I have always thought the Pledge of Allegiance is sort of a crock. I mean, it is a string of phrases that young schoolchildren are taught to recite without even understanding the meaning of what they are saying... how many kids think it is "invisible" and not "individisible?... as some sort of propagandist slogan. The Pledge of Allegiance is no more patriotic than simple acts like voting, oh which, by the way, only about half -- at the most -- of elligible Americans bother to do. It has always struck me as more of a prayer, particularly with it's "under God" phrase, than anything else, and stood as a relic of our society's general inability to truly spearate religion (i.e. mainly Christianity) from our concepts of nationhood, as our founders had envisioned.

I've largely kept these thoughts to myself, because I understand that anyone who atempts to explain these things will be dismissed as unpatriotic without being heard. This, like so many other things, is something people would rather not know about or try to understand, and just go on living in ignorance.

Now the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has made a controversial ruling, based on the "under god" phrase, the the Pledge is Unconstitutional because it violates the Separation of Church and State.

The Ruling is absolutely correct, and to the letter of the Constitution. It doesn't matter what blindly quasi-patriotic grandstanding acts Congess decides to take, or that millions of American will never understand the basic logic behind the decision. Everybody will throw a big shit-fit, in a similar manner as to when the Supreme Court (very correctly) ruled flag burning is protected under free speech, and various reactionary groups, falsely labeling themselves as "true patriots" will probably act to ensure constitutional protection of the Pledge.

I wonder how many people understand the history of the Pledge? I found a brief one here, but I am sure there are many out there. The fact is that the Pledge is extremely contrived, too contrived for my tastes, frankly, and it strikes me as an archaic, naive expression of blind loyalty... the type of oath our country is better off rid of entirely.

If the president, congress, and other so-called "patriots" are so upset about the possible banning of an unconstitutional oath, maybe they should write something that works, or, better yet, reverse the 1954 decision by Congress to eliminate the words "Under God" which are the whole problem in the first place.

But again, such logical reasoning seems to have no place in America, particluar in this post Sept. 11th time frame where we have excuses to replace sound freedom of expression with blind jingoism.