14 September 2005

Making stuff up again...

The Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional? Where do people get off? Before long, the Constitution will be ruled unconstitutional. You know, I'm pretty sure that none of the people who wrote that document meant what they said.
Apparently, there is s guy out there who has been railing agaist the Pledge for some time. He's an atheist and rejects the idea that God should be mentioned. He has a right to his beliefs, but he does not have a right to change history. He does not have a right to change the premises upon which this nation was founded.
If this man has no right to change premises, the judge has doubly no right. Who does he think he is, challenging the written words of the Federalists? People may not like the idea of God, but let's face it: This country was founded a nation under God and I defy anyone to explain how that is a bad thing. We have no religeon involved that chains people, no use of God to oppress like the Islamic world, we are not forced to worship God. All the Pledge says is that we are a nation under God. Our Declaration of Independance states our relationship with God when it says the 'all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights". Nobody has permission to change this history. This nation's 'under God' concept is how we have our freedoms, as freedoms can't be granted by mankind. Freedoms and rights come from God, man only takes them away. Our founders recognized this and set this nation up to recognize those rights and freedoms and to recognize where they come from. The Pledge, in turn, recognizes this state of affairs. It does not require a belief in God. It is not a pledge to God. It is a pledge to this Nation. If a resident of this Nation can't pledge allegiance to this Nation, I want them gone. If you can't be loyal to America, find another country to be loyal to. If you don't like this country, don't believe in it, and won't support it, then leave. There are plenty of other nations out there that are almost as good but that are founded differently. Sweden, England, Canada, Chile... This nation has a built in mechanism to change things, but our founding documents delineate what can't be changed. That nation under God bit is one of those things.

This is how we were founded:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton


This is how this nation was founded. Stop making stuff up and pretending that this either did not happen or is wrong!

Charlie Foxtrot out.

3 Comments:

Blogger Liam said...

Actually, the words ‘under God’ were only added to the pledge in 1954, which itself was only drafted in 1892, so neither the pledge, nor the reference to God are part of America’s ‘founding documents.’

Also, I fail to see why it is important to mention god if you are pledging allegiance to a nation. It isn’t that the guy doesn’t want to pledge allegiance to the nation, it’s that he doesn’t want to be forced to acknowledge somebody else’s God in so doing; something which should be his right under the First Amendment.

15 September, 2005  
Blogger Charlie Foxtrot said...

that statment is mostly true... what is also true is that this nation was founded as a nation under God (pick one, any one) and that there is nothing contrary between the Pledge and the Constitution. neither of those points can be argued, hence the title, Making stuff up.

15 September, 2005  
Blogger Liam said...

Actually, both of those points can be argued…

Reading the Declaration of Independence which you helpfully seem to have quoted in its entirety, I can only find three references to God in any form:

The opening paragraph puts the Laws of Nature alongside those of Nature’s God, yet no-one claims the US is a nation ‘under Nature and under God.’

The opening of the second paragraph states that all men have been created with certain inalienable rights, but creation doesn’t imply the ongoing relationship with the creator which you claim in your post and, in any case, it deals with the rights of men, not of nations.

In the concluding paragraph, most convincingly, although the founders appeal to the Supreme Judge of the World to approve of their actions, but they then declare the nation independent of Great Britain ‘in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies.’ [My emphasis.]

Finally, I have to disagree with your assertion that there is nothing contrary between the Constitution and the Pledge; neither the Constitution, nor any of the Amendments to it, mentions God or religion at all other than to prohibit establishment and guarantee freedom of worship. Not all religions have a ‘God’ in the Abrahamic style, so to include the reference in the federally prescribed Pledge is infringing on people’s freedom of worship by insisting they acknowledge somebody else’s God as part of declaring their loyalty to their nation.

15 September, 2005  

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