“If their personal belief is that they don’t want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, the district certainly isn’t going to dictate what they do.”
(Martha Parham, a spokeswoman for the Coast Community College District)
This story has a little bit of everything. Moonbats on parade. Kids playing dress-up-like-a-commie. Joe McCarthy. Conservatives standing up for America.
And a lesson in the nature of freedom:
Student leaders at a California college have touched off a furor by banning the Pledge of Allegiance at their meetings, saying they see no reason to publicly swear loyalty to God and the U.S. government.The move by Orange Coast College student trustees, the latest clash over patriotism and religion in American schools, has infuriated some of their classmates—prompting one young woman to loudly recite the pledge in front of the board on Wednesday night in defiance of the rule.
“America is the one thing I’m passionate about and I can’t let them take that away from me,” 18-year-old political science major Christine Zoldos told Reuters.
The move was led by three recently elected student trustees, who ran for office wearing revolutionary-style berets and said they do not believe in publicly swearing an oath to the American flag and government at their school. One student trustee voted against the measure, which does not apply to other student groups or campus meetings.
I understand the students anger at the moonbats. And I think it’s great that the incident has galvanized people to demonstrate their loyalty to America. I hope they continue to say the pledge loudly every time that little group of proto-commies meets.
But demanding that the pledge be reinstated? Just where is it you think you live?
If 19 year old kids want to play dress up and pretend they’re revolutionaries while rejecting the pledge, and God, and America, they are perfectly free to do so. Others are free to disagree with them. The Che-wannabes should realize that their protest comes with a price – disapprobation of their peers and the community. The counter demonstrators should realize that the pseudo-socialists are exercising the cherished constitutional right of free speech and not try to force them to conform to any behavior to which they object.
And about that objection; one mini-Mao obviously hasn’t said the pledge in a while:
Ball said the ban largely came about because the trustees didn’t want to publicly vow loyalty to the American government before their meetings. “Loyalty ought to be something the government earns through performance, not through reciting a pledge,” he said.
The pledge says absolutely nothing about “government.” It talks about “the republic” and “the nation” not any specific government. In fact, the pledge is to “the flag.” If one believes (as I and most Americans do) that the flag represents the very best American ideals of liberty and equality for all, by refusing to pledge their allegiance to the flag, the fake radicals only prove that their towering ignorance is matched by a desire for authoritarian government – with them in charge, of course.
It is the nature of freedom that it be abused by the shallow, the ignorant, the callous, the fakers, and those who hate simply because hate is their natural state. And it is the genius of the United States that they suffer little more than name calling and the shunning of decent people everywhere. By gritting our teeth and tolerating wayward children like the Orange Coast College ignoramuses, we keep faith with our founders and all the men and women who have given their lives so that the flag these smug, self-righteous lickspittles refuse to swear allegiance to has meaning for the rest of us.
1:27 pm
Excellent point, sir. These little twerps deserve the scorn and derision of their fellow citizens. They are absolutely not a threat to the republic. The tired ideology they pretend to adhere to is dead, dead, dead.
Communism is so 40 years ago. Let the twerps expose themselves.
1:49 pm
Veterans Day and a Soldiers Reaction.
The Rusty Humphries Show received a message from a soldier in Iraq and although it is not pleasant to read, this soldiers and all the soldiers in Iraq deserve to be heard.
2:36 pm
Beautiful story. Wonderful morals drawn. The best thing I’ve read since I saw Webb’s acceptance speech on the NRO website.
5:47 pm
I’ve never understood this aversion to the pledge. It’s not like the pledge to Hitler. You aren’t pledging to the government, you aren’t pledging to Bush. A nation is a people, not a state.
It’s unnerving how idiotic either side is. The communists (“I am a socialist” is code for “I am a moron who doesn’t understand how the real world works”) for thinking the pledge offers loyalty to the state and God (I’m an atheist, still say this part, doesn’t hurt me none); their opponents who think suppressing free expression would uphold American values (though it is tempting, seeing all the fools embrace an ideology which killed tens of millions).
1:51 am
Ye-eah. You Yanqs do realise that here in the rest of the world we find this practise of yours of forcing schoolchildren to daily pledge “allegiance” to a coloured bit of cloth just a tad, y’know, creepy? All a bit Young Pioneeresque?
Hey – congrats on the election results!
2:11 pm
If saying the Pledge of Allegiance was good enough for George Washington and Tom Jefferson then these snot-nosed little creeps in La-La Land had better damned well stand up and say it.
5:11 pm
Rob, you poor, pathetic eunuch, you would probably make a porn movie of your mom having sex with a donkey and sell it online. You are a liberal and therefore scum, and the sooner you die, the better off humanity will be. And thank you for staying the hell out of America, idiot.
12:09 pm
Forcing people to recite a loyalty oath (pledge=oath; allegence=loyalty) tells you nothing about their loyalty. After all, there are only two kinds of people who recite them – those who are loyal and those who want you to think they are.
1:37 am
I see you deleted my response to IM. He’s so lucky to have a friend like you to hold his widdle hand.
Vaya con dios!
6:34 pm
OCC STUDENT TRUSTEE SAYS:
“THE FLAG REPRESENTS GENOCIDE”
The issue is not the pledge.
There is room for discussion on whether or not a student government meeting needs to begin with a recital of the pledge.
The issue is that the Student Trustees hate America and they are trying to use their position as elected student government leaders to spread this hatred.
How do we know?
because at a meeting of Student Government, one of the Student Trustees explained the reason for opposing the flag.
He said:
“The Flag Represents Genocide”