Jul 5
85222972
Can you believe, post 9-11 nitwit Harry Browne has returned to sanity? Someone must have got him back on the right medication, because this is a cracking piece. Thanks to Dale Amon of Samizdata for the link.
Do you really want to pledge to the flag?
Liberty & Peace Commentary by Harry Browne
Published today at WorldNetDaily
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28178
The California ruling that the Pledge of Allegiance
can’t be recited in government schools has given a
much-needed lift to the conservative movement.
With George Bush devoted to increased spending on
foreign aid, government schools, government health
care, welfare and every imaginable boondoggle,
conservatives haven’t had much to rally around.
But now they have a cause. They can trumpet their
indignation, fret about the future of the country,
and send out fund-raising letters galore. They
have an issue.
A Google search of recent articles on the
“Pledge of Allegiance” returned over 75,000 hits.
All this hysteria and alarm seems a bit strange,
since tens of millions of Americans already
oppose the ruling and only one meager judge
seems in favor of it.
Religious freedom
The one thing being overlooked in all this is
the reason the Founding Fathers created the
First Amendment. They had no doubt that
Americans could and would practice religion on
their own, and so they were strongly opposed to
agencies of government promoting religion in
any way. In fact, an overwhelming number of
colonists had come to America originally to
escape state-sponsored religions in their
home countries.
They knew that religion in government
automatically meant government in religion.
Did the Founding Fathers intend for the First
Amendment to keep religion out of the
government schools?
How could they? There were no government
schools just as there was no government
health care or foreign aid or corporate
welfare or pork-barrel projects.
They understood the tyranny that results when
politicians and bureaucrats control the personal
lives of citizens. And so they scrupulously
limited government to a few functions they
didn’t believe could be handled outside of
government.
In America’s first century, there were only
private schools and most of them included
some kind of religion without any controversy.
But once the government moved into education in
the mid-1800s, it was inevitable that religion
in the schools would eventually become a
constitutional issue.
But why should religion in some schools be a
problem? Shouldn’t you be able to choose between
sending your children to a school that has prayer
and one that scrupulously avoids it? You make
similar choices in most other areas of your life.
The problem isn’t education. Nor is it religion.
The problem is government-run education. Wherever
those with the most political power can impose
their way on everyone else, you’re bound to have
pitched battles, acrimony and enormous amounts of
time wasted arguing over matters that each person
should be allowed to decide for himself.
If the government ran the supermarkets, there
would be bitter fights over whether the stores
should sell kosher foods.
If government produced our computers, we probably
couldn’t access religious sites on the Internet.
(Not to mention that your computer would be a
Pentium .001 with 1K of RAM, a 78 rpm phonograph
record for your hard disk, and a megaphone instead
of a modem.)
Anyone who thinks government should operate the
supermarkets or produce computers is a candidate
for a mental institution.
Why then would we want the government “educating”
our children?
What the Pledge is
Returning to the Pledge of Allegiance, it was
composed in 1892 by Francis Bellamy,
(http://www.fee.org/iollogin.php?nid=4937)
a socialist, specifically to help young children
become good little citizens of the Fatherland.
The idea that our children should be pledging
allegiance to government smacks of Nazi Germany or
the Soviet Union the very antitheses of what
America was meant to be.
If you like big government, if you think people
like Bill Clinton and George Bush are competent to
make important decisions in your life, you might
feel comfortable pledging allegiance “to the flag
and to the republic [government] for which it
stands.”
But if you don’t like politicians deciding how your
children should be educated, how your doctor should
treat you, or how much of your money African
dictators are entitled to, maybe you should
reconsider where you pledge your allegiance.
The Founding Fathers refused to pledge allegiance
to a government that had “become destructive” of
the “unalienable rights” of “Life, Liberty, and
the Pursuit of Happiness.” They pledged “to each
other” their Lives, their Fortunes, and their
sacred Honor.
Shouldn’t you be pledging your allegiance to
yourself, your family, and your friends to
those who truly enhance your life?
And shouldn’t you be pledging your allegiance to
the concept of liberty of freedom from a
$2 trillion government in Washington and its
look-alikes in state capitals?
That lovely lady in New York harbor with her torch
held high isn’t called the Statue of a Super Power,
nor the World’s Policewoman nor the Statue of
Big Government, Universal Health Care, or
Compassionate Conservatism.
She’s called the Statue of Liberty.
Isn’t liberty rather than a flag and its
government where your allegiance belongs?
