Organicity
What holds me back from bemoaning these survey results completely, swiping at “kids today”, and taking the opportunity to do a standard curse of our educational system, perhaps personalizing it to the point of cursing a particular seventh grade teacher as a personification of “Outcome Based Education”, is the gut feeling I have that It’s probably not that different amongst the whole population at large.
Take this result as a bit of evidence:
74% say people shouldn’t be able to burn or deface an American flag as a political statement; 75% mistakenly believe it is illegal.
Once or twice a year, the “Flag Burning Ban Amendment” is trotted out to score political points. If a majority of people thought a person shouldn’t be legally able to burn or deface an American flag, politicos wouldn’t bother trotting this bill out on such a regular basis.
I think I’ve already said this: I’m not a fan of The Pledge of Allegiance. After the first six words, the question plagues me “Why am I pledging Allegiance to a flag?” If someone tells me that a dear relative fought to preserve the flag, my thought is “If they did, they fought for a stupid reason.” (If you had a choice between living in a Totalitarian Dictatorship that left the Stars and Stripes as the Official flag and living our dear Republic, which would you choose?)
“The foundations of the country are vehemently about its citizens’ right to be defiant to tyrnnical and Godless authority.”
It is at this point in time that I recommend we stop having our kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance and have them recite The Bill of Rights. (Previously I thought The Declaration of Independance of the Preamble of the Constitution would be a just substitute.)
It’s a bit more organic to our nation and sends a better message, methinks.