Dwight, I am very sorry that the Indians were chased away to reservations. It seems to me that we should have honored our treaties with them, given them enough of America so that they could thrive, and not destroyed their culture. But because history unfolded the way it did, there are not any Indians living in San Francisco, and so I cannot give their land back. I do have a buffalo skull from the Battle of Little Bighorn sitting on my coffee table, though. The Indians painted a red sun on the forehead to give them good luck in the battle. I would have been rooting for the Indians, not the Army.
Since you asked, I was born in America and am just as American as you are. Because my husband is European, I also carry Irish and English passports. I have been curious about living outside of America at least since college. I would like the United States to apologize to the Indians, and the former slaves, because I do think it starts a healing process. I disagree with you about whether it would make anything better. The recent apologies by the the Australians to the aborigines, and the British to the Irish, have been very positive. It is a lot easier to move on and live in the present, working together, once wrongs have been acknowledged. It's really sad to be stuck with a lot of anger about past injustices, and apologizing lets people move beyond that.
Certainly, people who are sensitive to the plight of the Indians, respect them and their belief systems, donate money so that their children can attend college, and take other attitudes and actions that are pro-Indian, are doing more that is constructive than people who do not. I don't agree with you that all of America is clearly not really sorry for what was done. I think a lot of young people study American history, and when they find out the truth about the Indians and slavery and several other sorry chapters in American history, become very disenchanted. I also think some young people have problems with the way America is now, which is a reflection of its violent past:
For example, look at this girl's story:
The Pledge Not Taken
California teen won't stand for vowing
allegiance to the flag
Brad K. Brown, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, June 29, 1998
Independence Day for 16-year-old MaryKait
Durkee came on April 1 this year. While some of
the high school sophomore's fellow students were
playing April Fool's Day pranks, Durkee was
engaged in a dramatic protest -- one that embroiled
her in a battle of wills with school officials, touched
a political sore spot and catapulted her onto the
national stage.
On that day at Fallbrook Union High School,
Durkee took a stand -- or, more accurately,
refused to stand and recite the Pledge of
Allegiance. It was an exercise of free will, said
Durkee, who does not believe in God. It was a
rejection of a society, she said, that has become
too violent and a government that has become too
corrupt.
Durkee's teacher didn't see it that way; neither did
her fellow students, and they erupted. Her
classmates urged world history instructor Lutz
Zastrow not to let Durkee ''get away with'' the
boycott. ''Give her detention,'' they urged.
When the class had finished its recitation, Zastrow
insisted that Durkee stand up alone and say the
pledge. Three times he made the demand. Durkee
loudly refused.
Thus began one of the nation's most recent
examples of a continuing trend among students:
defiance of the pledge and the flag to which it's
spoken.
Civil rights experts say pledge protests crop up
periodically and probably have ever since the text
became a school ritual, shortly after it was written
by ordained minister and Freemason Francis
Bellamy in 1892. The matter is usually resolved
quietly in the classroom, said Dale Kelly Bankhead
of the San Diego and Imperial Counties American
Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Durkee
in a free-speech lawsuit against the school district.
The flag, too, has been a chronic object of
defiance, including a recent art exhibit in which it
was used as a doormat. And the dissent has incited
a backlash in Congress.
Lawmakers, incensed at what they say is abuse of
the Stars and Stripes for political and artistic
reasons, are pushing for a constitutional amendment
to ban flag desecration. The Senate Judiciary
Committee approved the measure Wednesday.
Before it becomes part of the Constitution, it
requires two-thirds approval of both the Senate
and House, then ratification by three-fourths of the
states.
The country is periodically seized by these displays
of patriotic fervor and reactionary measures, said
constitutional law expert Robert Cole.
Far from symbolizing true unity and strength,
however, they reflect ''a kind of lack of confidence
or loss of identity that Americans have in what they
really stand for,'' said Cole, professor emeritus and
associate dean at the University of California's
Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley.
''One of the symptoms of this sense of loss of
direction has been this drive to have people show
more respect to the flag,'' Cole said.
San Diego school officials have different ideas.
They say Durkee was disrespectful to her teacher
when she raised her voice and have ordered her to
serve four hours in Saturday detention.
Immediately after the incident, school officials also
told Durkee she must stand during the pledge --
silently, if she wishes -- or leave the room until it's
over. The school subsequently relented and
allowed her to sit during the pledge, but said she
will have to stand or leave the room when classes
resume next fall. Durkee should have stood silently
or left the room in the first place, said Thomas
Anthony, Fallbrook Union High School District
superintendent, and instead she chose to be
disruptive.
But Durkee and the ACLU say the edicts are a
violation of First Amendment rights to free speech.
