Roughly 50 Boulder High School students walked out of class, protesting the reading of the Pledge of Allegiance and recited their own version, omitting “one nation, under God.” The students insist that the phrase constitutes official recognition of religion and therefore constitutes a violation of church and state. The courts, however, have treated the pledge as more of a secular symbol of the country while requiring schools to allow students to refuse to recite the pledge. So long as it is not mandatory, it has been permitted. While some officials and politicians are quite angry over the protest, the students are showing a healthy interest in a long-running constitutional debate. High school is where we train future citizens. I would rather the students spending their efforts on constitutional controversies than debating who should have won Dancing with the Stars. There are many academics who agree with these students and many that disagree. However, it is a worthy debate and one that the school should embrace.
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3 thoughts on “Students Protest Pledge of Allegiance with Walk-Out”
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Indeed, such references as “under God” were relatively recent additions. One can only assume that before their addition we were viewed as a moral and even a God-fearing nation. Too often the media dismisses this question as part of the radical fringe. Atheists and secularists have a legitimate complaint over the continual effort to intermingle expressions and displays of faith in public forums. That does not mean that they should prevail in all such cases. However, their views are often given cursory dismissals when we should have a national debate over the need to intermingle spiritual expressions with secular functions.
Socialists in the USA originated the Nazi salute, robotic group-chanting to flags, Nazism, flag fetishism, and the modern swastika as “S” symbolism for “Socialism.”
Those historical facts explain the enormous size and scope of government today, and the USA’s growing police state. They are reasons for massive reductions in government, taxation, spending and socialism.
The “Nazi salute” is more accurately called the “American salute” as it was created and popularized by national socialists in the USA. It was the early salute of the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge was written by Francis Bellamy. Edward Bellamy and Francis Bellamy were self-proclaimed socialists in the Nationalism movement and they promoted military socialism.
They wanted the government to take over education and use it to spread their worship of government. When the government granted their wish, the government’s schools imposed segregation by law and taught racism as official policy. The official racism and segregation was a bad example three decades before the National Socialist German Workers Party, and decades afterward.
The Pledge was mandated by law in government schools for three decades before, and through, the creation of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
Many people do not know that the term “Nazi” means “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.” Members of the horrid group did not call themselves Nazis. In that sense, there was no Nazi Party. They also did not call themselves Fascists. They called themselves socialists, just as their name indicates.
The historian Dr. Rex Curry showed that the early Pledge Of Allegiance did not use an ancient Roman salute, and that the ‘ancient Roman salute’ myth came from the Pledge Of Allegiance.
I agree, this is one of those issues that needs to be debated. So many times I’ve heard Christian Conservatives point to the Pledge of Allegiance, and the dollar bill as “proof” that America is a Christian Nation.
The fact that references to God were not originally part of the package- of either – doesn’t seem to matter. On the one hand, they say, “It’s just symbolic.”, then, when the argument turns, they say, “See, this is proof-positive.”
BTW, I’m a huge fan!