I don’t understand this weird American obsession with flag. I was looking at some photos of Trump’s rallies. Flags everywhere - on shirts, hats, glasses etc. And this bizarre cult of the flag - “it cannot touch the ground” etc.
At the end of the day the flag is just a piece of cloth. If you worship any flag or take offense to any flag, you need to get a life.
Coming from a country that doesn’t have this sort of thing it’s really weird as an outside observer. Students have to swear allegiance to the flag every morning too which is the sort of thing I would imagine happens in north Korea or dictator states.
They don’t have to. It would be unconstitutional if they did. What happens sometimes unfortunately, for teachers to sort of discourage not taking part, or potentially punish the student for an “unrelated” reason. The school I went to only did the pledge once a year though.
I was suspended from school multiple times for refusing to pledge allegiance when I was in high school in the states.
Then you would have had legal recourse to sue and no one told you your rights.
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/west-virginia-v.-barnette-the-freedom-to-not-pledge-allegiance
That flag worship thing always seemed like a weird cult thing to me. I suppose Americans might not see it that way since they grew up with it.
The context of the origin of the US’ pledge of allegiance is it came shortly after the end of their Civil War when there was still a lot o political tension. A desire was born to instill national loyalty in children.
However, today as mentioned by another commenter, students cannot be legally compelled to recite the pledge, nor punished for not reciting the pledge as decided by the Supreme Court in 1943 using the first amendment as the base.
I mean, i’m swiss and we did a thing called “Geistige Selbstverteidigung”, mental self-defense, with mythos of Wilhelm Tell & focus on independence in WW2. But we don’t anymore. Why do you still do?
Probably comes from a combination of belief in American exceptionalism, tradition, and either popular opinion remains with reciting the pledge or a lack desire to change.
States are managed individually for the most part and only 47/50 still require reciting the pledge (with some exceptions). Without a call for change from the people, it would be political suicide for any lawmaker to come out for a change like this. Opponents could use this decision as a claim of lack of patriotism.
Wait til you learn about the Texas Pledge!
