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Comment by hackula1 | Hacker News Reader

The whole idea of a "pledge of allegiance" strikes me as extremely creepy. Having our kids giving their daily state worship by saying a "prayer" and physically submitting themselves to a state icon is something that I would expect would upset both secular people like myself and religious people.

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The United States Supreme Court held in 1943 that school pupils may decline to participate in the pledge of allegiance.[1] Most but perhaps not all state governments in the United States make saying the pledge a routine part of the school day (at least during primary schooling), but education regulation in the United States is mostly by state law, so perhaps there are some exceptions to this general pattern. Of course homeschoolers like my family make their own decision in such matters.

[1] http://www.rethinkingschools.org/special_reports/sept11/16_0...

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vo...

Which is interesting, because I was sent home one day in elementary school because I refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance. They called my mom, and they had her come pick me up.

5th grade, in Columbus, Indiana. 1993

Yes, many school officials behave lawlessly.

Oh legally they may decline, but peer pressure and words like "patriot" or worse still "traitor" probably mean most who don't want to feel compelled to.

IMHO, this sort of thing is as much brain washing as religious versions are.

In elementary school, I stood up, put my hand on my heart, and zoned out. I don't remember ever getting called out on that.

Then I started making extemporaneous variations that followed the meter but inverted the meaning.

I had a feeling someone would bring this up. My main counter here is that there is a power dynamic at play here that makes it extremely unlikely that a child will be able to decline. Imagine a teacher saying to an 8 year old "Stand up, face the flag, put your hand over your heart, and say these words." To a child, this is not a suggestion, but a command, and few kids are going to stay seated and respond "Sorry teacher, but due to the 1943 Supreme Court decision, I have the right to decline participation and will now exercise that right."

Similar things became quite common in the upsurge of nationalism in the early 20th century. Most countries dropped them either after the fall of Naziism or the fall of communism, but the US one seems to have fallen through the cracks.

As a foreigner, I'm shocked and very creeped out whenever I'm in the US and see people directly giving the pledge.

A country should pledge allegiance to it's citizens, not the other way around.

Quadruple that for me as a German. I'm pretty certain that if videos surfaced of children reciting the pledge or something similar in front of a German flag in a German school, a scandal would ensue, resulting in disciplinary measures against school staff (or a shutdown in case of a private school).

I'm a Christian, and I'm always baffled by the blindly-patriotic attitudes many Christians hold and promote. If you tie your religious loyalty to a specific government, what happens to your religion when the state turns on you?

I assume that _religious_ loyalty isn't tied into the US pledge of allegiance as such; it has some religious undertones, but I doubt many people making it would feel it impinges on their beliefs.

I think a reminder that you're part of a community and you should be working to improve it is pretty healthy. The ritual nature is a bit creepy but it's not a prayer. Allegiance is not worship.

"adoration or devotion comparable to religious homage, shown toward a person or principle."

"devotion or loyalty to a person, group, or cause"

Can you tell which definition I cut and pasted the above from without using google? One is allegiance and the other is worship, but its hard to tell them apart although as a hint the "comparable to" does kind of give away which is vaguely religious.

Hard core nationalism/statism never ends well. As a cultural vaccination program, forcing children to pledge themselves to blind worship of a bunch of crooked leaders should be banned on general principles.

The flat definitions don't do a good job of taking degree into account. You have allegiance to your boss at your job. You don't worship your job.

I suspect it's more because this sort of ritualised patriotism/nationalism has really nasty associations for many people; for Americans, who are used to it, it probably looks entirely different.

As an American I find it creepy but minor. It's a largely-meaningless ritual that you forget about immediately.

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