On Wednesday, as Pine Bush High School was celebrating National Foreign Language Week, a teacher asked student Andrew Zink, who usually leads the school in the Pledge, if another student could do it instead, in another language. “I wanted to say yes because I felt this is the right thing to do,” Zink told the LA Times Thursday. But almost immediately, he says, the trouble began. “The anti-Muslim sentiment started to build,” he says. “The poor girl who read it, she’s so sweet and when she finished reading it people called her a terrorist. They told her to go back to the Middle East. They mercilessly degraded her and I felt awful for her.”
Andrew Zink, meanwhile, says he is now no longer permitted to lead the
Pledge, and “may be impeached from his post as senior class president.”
And on a blog post Friday, his mother shared some of the online vitriol
that has been directed toward her and her “commie” son, from, she says,
“adults across the country,” telling them to “just leave and join ISIS.”
More at
Salon. The story reminds me of Sarah Palin's comment: "If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our
Pledge of Allegiance."
Isn't that a misquote of Palin? She was asked if the phase "under God" in the pledge of allegiance was offensive, and responded with that. She was not asked about the pledge of allegiance in general.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe it's a misquote of Sarah Palin's response to the questionnaire. Her response was apparently in writing and has been cited many places, including here:
Deletehttp://historynewsnetwork.org/article/53977
If her response was inappropriate to the question being asked, then that's another matter (and not a surprise...)
The founding fathers did not include the words "under God" in the "Pledge of Allegiance" because 1) the Pledge of Allegiance was not written by the founding fathers; it was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, and did not include the words "under God," 20 the words "under God" were not added until the 1950s, when Eisenhower encouraged Congress to include the words and signed the addition into law.
Deletehttp://www.ushistory.org/documents/pledge.htm
So, yes, Palin got it wrong.
Wouldn't put it past that Commie school to try and indoctrinate those kids with Arabic numerals!
ReplyDeleteSometimes I truly fear for the future of this country. The ignorance--which is really stupidity, IMHO--is astounding!
ReplyDeleteThe scared are very vocal, and the internet is a bullhorn. Vitriol from small pockets across the country may be concentrated & amplified, but that doesn't make them the majority.
ReplyDeleteI hope the adults in these children's lives can teach them compassion & forgiveness for those people scared enough to verbally attack children. And I hope that we as reasonable adults can better protect our children from such madness in the future.
And did you see that those children are using the *Nazi* salute?! And the Pledge of Allegiance was written by a *socialist* minister!! Oh, the horror of it all!!
ReplyDeleteAnd we can't have children taught to use Arabic numerals in school!!
Sigh. Attacking children is far easier than thinking for oneself.
If you put 100 "average" Americans in a room and forced them to think up an original thought, I'd swear that at least 40 of them would spontaneously combust and/or have a seizure.
DeleteMaybe I give the memory of my teenage self too much credit, but hopefully some students at the school can learn a lesson from all of this. I can't believe how easily these students turn against a multicutural lesson. Apparently to them, National Foreign Language Week is Punish-those-that-don't-speak-English week. Stories like this give me great concern over where this country is heading.
ReplyDeleteFor some folks the point of loving your country is always to hate someone else. It must be terrible to them to have those signals crossed.
ReplyDelete