Pledge of Allegiance Unconstitutional in Kalifornia

You're absolutely right, Garoad! And that's why I'm heading up an effort to CONTINUE having religion on our monies, in our classrooms, courthouses, etc.

I am formally requesting that they removed 'God' and instead put 'Satan' in all those locations. Of course, there will probably be those 'whiners' out there who will object because it is not representative of them, but f*ck 'em, right?!

OK - I'll give you that killing the pledge completely isn't the right response. Removing 'God' is.

Also, I'd hardly call it a 'tradition' - it is/was more like 'hijacking'.

Which sounds like current federal monetary policy, given ballooning trade and credit deficits. So I think the folks who put that on our money were being prophetic - no doubt talking to Ra.

Clearly, Taco, it'd say, "Just say no to pirates!"

...

So, I was going to post the same thread, if only to state that the story truncates the most important part - where the plaintiff screamed out, "HAHA! Take that, God! Oh, #@$&!! You don't exist! Ah, dammit! Foiled again!"

Sorry to disappoint you..

"The motto IN GOD WE TRUST was placed on United States coins largely because of the increased religious sentiment existing during the Civil War. ..., Secretary Chase instructed James Pollock, Director of the Mint at Philadelphia, to prepare a motto, in a letter dated November 20, 1861...The Congress passed the Act of April 22, 1864. This legislation changed the composition of the one-cent coin and authorized the minting of the two-cent coin. The Mint Director was directed to develop the designs for these coins for final approval of the Secretary. IN GOD WE TRUST first appeared on the 1864 two-cent coin.

The use of IN GOD WE TRUST has not been uninterrupted. The motto disappeared from the five-cent coin in 1883, and did not reappear until production of the Jefferson nickel began in 1938. Since 1938, all United States coins bear the inscription.

A law passed by the 84th Congress (P.L. 84-140) and approved by the President on July 30, 1956, the President approved a Joint Resolution of the 84th Congress, declaring IN GOD WE TRUST the national motto of the United States. IN GOD WE TRUST was first used on paper money in 1957, when it appeared on the one-dollar silver certificate. "

source: Facf Sheets: Currency & Coins ...History of In God We Trust

edtied to addh and before the hew and cry of "currency means PAPER money" arises.. broadly speaking, the word currency is accepted by numismatists and the US MINT to include both coins and paper money.... as well as meaning ONLY paper money in some cases.

Now that we have the facts straight on this.. I return you to your somewhat pointless discussion.

I wasn't saying as opposed to anything. I am for capitalism (and consequently the recognition that God's hands are in our dollars). Even though I am "for" capitalism, it's only because I don't think the technology currently exists to do otherwise. I often don't LIKE capitalism, but it's the best option at the moment.

Don't you mean "killing God?" XD

I like the LaVeyan assertion (even if it isn't necessarily true) that the eye of providence is a distraction to the true source of power, the frustum. Going off on a tangent for a moment, I like to think of people like greedy frustums who can never be capped, but we're always slaving to complete the pyramid (the pyramid to our Lord, Greed XD )

Anyway. Where my coffee, woman?

If we use "God," then we can appropriate a lot of existing notions of God whereas Satan is too rebellious and won't be popular among old timers.

Make love, not gods.

We where a world of equal opportunity rising and free though and learning. But starting after WWII we got scared of falling behind and changed what was taught in schools.

Think of everything you need to run a war... that's what got focused on in High Schools and College and hit it's height in the 50's.

But.. since you are still probably having trouble believing that the changes 50 years ago never happened 'cause most people can't remember what happened 5 weeks ago.

Politicians thrive on the short memory of Americans.

So to conclude... uh. where was it?

Oh yes..

At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia,

"'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"

It seems.. that the past is well under control.

taken from: http://www.ronaldbrucemeyer.com/rants/0614b-almanac.htm


"Under God" Added
to the Pledge of Allegiance (1954)

It was on this date, June 14, 1954, that President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a Congressional resolution which added the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. The pledge, which Congress had recognized officially a dozen years earlier, was originally written in August of 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855-1931), a Baptist minister, and active Socialist. The Pledge was first published in a children's magazine, Youth's Companion, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the Americas. The original 22 words were:

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Bellamy considered including the word "equality" in the pledge, but decided against it to avoid offending the many Americans (and Bellamy's publisher) who opposed equal rights for women and blacks. The American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1924 changed the Pledge's words, "my Flag," to "the Flag of the United States of America." Bellamy hated the change, but by then the Pledge was (in effect) no longer his. In the coming years, the Pledge would change again: the word "equality" was never inserted into the Pledge — but "God" was.

A soldier salutes the flag.
It was the 1950s. The Korean War. And the cold war was an issue in national politics. People and politicians were looking for ways to distinguish God-fearing Americans from those Atheistic Communists in Russia. On April 22, 1951, the Board of Directors of the Roman Catholic men's group, the Knights of Columbus, mounted a campaign to add the words "under God," after the words "one nation," in the Pledge. Some 15 resolutions were sent before Congress to change the Pledge. But none passed until President Eisenhower happened to hear a sermon by Rev. George Docherty on 7 February 1954.

