). Private schooling is hardly any better since it uses the same model as its basis.

Education and socialization happen in tandem with it, but just remember what happened to the kid -- well, let's not mince words, it was probably a little boy because girls get beaten with far subtler rubber hoses in order to learn not to assert themselves -- who stood up in class and asked why about virtually any policy in place.

There's a perverse part of me that wants to raise a kid just to endure his/her "why?" phase, just to see if I can break the little sod by giving clear, if cynical, answers. One thing I have found while teaching kids is that they understand a lot more than most people give them credit for (and adults understand a lot less -- I'm not sure if that's irony or just a cause for suicidal depression). But I'm half basing that on me and I'm pretty sure I'm not normal.

One nation, under god, indivisible? There are most certainly ideas or attitudes being proposed, and you certainly aren't encouraged to question or examine it.
There is the concept that it is one nation, not a collection of states/territories. Then there is the concept of the nation being under religious oversight/jurisdiction. And the concept that it is indivisible, or can't be broken apart.

Let's not mention that this starts with children around the age of 6-7, being told to pledge allegience to something they don't understand, nor have the mental capability nor experience to understand.

Not indoctrination? You are proof that it is working.

You're working too hard at this.

It's a pledge of allegiance to a flag. Not to the nation itself but to a fabric pattern used as an identifier. All Americans are in alliance with a large rectangle of cloth.

I know it goes on from there, but it starts with the flag. And no one seems to process that fact even when they remember the words. I'm fairly convinced most people don't have any grasp of the content of the Lord's Prayer, either, in spite of most Christians having said it literally hundreds or thousands of times in their lives.

I have one simple rule, "Don't bite the hand that feeds."

So you're for the abolition of the entire pledge then? That's at least refreshing...

I'm the poster boy for indoctrination now? lols... The goal would be to forcefully implant an ideology onto someone so that they accept it without question. Are you therefore implying that I believe that:


never having critically thought about anything related to it only accepting it because I had to say the pledge of allegiance?

I wonder how so many kids even forgot the pledge at this point, don't believe in god for that matter or have a patriotic bone in their body...

If this truly is indoctrination you can take comfort in how terribly innefective it is.

So what's the point of the pledge?

We could easily have children sing the national anthem (not that any Americans know that ***) as a way of saluting our country while getting a drunken war ballad deep into the subconscious.

I love that part about rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air but our flag was still there British scumbags.

No one knows the second verse of any national anthem. They technically exist and are carefully guarded and recorded by small, serious men with wire-frame eyeglasses and neatly coiffed, dark hair, but as far as John Q. Public is concerned, it is always "Nurr nurr nurr hmmm hmmm... AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE!" (or whatever the end of the first verse is for the national anthem of Zimbabwe or Samoa etc.).

Wait. What?

Who doesn't know the SSB - at least the verse always sing - backward and forward? (Insert obvious joke about Roseanne Barr or Naked Gun reference here).

But really. That ***is hammered into us from babyhood in the form of sporting events.

The flag of the USA, and the republic for which it stands? You do pledge to both the flag and the country.
I can't for the life of me figure out why someone would pledge to a flag, except as a poetic symbol.

As for the Lord's Prayer, any time my mother would insist on it, my father would say it fast enough that all you could catch was 'Amen', while my grandfather would belt out the 'Father, son, holy ghost; whoever grabs it first gets the most!' Particularily if there was mashed potatoes.

Which is why I don't even know the FIRST verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner" -- bollocks to team sports and exhibitions. I compete with myself and for myself and certainly not for the adulation of the sedated masses.

By the way, you did notice that my post was about the SECOND verse, right? You may have been confused by my using the last line of the first verse: that was to hammer home that no one knows the lyrics past Verse 1 and Chorus.

I got the first part about the second verse, but yeah; I got confused with the last line of the first verse and the implication that they were mumbling through *that*. Even I couldn't tell you the rest of the song, though I was at least aware there was more to it.

I just never gave a damn enough to learn more than was required of me.

Huh.

Every school I went to in FL (7) you had to say the pledge and we listened to the SSB, every morning.

Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub. Yay God. Amen.

America! *** Yeah?

Who could forget the prayer by the almighty King of Burger?
'Yahweh, right away!'

It one thing to recognize actual indoctrination and another to try real hard and squeeze something into a very basic definition and pass it off as such.

Not where I did. Actually, I'm not even sure if we said the Pledge all that often in my school in Maine, come to think of it. But I attended a Catholic school later, so we had morning prayer and the Pledge. First period in high school was already truncated by that, announcements, and Channel One News, so 2 minutes of pointless wank the national anthem would have been overkill.

Mind you, I mostly used that time to do homework that was due in 5 minutes. My French teacher (I had French at the start of three out of four years of high school) eventually stopped caring since I was becoming fluent regardless.

America: *** Yeah should be the pledge!

Having almost the entire juvenile population of a country exposed almost daily to an idea without criticism or evalution is most definitely NOT indoctrination. No sir-ee, nothing to see here.

Yeah, no one was allowed to be sitting down during the pledge or SSB (even if you opted to not recite it).

In HS the morning pledge was was handled by a JROTC student, the color guard also did the formal raising/lowering of the flags daily. I was in JROTC and we also had to memorize the preamble to the constitution.

If you think the SSB alone was a chore when you're 9, try doing La Borinqueña and Lift Every Voice after the SSB!

Time to mangle spanish.

Oh yeah... I wouldn't know I'm just some indoctrinated fool who thinks god rules america and we live on a lump of togetherness where our overlords feed us things and we do what they tell us! And remember thinking is punishable by death!

Peddle your agenda somewhere else lol...

Everyone had to memorize the preamble to the Constitution in 8th grade in my school.

Hi I'm back after my nap!

This thread sucks.

*Goes back to sleep because this thread has long served its purpose for shitstorms*

Flav you're not making sense.

Explain how the pledge isn't indoctrination, subtle or otherwise. It's a paragraph of words children are encouraged to repeat for years on end with no follow up lesson including a verbal pact between you and this country, God and about standards you don't learn in school until at least middle/high school.

I was doing the PoA as far back as the 1st grade and I'm damn sure I had no idea what the fk was going on other than being forced to put my hand on my heart and repeat some words while standing. It's an exercise in blind nationalism and unit cohesion. Most children discard it because they don't understand what they're saying, don't care and the entire procedure is a holdover.

I'm not discussing the effectiveness of the pledge, simply its existence and purpose.