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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (52265)	7/4/2002 1:23:07 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Cracks in the pillar of separation Mary Goulart pompano beach Posted July 1 2002 Too bad the media couldn't find anyone to interview who learned the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag in school prior to 1954. Most of us applauded the decision by the federal appellate court in California to declare unconstitutional the words "under God" in our Pledge. I guess I didn't read the paper that day in 1954 when those two words were inserted into our Pledge. By then I had finished school and was busy with activities that did not involve saying the Pledge. The revision just slipped by me. Then I moved South. My activities changed. The Pledge topped most agendas -- the revised Pledge. I thought it was just a Southern thing and silently omitted the annoying religious reference whenever the Pledge was said. And I was annoyed. Separation of church and state is one of the strongest pillars upon which our government rests. Many of our ancestors fled to this country to escape religious persecution. Cracks in this pillar have begun with minor religious references such as this one in our Pledge. Too many cracks and the pillar will weaken and crumble. The phrase "faith-based" has been bandied about in some circles as somehow desirable. A "faith-based" pillar to replace our "separation of church and state" pillar? Those who don't understand this ruling need a lesson in what can happen to a country ruled by a faith-based government. They should look at what happened to Afghanistan under the "faith-based" Taliban rule. Didn't they learn anything? Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

To: epicure who wrote (52265)	7/4/2002 12:25:55 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

It is merely improper as foisted upon captive children in a coercive setting by those who represent government. Foisting your world view should also be illegal in my opinion. "American education is in ruins. Students can’t read, write, add or think. Schools are plagued by gangs and mindless violence. Parents who can afford to, send their children to private schools, in the desperate hope of finding sane teaching but often find these schools beset by the same problems. More than ever, employers are left to pick up the pieces, training school graduates in the basic skills necessary for working life. Countless solutions have been proposed to save American education: computers, school uniforms, a voucher system, single-sex classrooms, school prayer. But none of these “solutions” will help, because they ignore the fundamental cause of the problem: the acceptance of false ideas, which leads to bad teaching and bad curricula. The real purpose of education is to teach students how to think, so they can lead productive, independent lives. Our education leaders, however, believe that knowledge is impossible and that truth equals majority opinion. Thus, our children are made to surrender their minds to the will of the group and are presented with a hash of frivolous, unsystematically organized topics. To save American education, we need a new, rational curriculum: Out with car maintenance, “self-esteem workshops” and every other politically correct time-waster, and back to a subject-matter curriculum of literature, math, science and history. Read on to discover the relationship between basic philosophic ideas and current education problems, including school violence, gangs, illiteracy, and others. This Web site argues that only with the right ideas — in the form of a rational curriculum — do we have a chance of correcting these problems." education.aynrand.org

To: epicure who wrote (52265)	7/4/2002 12:44:21 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Not forcing God upon people who do not believe in a God in a governmental setting is not atheism, it is separation of church and state. Nobody is forcing God on anybody. People who don't want to say "under God" are free not to say it. What you want to do is prohibit, in schools, people who DO want to say it from saying it not because other people want to be free from saying it -- they already are -- but because they want to be free from hearing other people around them saying it, which is a totally different thing.