Forty Seven States have state laws requiring all schools to indoctrinate students into ultra-Nationalism by requiring the daily ritual of prayer in the memorization and recital of a Pledge of Allegiance to a US Flag.
A classroom poster of the Pledge of Allegiance Words
Retaining liberty requires a fight against it’s enemies, foreign and domestic.
The past 20+ years of losing wars in the Middle East has turned Americans into a hot bed of ultra-nationalism. This movement has stolen political power using the destruction of liberty for thousands of Americans. There is no indication that their minacious activity will temper.
The right wing bellows that American schools are liberal breeding grounds of a ‘Woke’ agenda. It is a false definition of ‘Woke’ that has been invented not by what has been discussed in schools but by the agenda at the heart of the Christian Nationalist movement. American children are indoctrinated everyday by law in the right wing’s requirement of a recital of a pledge of allegiance prayer. The daily recital reinforces the Christian Nationalist themes of God and love as an invocation of the mystical powers of the US national flag. It ends in a blatant lie that a Christian Nationalist believes in ‘liberty and justice’ and ‘for all.’ They have ingrained this into the nation’s youth this concept everyday of their education. That is the best kept secret in the open that they don’t, noticeably to the latter statement.
The Oppressed become the Oppressor.
Ultra Nationalism has become a thing in the MAGA movement. They have achieve untold elective power from the corrupted discussions for the oppression of women’s rights to their bodies, transperson’s rights to exist and now a re-emergence of attacks on same-sex marriages and women’s birth control options.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s campaign advisor, raises his fist as he speaks during a rally for Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Coachella, California, U.S., October 12, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake
Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy comes from a Jewish immigrant background that fled the 1903–06 anti-Jewish pogroms in Anatol region of Russia (currently Belarus). Agents of Jewish foreign influence were blamed for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 starting the attacks on Jewish communities. Even though only one of the conspirators was of Jewish decent, none-the-less the pogroms caused Jewish families to be stripped of rights, reduced to poverty and in many cases, murdered. Laws restricting Jews were enacted including the forbidding of Jews to adopt ‘Christian Names,’ and forced them to use only their Hebrew names to insure proper identification of their heritage. Jews could not conduct business on Sunday or any Christian holy day. Jews were forbidden from holding public offices. Jews were restricted by quotas to enter public schools and universities to the point that many public schools at the time were left half-empty. The laws were worded as ‘temporary measure’, and until a general revision is made of their legal status.
“This government had found occasion to express in a friendly spirit but with much earnestness, to the government of the Tsar, its serious concern because of harsh measures being enforced against the Hebrews.” – 9 December 1891 speech to the United States Congress, PresidentBenjamin Harrison
President Benjamin Harrison defends equalization of individuals in 1891 Russia
In a short three generations, Mr Miller has forgotten his family’s struggle against and ultimate flight from political oppression in Eastern Europe. To Mr. Miller, the history that political power was achieved or retained by the oppression of his ancestors is pretermitted. He has created the America First Legal Foundation. An organizations that sent flyers to voters in Colorado that were characterized as transphobic by the Queer and Trans People of Color Program of the Latino Action Council. America First Legal won the judgement in November 2022 that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity from Trump appointed Judge Kacsmaryk. Judge Kacsmaryk also vacated protections for transgender workers that prohibited employers from discriminating against employees for being gay or transgender, in 2022. This decision a violating contravention of the Supreme Court’s Ruling inBostock v. Clayton County (2020). Clearly, being a gay or transgender US citizen you are not part of the ‘all’ in Judge Kacsmaryk’s or Mr. Miller’s pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America.
Demanding the equalization of individuals
No matter how many times, as a child, one says the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, it never seems to define the whole of society, as understood by the Right. The pledge appears to have allowed the creation of a society where ‘liberty and justice for all’ meant individual rights.
The Pledge of Allegiance in one word defines for all Christian Nationalists the reason they oppose the equalization of individual rights. That word is in the phrase ‘One Nation Under God.’ God used in this pledge is the very definition of discrimination. It is the sinister core statement attempting to orientate all children to the concept of a God. The biggest concern to Christian Nationalists is having forced a secular government into indoctrinating the children for them, God cannot be further defined by constitutional decree. The concept of a deity and divine rules for individuals are left to be discovered from a plethora of acceptance and policies by parents, teacher conferences, administration bodies and teachers themselves.
The ‘liberty and justice for all’ society began to move towards a vision of a humanity based on the equalization of individuals. Society had begun to allow for gay or trans children to participate as equals on its platform. This became antithetical to the Christian Nationalist of their concept of a society ‘under God.’
The Pledge of Allegiance could not be failing to provide the proper instructions for children to follow. Such a thought would be, at its heart, anti-American and anti-Christian-Nationalist. It had to be those entrusted with the education of children that have failed to define the harmonious concept of rules ‘under God.’ Thus began the underlying waspishness found in Christian Nationalists discussion of individual rights.
