Thanks to recent articles by terpfan1980(on "Politics") and Gideon MacLeish (on "Religion"), we've been informed of Michael Newdow's latest assault on the Pledge of Allegience, a new offensive which would seem to involve others that he has somehow convinced to follow his lead.
I've been posting comments on both threads, and must say that some of the arguments put forth by the resistance I've seen are fairly compelling. The debate has been kind of fun, if a little frustrating.
However, on terpfan's thread the debate switched from as to whether or not "under God" should be included, to whether or not we should actually make such an oath to begin with.
I was informed, by some, that they considered pledging loyalty to a flag to be "idolatry". I had to take issue with this.
According to the One Look Online Dictionary, the definition of idolatry is:
noun: the worship of idols; the worship of images that are not God
noun: religious zeal; willingness to serve God
Do we worship our flag as a deity? No.....we swear our loyalty and support of it, and the government and nation it represents. No more, no less.
For the life of me, I cannot see why some think it's so terribly wrong, pledging your support and loyalty to your country. One person, for example, says that they don't do it because it's not provided for, or named, in the constitution.
To that I say that lots of things, less noble things at that, are not named in the constitution, but we do them anyway.
Those of you who do not want to say the Pledge, that is your right, of course. But as I've said before, that fact that you don't ~~have~~ to should make you ~~want~~ to.
I was happy to see that those "anti-pledgers" or "no-under God-ers" (for desperate want of better terms; my apologies) who replied to terpfan's article seemed to think nothing disrespectful of those of us who did say it, and those of us who include "under God". Thank you for that.
I do want to say this to those referred to above: It is possible to think too much, you know, just as it is to think too little.