{"id":2580,"date":"2002-06-29T15:52:58","date_gmt":"2002-06-29T15:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=125"},"modified":"2002-06-29T15:52:58","modified_gmt":"2002-06-29T15:52:58","slug":"the-pledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2580","title":{"rendered":"THE PLEDGE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier<\/a>, I noted that I wasn\u0092t happy with either the inclusion of \u0093under God\u0094 into the Pledge, or with the court decision that maybe-kinda struck it. I got comments, both from people who felt they had been scorned and abused as children because they wouldn\u0092t say it and from parents who wanted to spare their children from such opprobrium.
\nI thought about it a bit while driving the Boyyz around this afternoon, and talking to them came to the conclusion that, basically, I was right. Here\u0092s the deal:
\nDealing with other people requires a certain flexibility. They don\u0092t know what you know, believe what you believe, or feel what you feel. The entire problem of politics is how to engage people and keep them engaged in some common purpose, even one as minor as obeying traffic signals.
\nI\u0092m not Jewish; but when I go to a Jewish wedding or funeral, I wear a yarmulke. Why? Out of politeness. Out of a willingness to respect the beliefs of others.
\nBut, you say, that\u0092s exactly what the Pledge doesn\u0092t do! It doesn\u0092t respect my<\/u> beliefs!<\/i>
\nAnd that\u0092s the key, isn\u0092t it? On one hand, my desire is to respect the beliefs of others, where it doesn\u0092t materially affect me and regardless of my own beliefs in the matter. On the other, your complaint is an overwhelming desire that your beliefs be respected, no matter how trivial the violation, regardless of the impact<\/a> on yourself or others.
\nLook, we’re not talking about material affect, about racist exclusion…about fighting to give your kid opportunity or dignity. And, in part, it’s this conflation of hurt feelings with Jim Crow or the Holocaust that is driving me nuts.
\nAnd in the other part, I think that including the \u0091under God\u0092 clause was an embarrassing artifact of late 50\u0092s cultural rigidity. I\u0092d like to see it removed. But I\u0092d like to see it removed via a process which doesn\u0092t drive a further wedge between the folks in the U.S. who are clinging to the symbols of a nonexistent former consensus, and those who feel alienated from that consensus.
\nWe\u0092re at a point in our history when we need<\/u> to find the threads that bind us into a nation and a polity. Sadly, \u0091win at any cost\u0092 politicians (c.f. Gray \u0091SkyBox\u0092 Davis), and culture warriors of one stripe or another are happy to drive wedges, if they believe the fractures serve their short-term political interests.
\nAnd we\u0092re at a point in our political history that\u0092s been made by single-issue warriors\u0085for and against development, for and against abortion, for and against parks for dogs…and damn those on the other side of the issue.
\nI had the unique opportunity to have dinner once with then-State Senator John Schmitz. He was a genuine John Birch society member, elected from Orange County, who lost his office when it was discovered that his mistress had sexually abused their sons. (His daughter is also Mary Kay Le Tourneau, so I\u0092ll take as a given that the family had\u0085issues\u0085). He was still in the Senate, and made a comment that I\u0092ve always remembered:<\/p>\n

When Moscone ran the Senate, he and I used to fight hammer and tongs all day, then go out and have drinks over dinner and laugh about it. We differed on where we wanted the boat to go, but we recognized that we were in the same boat. These new guys would gladly sink the boat rather then compromise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that\u0092s why I think the decision was stupid, and why the forces behind it\u0085the Church of My Wounded Feelings\u0085and their soldiers, the Warrior Cult of the Single Issue\u0085are incredibly destructive. And right now, we don\u0092t have the time for it.
\nMy sons don\u0092t go to church, because I\u0092ve never gone to church (at one point, one of my exes went to what I jokingly called \u0093The Church of the Sandinista\u0094 in Ocean Park, but I thought Jim Conn was a good guy, so I\u0092ll cut them some slack). I don\u0092t think they are abused by being asked to say \u0093under God\u0094 in the Pledge, and when they ask me about it (each one has, either in kindergarten or first grade) I tell them the truth; that some people who believed in God a lot asked to have it added to the pledge, and got the President to add it. And that they will; have to make up their own minds about whether to say it or whether to believe in God when they are older. But that this is how they do it in their school, and when I\u0092m in a similar situation I say it, while thinking about all the people who do believe in God, and how cool it is that we all get to believe whatever we want in this society. But they get to decide.
\nIf they told me they were being teased about it, I\u0092d ask them how it differs from all the other things kids get teased for \u0096 childhood is a vicious time \u0096 and talk to them about how to respond in a way that protects themselves emotionally without becoming the bullies they are afraid of.
\nSomehow this whole thing reeks of the kind of pecksniffery that wants to ban tag and dodgeball. It’s the same kind of thinking that bans Nativity scenes or menorahs from public buildings, and worries more about changing the names of sports teams than about bringing people along to actually change the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier, I noted that I wasn\u0092t happy with either the inclusion of \u0093under God\u0094 into the Pledge, or with the court decision that maybe-kinda struck it. I got comments, both from people who felt they had been scorned and abused as children because they wouldn\u0092t say it and from parents who wanted to spare their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2580"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}