Wednesday, March 12, 2008

I don't feel strongly about this, so don't send me hate mail

"Plans to make school kids swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country as a way of enhancing British citizenship were unravelling last night under a barrage of criticism in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland."

As some of you may recall, I went to an unusual school -- it had a public bar. We also switched, as best I remember, from the Pledge of Allegiance to the Preamble to the Constitution in the 7th grade. I can still recite the Preamble, so we must have said it everyday, my memory is
otherwise not that good. I don't remember what we did in high school but I can also recite the Gettysburg Address so we must have said it from memory on a regular basis, maybe at the beginning of Civics classes.

In general, I don't like when adults take things that belong to kids, like Halloween. I have the same feeling about the
Pledge of Allegiance, it was written specifically for kids and I always feel like I'm stealing something from them. As I said in the HED, I don't have a strong feeling about this, it's just something that I remembered when I read about the todo on the UK.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

***
Last sentence of the Gettysburg Address:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln 1863

3 comments:

moni said...

These documents are beautifully written and well worth remembering.

:P fuzzbox said...

I also have the preamble down pat. It wasn't school but Schoolhouse Rock that taught it to me. It is weird to have to sing it in order to get it right, though.

Jim said...

I think it was meant to be a show-tune :)