Wow, first time my Facebook updates were faster than B3ta :O
I'll say here what I said on Facebook...
The whole "One nation under God" part of the Pledge of Allegiance was added in 1954. Breaking the First Amendment in doing so by respecting Christianity over anything else. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Both the Protesters and the Charity have a right to do what they were doing. While what the protesters were doing was hateful, it is protected by free speech. They prevented no-one from gathering and threatened no violence.
However, it is the idea that America is a Christian Nation over anything else which is stoked by the government and fuelled by the rampant paranoia of it's middle-class and working-class citizenry that caused this, frankly disgusting, protest.
The protest is a symptom of the rise of a new kind of McCarthyism that strove to find and ostracise communist traitors (a worthy cause) that ended up targeting left-leaning artists, scientists, novelists, actors and free-thinkers that now has begun targeting Terrorists (another worthy cause), and has ended up targeting Muslims.
The question Americans have to ask themselves is: The result of McCarthyism left America with the Hippy Movement, if you really, honestly and truly want to make America a Nation for Christians only, you're going the wrong way about it.
But then again, Fundamentalist followers were never the brightest lot.
bit of a rant there actually.
(, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 11:20, Share, Reply)
top words
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Griffin Saver Something, something, 2006, something., Fri 4 Mar 2011, 11:22,
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I love the way that most of them bring up the founding values of the USA
Well, I actually hate it. But here we go:
Benjamin Franklin: "Even if the Mufti of Constantinople [were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service."
Washington on who to hire: “If they are good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa or Europe; they may be Mahometans, Jews, Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists."
But, yeah. Back then government would have told Moslems to go home. Honest.
(, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 11:34, Share, Reply)
thing is, history has proved McCarthy right and hippies are ruining the country
His tactics may have been flawed, but he discovered quite a few Soviet agents working in crucial areas of the US governmen: likely how the Soviets got nukes, which is not a good thing. Don't know how you made the leap from opposing muslims to McCarthy unless it is a label like "boogeyman"
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BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 11:35,
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I'm not saying that McCarthyism didn't work.
It did find spies, just as the Anti-Terrorist laws are finding Terrorists.
But it's having the side effect of shunning a large part of the population (Free thinkers, Scientists, Artist, Actors etc in the case of McCarthyism, and Muslims, and anyone non-Christian in this case).
To say that "Hippies are ruining the country" is rather bland. The hippy movement branched out in many ways, including into Environmentalism, from which we wouldn't have had people willing to spearhead planet-saving green movements for little or no reward.
On the flip-side you can easily say that Republicans are ruining the country and just point to George W Bush, despite the fact that he was re-elected and his tenure as president did have some positive benifits. (like making it profitable to jump on environmentalism)
Blaming one thing for ruining a country is the flimsiest straw man ever. Except maybe saying that something is the flimsiest straw man ever.
(, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 11:49, Share, Reply)