"Apart from the mention of the phrase the United States of America," Docherty said, "it could be the pledge of any republic. In fact, I could hear little Muscovites repeat a similar pledge to their hammer-and-sickle flag in Moscow." Eisenhower was impressed. News spread, public opinion grew. A bill to add "God" to the Pledge was approved as a Congressional joint resolution on 8 June 1954. It was signed into law on that Flag Day, June 14.

President Eisenhower, who started the tradition of the "prayer breakfast," said at the time, "From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our Nation and our people to the Almighty..." It is odd, therefore, that when the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit decided, on 26 June 2002, that the words "under God" made the Pledge run afoul of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, they rejected the changed Pledge for the same reason that President Eisenhower accepted it: because it was a government endorsement of religion. A Supreme Court challenge by Atheist Micheal Newdow, in early 2004, resulted in a nimble sidestep on the merits: the Court decided against Newdow on the grounds that he had no standing to bring the case in the first place.

Eisenhower specifically recognized the initiative of the Knights of Columbus in originating and sponsoring the amendment to the Pledge of Allegiance on August 17, 1954. Today, many have forgotten that Americans fought and died in two World Wars and the Korean conflict without acknowledging God in their Pledge of Allegiance. And those who claim that everything has gone downhill in this country since the 1950s — when amending the Pledge divided the nation into believers and non-believers — might pause to reflect that adding "under God" to the Pledge didn't help!

What's TV? What's SL? What's a Video Game? I have no time for such things!

What were we talking about again? Oh, right... America. I liked that Micro Machine man.

Jesus Christ of Nazareth: the first advocate of the seperation of Church and State.

Watch the Flag Nut while the Politicians shift the real money from one hand into the other. It's called the shell game and they are SO good at it!

While I would prefer that they have a complete separation of religion and state, I tend to think that there are (and have been for some time) far more pressing problems in the United States. Unfortunately, everytime our focus drifts toward them, it's shifted yet again to something individual and dramatic by a press that is corporate owned.

Want people to forget about how incompetent FEMA was?

Want people to forget about gas prices, poverty, job loss, race divide?

How utterly unsafe American's really are?

Want them to rally around the flag again?

Then by damn... find some nut who is willing to go to court to trample on God and Country or both. Gotta be someone out there angry enough to do it.

Keep a close eye on the shell, pay no attention to the money changing hands.

Funny, I've never been terribly concerned about the words "under God" in the Pledge. What has always bothered me is that we have elementary school children saying it to begin with. A pledge of this sort ought to be taken seriously, and most of the people who even bother to say it are children too young to really understand what it means, and what they are promising.

So we have the forced recital by children, and then as they get old enough to understand, no one bothers anymore.

I thought the point of it was to teach kids to ignore anything having to do with government, yet still pay taxes?

I haven't read the whole thread and sorry if this was brought up already. But the whole thing is a non issue. Most kids don't even know what the words mean. Many say the wrong words. What good is it if they are just repeating something without understanding the what they mean.




For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
Robert Louis Stevenson

That's because American education is the most subtle and effective form of propaganda and psychological control ever developed by a civilization.... And the Pledge is but one tool among many.

By the time you're an adult, you're one of ours - doesn't matter how much you scream, complain, or pretend you're an "independent thinker".... We own you.

nah, I wouldnt say that, it was sort of a weak attempt at a Jugenddienstpflicht

Most of them were Deists, and the "Creator" reference is to the Deist notion of a creator. Deists believe that there was a god who created the universe and everything in it and when he was finished he moved on to other things and had no further interest or connection to his creation. Deists don't believe in worship or prayer and see them as pointless. God isn't there to listen. If Darwin had been around during the enlightenment you can bet that most of the founders would have been atheists. Deism is really nothing more than a way to explain creation. They were humanists.

What was done to the Pledge and to our currency in the 1950's was antithetical to the point of view of the founders, and to the writer of the original pledge (who incidentally happened to be a socialist).

"One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." That phrase is about the civil war. We would remain a single nation, not divided. What the Knights of Columbus (who lobbied the hell out of Congress to get the pledge changed) did to that phrase makes me sick to my stomach. They completely changed the meaning to say that we are indivisible from God. The Christian god, not just the deist creator. They did exactly the same thing to the national motto. E Pluribus Unum "From many, one". One people, comprised of individuals. A purely humanist slogan, and a perfect summation of what this country was founded to represent... the will of the people, as individuals, free to pursue happiness. Changing it to "In God We Trust" erased the humanism and equality and replaced it with Christian worship. It's offensive. And it's directly contrary to the spirit with which this nation was founded. It needs to go.

whichever.