[Vision2020] One Should Have Right To Object To 'Under God'

[keely emerinemix]

Good heavens!  I find myself agreeing with the Princess, whose explanation 
yesterday and today of why he doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance mirrors 
my own.

One clarification:  I would not say that a Christian who does recite the 
pledge is committing idolatry; I am saying that I would be if I were to 
violate my own conscience in this matter.

Assuming, still, that the Princess won't be inviting me to any of her tea 
parties anytime soon --

keely


From: "Taro Tanaka" <taro_tanaka at hotmail.com>
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] One Should Have Right To Object To 'Under God'
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 14:12:38 +0000

Tom Hansen thansen at moscow.com wrote:

[[ By your statement, P. Sushitushi, you support an argument (discussed in
this
forum, V2020, last January) that the Moscow City council should NOT be
required to open each council session with the Pledge of Allegiance? ]]

I have learned not to trust my memory anymore, and I don't have time to go
back and check that discussion in the archives, but I'm against the Pledge
of Allegiance. I believe that (potentially, at least) the most patriotic
thing is to NOT say it.

The reason why I add the qualifier "potentially" is because a person's
motives for going against the flow need to be taken into consideration.
*Why* a person does what he does is at least as important as the objective
behavior. For example, it is possible that a man could be actingly very
gentlemanly toward a woman because he's looking for an opportunity to get
into her pants. In that case, he's not a gentleman but a cad. (That would
have to mean that most men are cads at one time or another, but anyway.)

So without commenting on directly on what happened last January, let me
simply say that I'm against anyone saying the Pledge of Allegiance because I
think it promotes Statism, and, as a separate but closely related issue, I'm
particularly against Christians saying the Pledge of Allegiance because it
is idolatrous.

But remember, it is simultaneously true that I think favorably of
Trinitarian test oaths. Oath-taking is pretty much inescapable in society.
It seems pretty clear to me that by placing their hands over their hearts,
people are taking what amounts to a self-imprecatory oath . . . not that
anyone ever formally proclaimed that "this is the meaning of the symbolism
in the Pledge of Allegiance." But I think that is a fair conclusion to draw
from it.

[[ "I love my country but fear my government." ]]

They came in the middle of the night for the author of that statement . . .

-- Princess Sushitushi

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