The Pledge of Allegiance Sucks

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton banned the Pledge of Allegiance today in San Francisco. As usual, the "under God" bit had a few Atheists antsy in their pantsy. One in particular, Michael Newdow, who's filed anti-Pledge suits in the past, finally succeded in defeating recitation of the oath in public schools.

This is interesting because the original Pledge was neither an ode of devotion cooked up by our founding fathers, nor did it contain the offending phrase. Created in 1892 to help a magazine called Youth's Companion sell flags to schools, it only became a prayer in 1954, when the Knights of Columbus petitioned some Michigan senator to sneak one little preposition and another little Supreme Being into the poem. Congress adopted the idea, and Bob's your uncle.

The real issue at stake here seems to be less that atheist kids (raised, no doubt, by stuffy intellectuals) have to mention God's name in vain, but that they stand in mindless unison reciting a glorified advertising jingle in the name of patriotism. The Kindly Planner reccommends that children be forced to recite and enact instances of free speech upheld by the Constitution, rather than a lame, conformist poem that doesn't even rhyme.