This pledge of allegiance thing…

The downside is that other nations who also view themselves as “under God” will be less willing to form coalitions with us against repressively evil dictators and/or commie regimes.

There may even be many God fearing governments around the world who would use our dropping “under God” as a reason to form active economic/military coalitions against the USA.

Linkon - name ONE nation that you are concerned about.

Commie regimes? WTH? McCarthy must be spinning in his grave. Quick! To SouthEast Asia!

Iran might be concerned not to ally with the US anymore when they are not “Under God” anymore.

honestly, when did kids become such losers? “they make fun of me for not saying the pledge of allegiance”??? these kids are dorks! im surprised they arent all making fun of themselves. its absurd! what will they pick on next? someone didnt raise their hand in class? someone didnt look both ways before crossing the street?
“i wont go back to school mom”
“why not son? did the children make fun of you again?”
"they keep laughing at me and saying “timmy didnt eat all his vegetables, what a nerd!”

!!!

where does it end?
since when did it become cool to follow the rules? next thing you know, it will be super cool to be smart, and be a teacher’s pet!

we need to go teach these kids a lesson! five across the eye, keep going till you smack some sense into them…

…

If only you knew the half of it, Janus. We should be focusing more on bullying, esp. after Columbine, but the school I’m at seems to turn a blind eye.

@Mary:

If only you knew the half of it, Janus. We should be focusing more on bullying, esp. after Columbine, but the school I’m at seems to turn a blind eye.

That’s weird. Many schools up here are focussed on “values” etc. particularly in efforts to curb bullying.
Having said that - we’ve had our share of bully-related “events”.

@cystic:

Linkon - name ONE nation that you are concerned about.

The USA will be where I am most concerned.

I used to live in the Republic of China, which is under the threat of commie invasion.

Other places, like Singapore, and the Phillipines are potential targets for the same commies. The native Tibetans have fared poorly under commie rule.

Communist China will soon be a superpower. They will present a much greater challenge than Stalinist Russia. Will we be friends? Will their govmt become truly representative of the people? Will they end the barbaric population control measures? Will they finally allow free speech and respect basic human rights?

Will we as a nation stay united until they do?

We are allied for the moment to deal with N. Korea and the terrorists.

As a general rule, I favor any policy that makes the USA stronger. Reciting the pledge is one. NASA is another. Both unite us a bit more with the global community. Replacing the Taliban and Saddam with representative govmt’s will take much effort, but it is the right thing to do, so it makes us stronger.

@Linkon:

The downside is that other nations who also view themselves as “under God” will be less willing to form coalitions with us against repressively evil dictators and/or commie regimes.

There may even be many God fearing governments around the world who would use our dropping “under God” as a reason to form active economic/military coalitions against the USA.

name one country, in this world, that you honestly believe would be less willing to form a coalition with you on THIS basis.

If the US was actually concerned in the least with increasing its cadre of friends willing to form coalitions with it, then it is giong about it completely the wrong way. Iraq did NOTHING to encourage European/other nations to band with the US. In fact, all it did was alienate the US from many European, Arabic, and other nations.

Bush has to stop lying to other nations if it wants allies, to stop invading sovereign nations, to stop terrorizing other nations who he does not feel ideologically alligned with.

Anyway Linkon. this is the worst reason i’ve heard of to say the pledge of allegiance (or to keep the phrase “under God” in it). My guess is that you would be the only person in America who buys this as Bush (as well as your conservative board members) very obviously does NOT care about making friends/the rest of the world - civilized or otherwise.