(September 26, 2017 at 7:35 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: "America -- love it or leave it!"
Yeah, fuck off. I put my ass on the line for this country, unlike you. He's welcome here, just as you are, no matter how fucking stupid you can be at times.
That goes for anyone. Yea, even A Theist is welcome here. I would say to him however, while I am not demanding he leaves, I still say and stand by the fact that I really do not think he understands what real oppression is. I would say he has a very narrow view of the world.
I would say if you want to know what real oppression is, visit parts of the world where expressing dissent can get you murdered by mobs, and or the state. Then come back and bitch about others protesting.
45 is not defending freedom, he is using very dangerous rhetoric to drive a wedge between the classes and races. As I said in many posts protesting to bring light to real problems isn't saying you hate America, it is saying you care enough to bring light to those problems so we as a nation can improve.
But when a politician makes demands of forced ritual, that is not a western value. When a politician makes demands of forced ritual that is the very dangerous divisive rhetoric that has the potential long term to erode the concepts on checks on power.
Hitler and the Nazis demanded you stand ans salute their flag. Kim Jong Un demands you stand and worship him and solute his flag. Stalin also had those forced rituals.
And what is utter nonsense is that those on the right forgot or ignore Supreme Court history in regards to forced ritual. It was not communists or atheists, who brought the case about the pledge being forced. Religious people sued in district court to allow their children to sit out the pledge. The Supreme Court agreed.
No, I am not talking about more current cases with the words "under God, but the older cases that addressed the unconstitutional forced ritual of the entire ritual.
http://education.findlaw.com/student-rig...ation.html
Jehova's Witnesses were the ones whom filed the suit to get the mandated ritual struck down.
The reason you don't use government to mandate forced oaths/rituals including prayer, secular or religious, is because we are not a 1 party state, we are not a theocracy. The founders knew how divided the colonies were prior to the Constitution. They knew, while many of them were deeply religious, most of them were deists, all were very suspicious of forced rituals of any kind.
America is basically a contract of mutual participation and consent with a constitution that DOES NOT set up social pecking orders favoring one segment of society over another.
Do not assume why someone does not take part in a ritual. Do not vilify them because they do not partake in a ritual. Americans are not clones of each other nor should we demand forced ritual.
When you do take an oath it is voluntary as it should be. Just like nobody can force you to attend a Mosque or Synagogue or Hindu Temple. The National Anthem is a ritual, not a legal contract. The pledge is also a ritual and not a legal contract. You most certainly can express your patriotism by partaking in them, but they are not things that should be forced on anyone.
The only legal contract as an oath that is required is the Oath of Office, but even that is voluntary because the one attempting to get that office is not being forced to make the attempt to get that office.
I love America, no, not everything about it, lots of it needs improvement. But I do love the fact that I can protest, and speak to power without fear of oppression. If the GOP or their supporters stupidly think they are the only ones who have those rights well, what can I say. NO, you do not own a monopoly on the right to protest, so fuck you.
