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Comment by dtx1 | Hacker News Reader

These Rules and Statements always remind me of the stories I heard from the GDR and USSR Days. To get your highschool diploma or PhD in the GDR you had to recite your commitment to Communist/Marxist ideas before a panel that often didn't care about it but everyone knew it was just easiest to go through the motions anyway.

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Reminds me of having to stand in a circle with all my classmates while one of us had the privilege of holding the national flag. We then in unison had to recite a pledge to that flag, the nation and god. just thinking about having to say the pledge of allegiance gives me chills.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

It’s a pointless, anodyne and unobjectionable pledge that prescribes nothing.

It’s stupid, but not remotely comparable to DEI statements, or commitment to much more specific political ideals.

Disregarding someone else's objection to forced speech and saying yours is more important isn't going to win a lot of people over. Just because you can't see why it's objectionable doesn't mean it isn't.

I did not get the liberty to decline participating.

I am not religious so why should I pledge an oath to be ruled under a god.

I am forced to recite a daily mantra filled with propaganda for a republic which is more concerned about arguing for liberty and justice than it is actually providing liberty and justice.

Yep. Had a flashback to when I was a kid and was forced to pledge allegiance to an empire of terror. Have been shaking and crying remembering abuses like that.

There's some irony here. The flag and the pledge start off as symbols of obedience to established power, and then become symbols of revolt against shifts in power, but it seems to me that the obedience programming always wins.

Right now in the US, there are parallel "flag-waving" and "flag-burning" revolutions. There's no question that the flag-burners are winning the biggest shifts in established power, but the flag-wavers are predominantly the rank-and-file enforcers of the flag-burner policies.

Both can be true examples of authoritarianism.

Every company I've worked for has a code of conduct we had to sign.

I didn't have to take an oath to get my diploma, but I'm not a medical doctor. I've also never had to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, etc., as I've never witnessed anything the Courts cared to interrogate me on.

There's a lot of contexts where oaths are required; they're not limited to the USSR and GDR. Oaths are just one of those tools societies use to bind together a heterogeneous people.

Signing a code of conduct which proscribes specific behaviors is not in any way comparable to professing allegiance to a specific political system.

And DEI statements are in no way sworn allegiances to political systems. You can write an essay exploring the difficulties wheelchair users face in education, and how you e worked to make that better. That would be a fine statement. How would that in any way be what you describe?

And you would probably be very on point with that. Also not too different that kissing the sceptre of your king.

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