Individual rights ‘under God’ began a movement against societies inclusiveness of gay or trans children and their lives as understood by children. The ‘under God’ movement further had act to force society away from an equalization of individuals. This defined political power under such things as the Don’t Say Gay Laws or Anti-Trans Laws. All of them using children and the protection of society through call to protect children from indoctrination. A society to the Christian Nationalist that definitely was not ‘One Nation under God’
A new billboard welcoming visitors to “Florida: The Sunshine ‘Don’t Say Gay or Trans’ State’ is seen Thursday, April 21, 2022, in Winter Park, Fla. Billboards, which are being placed in key areas with high visitor traffic and visibility, are part of a new advertising campaign launched by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). (AP Photo/John Raoux)
The campaign created focused banter to claim political power at the national level. It produced laws in Florida, which was only the first of many, punished with imprisonment the discussion of gender or sexual orientation in grade schools. The Christian Nationalist’s society redefinition efforts created 391anti-LGBTQ bills/ laws in US States. The majority designed to apprehend and control of minors, their education, their parents actions, their medical care.
It should be noted, none of these laws did not take down the pledge of allegiance posters nor stop the requirements for its continued daily indoctrination ritual. To school children, at least, the US would remain the ‘one nation, indivisible, under God with liberty and justice for all.’
Children, for Christian Nationalists for the moment, no longer will be confused by a nation infected by a concept that would demand the equalization of individuals. Such a demand is defined by the Christian Nationalist as a radicalization of the concept of any ‘liberty under God’.
The Christian Nationalist movement continues to move in a more Machiavellian manner to define the literal definition of freedoms and the identification of anyone’s selves. Laws have passed defining “sex” as “the classification of a person as either female or male. They have forgotten to redefine Liberty.
Liberty is defined as the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views.
By definition the US has killed ‘Liberty and Justice for All’ even as they make every school child blindly repeat its holy prayer each morning in a nationalistic pledge.
When I read this article from the Washington Examiner; Justice Barrett is allowed to have religious beliefs, (by Hugo Gurdon E.I.C.) I found myself conflicted in its intention and taken aback by its content. I slowly read the absolute bias and abundant usage of harsh cliche terms for those that are termed “The Left”. The entire article could have been written without the jaundiced derision of those who doubt Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s ability to rule blindly on the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act case before the Supreme Court. Because of her membership association with a religious group that is clearly opposed to the outcome of the case this author’s seemingly only intent is on attacking those that call for impartiality.
The case is based upon the religious freedom of a woman who’s business is the designing of public webpages. In this case the women has been refused the ability to expand her business to provide wedding webpage services because of her refusal to allow public service for an LGBTQ wedding solely on her religious beliefs
“I want to create for weddings, but I can’t because Colorado is censoring and compelling my speech and forcing me to create custom messages and expressions … celebrating messages that violate my deeply held beliefs,”1
The concept of Religious Freedoms as being so inalienable by the Conservative or Religious Right as presented by Mr. Gurdon and those that oppose this web designer and her ruling on the case as solely the acts of ‘Leftist’ religious persecution deserves a remonstrance regardless of Justice Comey-Barrett’s ability to rule fairly.
I too, feel there is a fine line between using your own beliefs in business and the government’s ability to maintain general authority in society. The conflicts of any civil society with the Governor of the universe and the duty one owes the Creator based upon each individual’s right to exercise it as they themselves dictate cannot be held apart. Religious viewpoints are inalienable because as Madison wrote;
The right is unalienable because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men. – James Madison
However, as was revealed by Madison’s dissertation there is a conflict between Freedom of Religion and being a member of civil society. It is not just the pocketbook that rules our society as Mr. Gurdon inaccurately portrays but our willing subordination to the institutions of that civil society that acts to protect our basic freedoms. The conflict arises from the Constitutional holding that in matters of religion no man’s rights are to be held back by the institutions of civil society. Religion must be wholly exempt from the institutions of civil society is our belief. “No other rule exists”, Madison writes. Yet questions that divide society can only be decided by the majority for a free and democratic society to exist. As Madison continued the concept”
but, it is also true the the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority
Since the make up of civil society has never been a fad or a short lived movement it cannot be fleeted away by Mr. Gurdon as simply a ‘cultural revolution’ and its change in society as simply ‘fashionable opinion.’ Civil society adherence to the Constitution has a requirement to uphold the will of the majority and at the very same time protect the rights of the minority. In this article Mr. Gurdon directs a reader into the idea that the ‘traditional Christian’ viewpoint is the minority to be protected. Yet, it is just that Christian viewpoint in the majority that trespasses and persecutes the LGBTQ minority and violates the separation of civil powers that have protected so called traditional Christians from the dictates of other Christian sects, including protection of Justice Coney Barrett’s own Roman Catholic sect.
