More politics
Mar. 24th, 2004 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
Some of you may remember my longass post about how the Pledge is stupid and the American's Creed is better. If not, you can no doubt find it in my memories (I'm at 200 now! Go me!)
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000630.html
I love this person. Seriously.
If any further evidence is needed that the purpose of the Pledge of Allegiance is to inculcate mindless loyalty to the state, it can be found in the fact that many children clearly do not understand what they are saying. This can be seen in the eggcorns that they construct. My mother tells me that as a little girl she believed that there was a thing called a legiance that she was pledging to the flag. She didn't know what it was. In today's column in the New York Times, entitled Of God and the Flag, William Safire reports that as a little boy he thought that the Pledge began "I led the pigeons to the flag". In a roundabout way, I think he understood it all too well.
THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT! Or one of them, anyway. It's wrong, dead wrong, to teach children to say big words they don't even understand, especially if you're expecting them to promise something. If they don't understand it, why should they say it? You're making them lie, even if they'd mean the sentiment. So, of course, by the time they understand what it means, they're just numbly reciting pitterpatterbabble. Stupid, really. If you're going to say something and not mean it, it might as well be something personal, like "I love you" or "I'm allergic to mushrooms".
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000630.html
I love this person. Seriously.
If any further evidence is needed that the purpose of the Pledge of Allegiance is to inculcate mindless loyalty to the state, it can be found in the fact that many children clearly do not understand what they are saying. This can be seen in the eggcorns that they construct. My mother tells me that as a little girl she believed that there was a thing called a legiance that she was pledging to the flag. She didn't know what it was. In today's column in the New York Times, entitled Of God and the Flag, William Safire reports that as a little boy he thought that the Pledge began "I led the pigeons to the flag". In a roundabout way, I think he understood it all too well.
THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT! Or one of them, anyway. It's wrong, dead wrong, to teach children to say big words they don't even understand, especially if you're expecting them to promise something. If they don't understand it, why should they say it? You're making them lie, even if they'd mean the sentiment. So, of course, by the time they understand what it means, they're just numbly reciting pitterpatterbabble. Stupid, really. If you're going to say something and not mean it, it might as well be something personal, like "I love you" or "I'm allergic to mushrooms".
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-03-24 09:12 am (UTC)Personally, if they *are* going to stick with the pledge of allegiance, I'm in favor of returning it to the form in which it was originally written, not the Knights of Columbus-amended version of the Cold War era. The fact that "under God" wasn't a part of the original pledge is especially noteworthy given the fact that it was written by a Baptist minister!
(And for what it's worth, I mondegreened "under God" into "under guard" back when we had to recite the pledge back in elementary school. And I think I was momentarily confused as to where Forwitchistan was before that part finally dawned on me...)
no subject
Date: 2004-03-24 09:23 am (UTC)Apparently, his original draft also included the word "equality", but he decided it might not take with that added :(
no subject
Date: 2004-03-24 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-24 06:26 pm (UTC)