I know, in this country, we’re free to praise God
And we’re free to ignore those who don’t
We’d be free to spread some of this freedom around
But we’re also free not to… and won’t.
Some people might claim that we’re doing it wrong—
Why they’d say that, I cannot conceive—
Those people have freedom, like everyone else;
I suggest that they feel free to leave.
Via Opposing Views, who note Former Bush Spokesperson Dana Perino is literally telling atheists to leave the country, a case study of privilege at work. Take a look at the segment (I can’t embed it or I would); listen to the same old arguments (including “‘in god we trust’ is on our money”–so there’s another batch of coins off to the engraver–and the old favorite “they don’t believe, so why do they care?“–apparently you can either believe in god or the constitution, but not both), and then try turning it around. Imagine that there was nothing on the coins at all–not God, not Allah, not Thor, but also not “there is no god”–and imagine that their arguments were being made in opposition to a push to put “In God We Trust” on the coins to begin with. Virtually every argument they make works just as well against putting their god in our pledge (or on our money).
And then, look up in the right hand upper corner of the site, and read their own pledge:
The Fox Nation is for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought, expression, and worship.
And they probably believe it. They just don’t understand it.
Godless before 54
No prayers out loud in public school;
Nobody seemed to care.
The prayers were kept in church or home.
They seemed more fitting there.
Then suddenly the pledge was changed.
They added in a line.
I could not see the point of it.
Before it seemed just fine.
For days we stumbled through it,
Overlapping old with new
But finally we mastered it.
Just more words to get through.
But truth be told, I liked the old,
Succinct and so much sweeter.
I never did forgive those fools
For messing up the meter.
Such pitiably small minded attacks on the “other”. Whichever other they can muster for yet another “oppression for thee, not for me”, because it gets heads nodding in agreement. I’d venture that almost every one of us nonbelievers have friends and relatives who post the same pablum excreted in that Fox segment. I’ve grown tired of just ignoring them, and have started responding as if I no longer cared if they cut me off; as if.
While I always appreciate the artistic endeavors of the great Digital Cuttlefish, I love your little ditty, Joan!
Thanks Trog!. Only problem with the ‘ditty’ is it shows my age.
Yeah, I guess calling it a “ditty” shows mine as well.
When finally I got over the excitement of your savoring your compliment and actually re-read the first part of your post, I found myself in familiar waters. Why do people send these things around as if everyone is automatically in agreement with them? I finally got tired of ignoring them and deleting, which didn’t seem to help, and started answering back. I was then dubbed ‘irritable’ and now I’m pretty much free of them. (grin) The astounding thing is that I was often including in a multiperson mass mailing. One of these peeps actually had up to 25 or 30 people she would send out. They consisted of either saccharin Christian homilies or huffy responses to the various manufactured complaints against the ‘others’, of course usually around the holidays. Well, apparently the flag pledge will be the new one. (sigh)