ACLU Defends Student Against Having to Recite the Pledge of Allegiance

The right of a Montgomery County (Md.) middle school student not to stand up and recite the pledge of allegiance is being defended by the ACLU, who is fighting to compel an apology from the teacher who punished the student for not complying. The student was sent to the principal’s office and the student’s parents later 'counseled ' by the school administration to have the student apologize.

Our country is in such great part founded on the right of dissent, even if that means being against the US itself in belief or opinion.

While I personally believe this does not ultimately work, that is, democracy I believe, by nature will ultimately only lead to the tyranny of decentralized pressure groups which in turn become either corporate overlords or actual independent nations-- as we had more than a glimpse of in 1862 with the US Civil War which marked the struggle between those very factions that are still driving this country apart today.

Nevertheless, I am more than pleased within this historical context to see that the Supreme Court decision of 1943 of West VA school board vs. Bartlett, which confirmed the right of a student to not to have to stand up for and recite the pledge of allegiance --continue to be upheld.

The right wing, which has all but vanished in the true form of what it was, now poses and gets away (in flying colors) with posing extremist right wing religious view as if it were moderate.

The right wing would have you believe that the pledge of allegiance is a fundamental part of what our nation is about...but why? What exactly is the pledge of allegiance and what does it stand for to us?

Thomas Jefferson himself, a vehement opponent of Christianity, and an ardent 18th century style Deist, would oppose the pledge on the principle of coercing religious views in our schools.

In fact there are so many things wrong with the pledge of allegiance that one wonders why it continued to exist from the get go here in our country.

But the fundamental reason the pledge of allegiance is against true Republican Democracy is because the notion of blind obedience is akin to rule by coercion, the diametric opposite of the ideal of Democratic freedom.

The Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/23/AR201002...