someday your prince will come

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what if nigger meant kite

Of course I'd be against official statements of religion, even if a majority wanted the government to make them. There's a reason the Founders had a concept of protecting against a tyranny of the majority. There's a reason Thomas Jefferson wrote that freedom of religion protects believers and "infidels" alike.

But most importantly, limiting the power of government to make official religious statements is not censorship by any stretch of the imagination. Note that taking God out of the Pledge would in no way limit your freedom to go around talking about God. It is not censorship any more than saying that "hail Satan" doesn't belong in the national anthem.

I do agree with you that lefties might practice their own kind of censorship, just as much as righties. I just don't think that protesting the religification of the Pledge is a good example of that.

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What others say about boorite!

...although it'd be pretty cool if the national anthem did say "hail Satan."

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What others say about boorite!

I think we've forgotten the true meaning of this thread.

[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c12/ivytheplant/quicksand.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b5/boorite/open_grave.jpg[/IMG]

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What others say about boorite!

they should be allowed to run into really inappropriate behavior....

[IMG]http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h196/Swamp_Lummox/vinniejones.jpg[/IMG]

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Kill Whitey.

Where oh where is a picture of bob dole falling over a railing?

I'd like to chime in on the whole pledge thing.

Taking the word "under god" out of the pledge isn't disavowing anything's existince. It's not athiestic to not mention religion. It's being inclusive by not being exclusive. It's little things like this that work their way into the US system that start eroding the diversity of the country. Stop fucking whining about the commandments in front a court house when there's an athiest being told he has to acknowledge a God inside. On top of that, he has to swear to this God he doesn't believe in.

Our crusaders for a secular society have missed the point a lot of times, and that's really what bugs me. I'm fine with retracting the exclusive religious stuff, but shouldn't they be concentrating on the important issues? Our money isn't a grand delcaration of faith. If anyone is implied to have faith in a God, it's those who created the money, not those who use it.

All I know is that I don't believe and I don't really much mind. Words are words.

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Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants.

we haven't even got to whether separation of church and state warrants the censorship. we're still stuck back debating whether forbidding the words 'under god' is indeed censorship

from www.merriamwebster.com:

censor
Function: transitive verb
/'sen(t)-s&-ri[ng], 'sen(t)s-ri[ng]/
: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable

from www.dictionary.com:

cen·sor
tr.v.
Pronunciation Key (snsr)
: To examine and expurgate.

ex·pur·gate
tr.v.
Pronunciation Key (kspr-gt)
: To remove erroneous, vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectionable material from (a book, for example) before publication.

it limits a democracy 'of the people' to have in its pledge what the majority wants. keeping blacks from running in the olympics doesn't keep them from running from the police either. its the context thats important

it does when i sing it. it comes right after the 'oh say can you see' part. i yodel it in falsetto. people shit themself

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what if nigger meant kite

No one is suggesting that we "forbid" the phrase "under God."

Some are suggesting that it doesn't belong in the type of government utterance that the Pledge of Allegiance represents.

We might also suggest that the phrase "right to paaaaaaarty" doesn't belong in the Bill of Rights. This is not censorship by any stretch of the imagination. The phrase has not been "forbidden."

If you mean to say it is "censoring" the Pledge itself to select and exclude what goes in it, then every single official utterance of the government is "censored," including the Bill of Rights.

You seem to be equating curtailment of the State's power to endorse religion with curtailment of the individual's right to free speech. They are two different things. It's not confusing in the slightest.

I can only think you mean "not to have." And it does not "limit" democracy to safeguard against tyrannies of the majority. Quite the opposite.

But if that's not a typo, then I agree that what the majority wants can indeed limit democracy.

Excluding religion from government utterances is not the same as excluding blacks from international sports. It could be that you're confused by the fact that they use the same word. But the cases differ in one important way. In one, individual rights are preserved. In the other, they are abrogated. You could not possibly be confused about that.

To take your analogy of running: We don't say a person is not free to run just because he's not free to run at work without getting fired. Most people aren't paid to haul ass all over the office.

And I don't pay government employees to make religious statements. They can do that on their own time.

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What others say about boorite!

The Pledge Of Allegiance is supposed to have the words "under God" in it. That's just the way it is. If you don't like it, you can just substitute something else at that point, such as "I like Brylcreme" or "oh boy, cookies!" How often do you actually say the Pledge Of Allegiance anyway?

I realize that there are opinions that are different from mine, but I can't even pretend to be interested in them.

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Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.

No, it isn't. It was jammed in there rather late in the game as a thumb in the eye of Godless commies.

MMM, cookies.

quote:

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I realize that there are opinions that are different from mine, but I can't even pretend to be interested in them.

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OK, now that's American!

Fuck all y'alls!!

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What others say about boorite!

quote:

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It was jammed in there rather late in the game as a thumb in the eye of Godless commies.

