Hey, they weren’t speaking Arabic, so it’s all good.
Nearly every weekday morning in this supposedly free country, schoolchildren are forced to make “Islam” – that is, submission – as part of a mandatory religious ritual.
Oh, sure, in some jurisdictions they are promised that there is “no compulsion in religion,” and non-believers are told that their decision not to participate will be respected. Owing to the intangible but often irresistible influence of peer pressure, those assurances are generally useless, and often specifically ignored by school officials who punish non-conforming children for refusing to submit.
Declaring one’s “allegiance” is a proclamation of servitude. One who makes that pledge is recognizing the object of the ritual as a “Liege,” which is to say a lord or a ruler. Granted, American schoolchildren who repeat the Pledge of Allegiance aren’t required to prostrate themselves, nor are they still instructed to render the fascist-style salute that was once integral to the ritual. The vile essence of the ordinance remains, however.
The chief purpose of the Pledge was to compel those who took it to repudiate the heresy of federalism, in which the “union” was understood to be a constitutional confederation of independent states. That matter, we are told, was settled in blood by the triumph of the political monotheists, who insisted that there was but one Divine State, and Abraham Lincoln (peace be upon him) was its prophet.
The Pledge is also intended to teach the participant to subordinate himself on behalf of the collective and to venerate its symbol as a nationalist totem, and to cultivate the idea that killing and dying in “holy wars” waged on its behalf is the highest and holiest calling.
GOP propagandist Rick Wells, expressing the pious outrage of the true believer, is scandalized that students at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, Colorado were recently invited to recite the Pledge of Submission in Arabic.
Principal Tom Lopez denied the predictable accusation that this was an “attempt to push an Islamic agenda,” but rather an effort to “destroy the barriers [and] embrace the cultures” that are found in the local community.
“That would translate into `destroy the barriers to Islam and embrace it, correct, Mr. Lopez?” Wells wrote archly, in a rejoinder worthy of a sinister music cue.
How dare such people defile this compulsory pagan ritual by having the victims perform it in an unfamiliar language? When our children utter the Pledge of Servitude, they should do it in English, just as Lincoln (peace be upon him) intended!
If Principal Lopez and his associates are genuinely interested in breaking down artificial barriers and encouraging mutual respect for cultures, they should jettison the statist doxology altogether and encourage students to learn and practice the Golden Rule – which, unlike nationalist creeds, is of universal legitimacy. It should also be remembered that while the state’s educational cartel exists, there will always be “compulsion in religion.”
12:51 pm on October 15, 2014