Can Justice Coney Barret rule impartially on the matter without recusal? I cannot tell you the conscience of this Roman Catholic and her inalienable right to the Creator left to her own reasoning and convictions by . I can hope she will not overleap the great barrier which defends the rights of people. She must do so without the violation of the free rights of every citizen in every aspect of their equal participation in civil society. She must do so free from the dictates of religious viewpoints and opinions of other men, in this particular case women and of her own.
“If all men are by nature equally free and independent. All men are to be considered entering into society on an equal conditions; as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less one than another of their natural rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining ‘equal title’ to the free exercise ..to the dictates of their conscience. While we assert for ourselves to embrace, to profess, and to observe the religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yielded to the evidence which has convinced us” – James Madison.
The reason I began this Blog was to publish new thoughts in a continuation from my previous Blog: In Search of a Quiet Room.
The picture above, I took during a visit to Dachau Prison in Germany. It is not in the context of that location that this discussion is centered. Yet, it is a visible sign that provokes the thought; which side? Is it from the side to stay in or the side to stay out? You may well know the answer but understand the psychological effect of such a barrier on the concepts of freedom? The barrier or fence has set limits. A concept of freedom either begins or ends at the fence. There is something inside or outside that must be protected. This barrier is both the physical and conceptual limit or border of an unmentioned freedom.
This concept of border forever removes the perception of boundless or limitless. It is this conservative thought that provided the end of the ideal of Rome. Dame Winifred Mary Beard provides the notion in her BBC saga Meet the Romans with Mary Beard. It was the building of Hadrian’s Wall that ended the concept, at least to Romans, of a boundless, ever-expanding Roman Empire. Rome was no longer the ever expanding empire that would rule all the known world. There were now those inside the physical limit on the empire that were Roman and those outside the limit that were barbarians.
Once defined as within limits, Rome placed itself on the defensive to protect and hold those borders against all those that sought to attack the State of Rome. It was this concept of a defined State that further eroded the empire’s hold. The conservative thought of Rome’s success was ultimately defined by it’s diverse religious deities and the State relationship within the favor of the abundant gods. Once Christianity mono-theistic thought arrived with followers who could not provide sacrifices to the Roman gods and would rather die than perform such ceremonies, this upset the balance in the concept of the State and how it believed in it’s success. This upset led to persecution and the Roman State’s attempt to outlaw an undoubtible cause of any State problems including military failures along its borders maintaining the status quo. The Christian practice had upset the traditional concept of the relationship of the State with the gods.
The concept of the Roman State began to erode. Continual attacks along its borders and the costs of needed defenses to prevent pillaging, political migration and immigration ultimately cost Rome it’s existence as a State. It was no longer the concept of a limitless State that could rule the entire world.
The Roman conservation of the State allowed the surrendering the concepts of limitless empire. Conservative Romans held rigid the concept of the State’s success through a favorable relationship with the gods. Both of these conservative concepts produced the fertilizer for the destruction of the State itself.
So now, how does the destruction of the Roman State bring us on the first paragraph’s definition of the limits of freedom? Especially, in the freedoms as defined by the conception of state found in the United States? If you look at a definition of conservative you find; holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in relation to politics or religion.
In the United States, conservatives profess they hold freedom dearest and are it’s sole defenders. Conservatives profess a religious existence of the State in the requirement of standing for the National Anthem at a sport events. They profess this in a required saying of The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America by school children.
The American concept since the United States’ creation has been a building of a concept of limitless freedoms. The founders viewed certain unalienable rights having no limit. Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that people in all nations of the world shared Americans’ entitlement to four freedoms: the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship God in his own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear. It was this boundless freedom concept that has ruled American political actions as a State since World War II. Eisenhower said to the troops on their way to Normandy,
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have
striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The
hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.
The concept of freedom from the United States after World War II was that everyone in the world wanted and deserved freedom. John Kennedy wrote:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
In these ideas we see the concept of a limitless Liberty moving outward towards the people of the world without borders. All men are created equal in their desire to be free. The US concept of freedom was not limited to it’s view of itself as a state but a view that was without borders. Man’s desire for Liberty means to rule the known world.
The dangers to this liberty is now present in American society. Just like the Romans the conservative movement has abandoned the limitless concept of freedom and defining borders or limits to where liberty is and is not. Those inside free and those outside are not. The Republican conservative party has itself declared a religious worship of the state in a national anthem, with a symbol worship in the pledge of allegiance. They have set rigid the definition of liberty that is falling to the disobedience to the state gods in calls for social justice by Blacks and Women’s rights. It is this conservative call for attacks and persecutions of those within the Black Lives Movement and Woman’s Rights that endangers the concept of absolute and limitless freedom. These movement don’t hold the conservative religious concepts of the State. They don’t hold onto a single meaning in liberty. It is, as with the concept of Rome and its alliance with their gods, here that the conservative has endangered freedom in the world despite the perception of themselves as liberty’s defender.
ABSOLUTA LIBERTAS 