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Fuckin' A.

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Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.

I would simply like to ask the people who want to spend this much time getting prayer in schools, or pledge of allegiance to be repeated, teaching creation myth as science, etc if they would spend the same amount of money and resources getting actual science, math, computers, and language skills into schools.

addendum; lets get those basics of education right first, then they could worry about more trivial aspects like a pledge or prayer. If they aren't learning anything, then school is moot.

quote:

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No one is suggesting that we "forbid" the phrase "under God."

Some are suggesting that it doesn't belong in the type of government utterance that the Pledge of Allegiance represents.

We might also suggest that the phrase "right to paaaaaaarty" doesn't belong in the Bill of Rights. This is not censorship by any stretch of the imagination. The phrase has not been "forbidden."

If you mean to say it is "censoring" the Pledge itself to select and exclude what goes in it, then every single official utterance of the government is "censored," including the Bill of Rights.

You seem to be equating curtailment of the State's power to endorse religion with curtailment of the individual's right to free speech. They are two different things. It's not confusing in the slightest.

I can only think you mean "not to have." And it does not "limit" democracy to safeguard against tyrannies of the majority. Quite the opposite.

But if that's not a typo, then I agree that what the majority wants can indeed limit democracy.

Excluding religion from government utterances is not the same as excluding blacks from international sports. It could be that you're confused by the fact that they use the same word. But the cases differ in one important way. In one, individual rights are preserved. In the other, they are abrogated. You could not possibly be confused about that.

To take your analogy of running: We don't say a person is not free to run just because he's not free to run at work without getting fired. Most people aren't paid to haul ass all over the office.

And I don't pay government employees to make religious statements. They can do that on their own time.

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WRONG!

l00l

i stand by what i said more than ever -- you're confusing your flavor of censorship with non-censorship and using the apples and oranges justification that it facilitates competing desirable principles to make the claim that to 'suppress or delete' a phrase out of the pledge of allegiance that a majority of the people want in it somehow isn't censorship. since you continue in that vein and since i could again reply to everything you said using previous quotes, it's probbly a good time to agree to disagree

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what if nigger meant kite

quote:

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addendum; lets get those basics of education right first, then they could worry about more trivial aspects like a pledge or prayer. If they aren't learning anything, then school is moot.

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I agree. Until those more important problems are dealt with, the Pledge Of Allegiance should simply be left as it is.

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Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.

And I still say you're confusing enforcing the First Amendment with abrogation of the First Amendment. It says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." But when Congress jammed God into the Pledge during the McCarthy scare, they did just that.

Opposing this is in no way a "flavor of censorship." It is in fact upholding the First Amendment.

If you think anyone, in the majority or not, has a right, tantamount to the right of free speech, to stick their religion into government, then we will indeed have to agree to disagree.

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."
--TJ

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What others say about boorite!

quote:

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addendum; lets get those basics of education right first, then they could worry about more trivial aspects like a pledge or prayer. If they aren't learning anything, then school is moot.

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What if the real purpose of public school is not to teach children to think, but to teach them obedience and job skills? Then I think making them recite that their country is under God's dominion is a fucking great idea. But if we don't want to teach them to accept any old crazy idea as long as the boss says it, then we should take that line out of the goddamn pledge first thing, now, right away.

But I don't care that much, because I don't have kids. Let your kids recite theocratic dogma on a daily basis until their brains go so numb that they think the news media are liberal. Who gives a fuck?

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What others say about boorite!

Me, too. Rarely has anything good ever come from a bunch of kids going around "thinking", unless you liked punks and hippies. When they graduate, fine, but till then they should put a fucking sock in it.

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Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.

Me, too. Rarely has anything good ever come from a bunch of kids going around "thinking", unless you liked punks and hippies. When they graduate, fine, but till then they should put a fucking sock in it.

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No no no. It's like basketball. Kids are no good at it, but if they don't start young, then they never will be. So you let them play, but if they ever try to get a shot off on an adult, the adult should swat it into the bleachers. And so it is with thinking. Except basketbal is cooler. Who do you like in the West? It's going to be a clusterfuck, in my opinion.

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What others say about boorite!

Looking back, I should have just replied: "Dude, you think keeping religion out of government is censorship? WEIRD."

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What others say about boorite!

[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c12/ivytheplant/Calvin_Hobbes.jpg[/IMG]

And I still say you're confusing enforcing the First Amendment with abrogation of the First Amendment.

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funny, i don't even remember mentioning the first amendment. last thing i remember is holding up any dictionary's definition of what it means to censor something, then thinking to myself how odd it would be to forget that censorship didn't pop into existence with the creation of the first amendment

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what if nigger meant kite

Dude, you think keeping religion out of government is censorship? WEIRD.

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What others say about boorite!