From OC Weekly's Staff Blog:
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/...
In a meeting on Wednesday night, Orange Coast College student trustees voted to ban the Pledge of Allegiance from their meetings, citing an incompatibility between nationwide submission to God and justice for all.
The story first appeared in the OC Register on Thursday, but they left out all the good stuff. Leave it to Reuters to pick up the slack in their coverage, which appeared in the wee hours of Friday morning.
From Reuters:
http://today.reuters.com/...
"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 fact that they have enough power to ban one of the most valued traditions in America is just horrible," Zoldos said, adding she would attend every board meeting to salute the flag.
Most valued traditions, eh Christine? What about HABEAS CORPUS? There's a FOUNDING tradition that we seemed happy to let slip away, but you're getting all fired up over something like the pledge? Get some perspective.
This is a great example of the degree to which certain folk will focus on one issue, completely unaware of the hypocrisy and ignorance that allows them to totally ignore much more significant problems that their particular argument suggests they ought to be more concerned with. Oh, and if America's the only thing you're passionate about, my heart goes out to whoever you date. Really.
Back to the Weekly:
he pledge was first published in 1892 in The Boy's Companion. As years went by, especially in the lead-up to World War II, there was an increasing demand for a flag salute statute to, you know, cement loyalty to Vespucci-land. 31 years later, in 1922, that pledge found its way into legislation through the Flag Code [Title 4, United States Code, Chapter 1]. In 1925 over 40,000 Ku Klux Klansmen marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. in support of this Flag Code.
What a lovely history lesson, one utterly lost on Christine Zolos, president of the Orange Coast College Republicans. Zolos told Reuters of her disapproval of the trustees' decision: "The fact that they have enough power to ban one of the most valued traditions in America is just horrible."
Most valued traditions, my lily-white ass. This is a tradition so valued that it's undergone change after update after revision in the scant 84 years it's been in common usage. Originally, the salute was a straight-armed, flat-palmed gesture, but in December 1942 Congress amended the Flag Code to the familiar hand-over-heart move so we wouldn't look like a bunch of Nazis. Klansmen and Nazis--these are a few of our favorite things?
To be fair, the Register deserves credit for breaking this story, but for whatever reason Reuters is running away with it - they're the ones with the link on Drudge Report, and it IS their most-viewed story at the moment. Yikes! The Reg did what they could but left out that juicy Zolos quote.
http://www.ocregister.com/...
Three of five Associated Students trustees took the action Monday, with board member Jason Ball calling the flag salute "irrelevant to the business of student government."
"While it's great to be an American, and I'm proud to be an American, yadda-yadda-yadda, and I appreciate all the rituals, I'm done" saluting the flag, Ball said Wednesday.
I wish this crap had come up decades ago. I remember worrying every single day about whether I ought to say "under god" or not. Should I say something I didn't believe? Should I identify myself as an outsider? Was I making a mountain out of a molehill? Or was I betraying my beliefs and my secular human upbringing? Why does God want us under him, anyway? Doesn't he ever want to be on the bottom? Or is he satisfied with the missionary position ad infinitum?