The controversy could have been avoided, Durkee
stated in a letter to school officials last month, if her
teacher had respected her right to sit quietly. She
accused Zastrow of badgering her and subjecting
her to ridicule when he insisted that she recite the
pledge by herself.
The school district doesn't have a constitutional leg
to stand on, said Jordan Budd, Durkee's ACLU
attorney. The Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of
thought and speech, he noted. ''You cannot be
punished for exercising your constitutional rights,''
he said.
Law expert Cole agrees. So does the Supreme
Court.
If Durkee is acting on principle, Cole says, the
school district cannot compel her to reject her
beliefs.
Durkee also seems to be within her rights to reject
the school's offer of asking her to stand silently or
leave the room -- which ''constitutes a serious
burden on (people) because it singles them out a
great deal,'' Cole said.
In fact, Durkee has already been singled out more
than she ever dreamed possible. The bespectacled
honors student, a self- described loner, has had her
story picked up by newspapers across the country
and debated heatedly on talk radio.
At school, the temperature runs even higher.
Fallbrook Union High sits near the Camp
Pendleton Marine base in a staunchly Republican
enclave of 30,000 people. After the incident, 400
out of 3,000 students signed a petition urging
Durkee to stand for the pledge. Students also wore
buttons that read ''We Stand.''
Durkee's mother, Ann, says the imbroglio has had a
profound effect on her daughter.
''She was hurt to think that people think that she
doesn't care'' that people have died for the country
and its ideals, says Ann Durkee, who has been
handling calls for MaryKait. ''But my daughter
doesn't see the flag or the Pledge of Allegiance in
itself as the ideals that these people went to war
and fought for and died for. What they fought for,
Ann Durkee says, ''is the freedom to live in this
country. And the freedom that goes along with that
is to think and to act freely.''
MaryKait ''is a thinking, responsible person'' who
''will not be coerced into anything, including
patriotism,'' said Ann Durkee, who thinks the
school detention order is unjust and should be
rescinded.
Superintendent Anthony, for his part, says that until
he receives an opinion from the school district's
lawyers, the disciplinary action stands.
''I have to respect their (the Durkees') opinion,''
Anthony said. ''I don't want to violate her rights.''
On the other hand, ''the issue is respect, not only
to the teacher but to the flag.''
''Respect,'' professor Cole countered, ''is
something people have to give voluntarily. It's not
something that the government can coerce out of
you.''
THE RITE STAND
Jefferson valued patriotism, scholars say, but not at
the expense of the right to dissent
The Pledge of Allegiance has long been a source of
controversy, particularly since 1954, when
Congress added the words ''under God.'' During
and after the tumultuous 1960s, the pledge was
sometimes scrapped as a daily school ritual. Today,
it has made a comeback -- and with it the
temptation to defiance, as expressed by Fallbrook
teenager MaryKait Durkee.
What would one of the nation's fiercest patriots --
founding father Thomas Jefferson, author of the
Declaration of Independence -- have to say about
forcing people to recite it?
''I suspect that he would oppose a compulsory
pledge,'' says Andrew Burstein, history professor at
the University of Northern Iowa and a consultant
and participant on filmmaker Ken Burns'
documentary on Jefferson.
''Jefferson believed patriotism was voluntary,''
Burstein says. And although he warns that
translating Jefferson into late 20th century civic
culture has pitfalls, Burstein says that ''Above all,
he upheld the right of dissent. . . . He did not fear
rebellious minds as long as the rights of others were
not infringed upon.''
That view is shared by Peter S. Onuf, the Thomas
Jefferson Memorial Foundation professor of history
at the University of Virginia, which Jefferson
founded. Onuf believes the country's third
president, whose writings defined America's most
cherished principles, would not give blanket
approval to all rejections of patriotic observances.
Still, Jefferson would have been ''against hollow
ceremonies and demonstrations of obeisance and
submission that would have reminded him too much
of the monarchical regime,'' Onuf says.
Jefferson, Onuf adds, probably would have seen
Durkee as someone whose position was mistaken,
but who was ''not threatening.'' Jefferson believed
that ''the overwhelming good sense of the common
folk will preserve the republic, and it's a sign of our
strength that we don't have to persecute
dissenters,'' Onuf says.
Even the head of the National Flag Day Foundation
acknowledges that honoring the flag should be
voluntary. Each year Louis V. Koerber's Baltimore
organization ''invites'' every American to take time
on Flag Day, June 14, to recite the Pledge of
Allegiance and ''stimulate the patriotic experience.''
But Koerber sounds a word of caution to citizens
who reject what he calls the most visible symbol of
the country's Constitution and Bill of Rights:
''Young people and others may not agree with
where the country is going, but where else would
they like to go and live and miss out on the freedom
and protection of the United States?''
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