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Glancing at all those JournalScape journals that have the full month's entries from February, I see that the month began with the Columbia and ended with Mr. Rogers dying. Feh.

Oh, well, there was a lot of good stuff in between.

In unrelated news, except that it's about another February news item, Vardibidian has some good comments about the Pledge of Allegiance and the Ninth Circuit Appellate Court's decision not to rehear the Newdow case. (Aside: I gather that the Newdow case was complicated by the girl in question stating that she actually had no problem with saying the Pledge; at least one article indicated that it was the father using his daughter's situation to push his own political agenda. Which, if true, bothers me even though I completely agree with the father that the schools shouldn't be pushing God.) I wrote briefly about the case in an entry last June, but here's some other stuff, partly excerpted from a couple emails I wrote at the time:

I'm annoyed by "under God" in the Pledge, just as I'm annoyed by "In God We Trust" and by Bush Sr.'s famous "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens" line. But I tend to figure that it's a relatively small thing compared to all the other ways in which Americans receive religious indoctrination hand-in-hand with patriotism. (Oh, which obliquely reminds me that I've been meaning to re-post that patriots-for-peace logo. I'll put that in a separate entry.)

And I suppose it's refreshing honesty, in a way; the US is in many ways a Christian nation, regardless of the fact that many of us non-Christians live here, so my inner cynic suggests that making that explicit isn't such a bad thing.

And yet, I do find it heartening to see people addressing this issue; even if it's a relatively small one, as Vardibidian points out, that's no reason not to address it.

And even small things can be deeply ingrained. I've told this story before, but not (I think) in this journal: when I was in 5th grade, I started refusing to say the Pledge. I was in one of my "won't say anything I don't absolutely believe" phases, and there was plenty in the Pledge I didn't agree with, starting with the notion of pledging allegiance to the flag per se. A friend of mine who sat next to me noticed that I was standing there with my hand over my heart and not saying anything, and he told me, "You should say the Pledge." I said, "But I don't believe it." He said, "But you should say it." I said, "I'm not going to say something I don't believe in." He said, panic growing in his eyes: "But you should say it!" I don't know whether he'd ever thought about what the words meant; it was just something you were supposed to do, and I was committing a near-treasonous act by not saying it, regardless of my reasons. I consider that to be a dangerous situation, when kids are so thoroughly indoctrinated that they get scared and angry when other kids don't go along. (But of course this is mere anecdotal evidence, and shouldn't necessarily be taken as representative.)

On another tack, it occurred to me last summer that those who say this is no big deal probably would not say the same thing if a teacher every morning led a class in an optional statement that Allah guides the lives of all Americans. I suspect in the current political climate, such a teacher would be fired in less time than it takes to say "under God."

What it comes down to for me (and Vardibidian says some similar things) is this: Why does the state have a compelling interest in having the "under God" clause in the Pledge? The only reason I can see is that the state considers itself to be Christian (or at least monotheistic, but the term "God" is strongly associated with Christianity in modern America), and that bothers me.