Today's Reading
Jul. 18th, 2002 08:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
autographedcatAn interesting, alternative perspective on the whole Pledge of Allegiance flap.
" NEW YORK, July 15 (UPI) -- When I say "one nation under God," I can take or leave the "under God" part, but I'm a fanatic about the "one nation" part. Has anyone ever considered that we're possibly arguing over the wrong words?
The screwy thing about the self-righteous posturing of the past two weeks -- and, by the way, you can stop sending me e-mail with Red Skelton's interpretation of the Pledge of Allegiance, I already have 39,000 copies -- is that "under God" is at best just a throwaway line, which is why it wasn't in the pledge to begin with.
It just expresses a vague desire to acknowledge that, yes, the Big Guy is watching what we do. It was actually added to slam communist Russia.
But the "one nation" thing is the meat of the Hungry Man dinner, considered so important that the pledge hammers it home with the word "indivisible." I'll bet there are lots more people who disagree with THAT part of the pledge than there are people who bridle at the words "under God.""
Read the whole article at:
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20020715-014325-5149r
" NEW YORK, July 15 (UPI) -- When I say "one nation under God," I can take or leave the "under God" part, but I'm a fanatic about the "one nation" part. Has anyone ever considered that we're possibly arguing over the wrong words?
The screwy thing about the self-righteous posturing of the past two weeks -- and, by the way, you can stop sending me e-mail with Red Skelton's interpretation of the Pledge of Allegiance, I already have 39,000 copies -- is that "under God" is at best just a throwaway line, which is why it wasn't in the pledge to begin with.
It just expresses a vague desire to acknowledge that, yes, the Big Guy is watching what we do. It was actually added to slam communist Russia.
But the "one nation" thing is the meat of the Hungry Man dinner, considered so important that the pledge hammers it home with the word "indivisible." I'll bet there are lots more people who disagree with THAT part of the pledge than there are people who bridle at the words "under God.""
Read the whole article at:
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20020715-014325-5149r
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no subject
Date: 2002-07-18 05:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-18 06:16 am (UTC)-R
no subject
Date: 2002-07-18 10:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-18 10:57 am (UTC)I love the diversity of America. It's has the potential to be our greatest of strengths. While other countries are plunged into darkness and civil war because of the inability of two ethnic groups to get alogn with each other, we are comprised of every possible group imaginable, living together as one people.
That's the idea, at least. We seem to have lost somehow the notion that you can be whatever it is you are and be from whereever it is you came from, but first and foremost, you are an American, with all the amazing rights and priviledges that entails. I blame this as much on the right-wing "How Dare You Be Different" crowd as I do on the left-wing "Assimilation is Cultural Extinction" crowd. Both extremes are, as extremes are wont to be, rather wide of the actual mark.
It doens't ultimately matter if you're Asian-American or African-American or Mexican-American or European-American....all of them are Americans, are part of the great social experiment that is the United States.
Maybe that US doens't really exist in the real world, but it's the US that I believe in, and will continue to strive to see realized.
Love,
-R
no subject
Date: 2002-07-18 11:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-19 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-19 08:27 am (UTC)Love,
-R