From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Jun 27 2002 - 19:17:59 MDT
Unfortunately, that particular Federal Court has had
an abysmal record of having about 90% of its decisions
overturned by the Supremes. The guy who penned the
orginal Pledge, BTW, was allegedly a Baptist preacher
himself, of the 19th century utopian socialist bent.
The original, besides not having "under God," also had
"my flag," not "the flag." It was intended for some
sort of event sponsored by educators originally, and
the hope of the sponsors was that it might serve as a
model pledge for the emerging democracies of the time,
nationalism as opposed to tribalism being seen as a
progressive force (this being pre-WW1). The author
reportedly objected to early proposals to add in
references to God. For his efforts, the businesses
who had been funding his church of low-income working
class people threatened to pull the funding unless he
was removed, so he lost his pulpit out of it.
We've come a long way in many respects. The public
schools I attended in the '50's and '60's in Georgia
staunchly ignored any attempts to take religion out.
We had prayers, manditory pledges, teachers quoting
from the "Good Book," etc.
They left out the really interesting parts, however,
like when God instructs the Israelites, who had only
been gone from Palestine for a hundred years or two,
to take back all that land that those thieving
infidels grabbed while they were off in Egypt. The
effrontery! Seizing the land of God's chosen people!
Turn your back on a Goy and see what you get.
And then he tells them at one point to kill all the
men, women, children, cattle, sheep, oxen, etc.,
belonging to the land grabbers, but ... the young
women, take them unto yourselves... Occasionally even
God got it right. ;)
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