MAILBAG - Nov. 29, 2006

Ask three questions of misguided youthsThat’s great that the OCC student government put the Pledge of Allegiance back on the agenda, but it never should have been removed in the first place.

What did Jason Ball have to do with that, and why? I’ve heard some very disturbing things about this young man. Are they true?

Some years ago Saddleback College students did this same thing. The head of the students involved had served two years in the Army. I think he was about 26 years old. He heard of my concerns and called me at home. It was about 10 p.m. He said, “How would you like to come and talk to us?” I said I had planned to but appreciated his invitation and would come.

I did not tell them they could not or should not do this. That had not worked.

As I looked at these nice young people, I asked them three questions.

1. How do your parents feel about what you are doing?

2. How do your grandparents feel about what you are doing?

3. If you have great-grandparents, how do you think they feel?

Ask all of them. Do it.

They must have. Shortly after, they put the pledge back in. Last I heard it was still in use. Would OCC students invite me? I wonder. I hope so. I’d like to talk with them. Thank you very much for the opportunity to express myself in your fine paper.

GEORGE GRUPE

Newport Beach

Reason, history needed in pledge debateWhile I disagree with what you say, I defend your right to say it. If Voltaire didn’t explicitly write that, it is still consistent with his philosophy and the core of our tolerance and free speech tradition.

Yet the lion’s share of Pilot letters are laden with anger and umbrage in the ongoing Pledge of Allegiance debate. Some writers are further incensed that OCC is a public institution, supported by their property taxes.

As if that conveys the right to circumscribe dissenting views.

The pledge dates only from 1892, written by a socialist Baptist minister; “under God” was inserted in 1954. And so it became “both a patriotic oath and a public prayer.” That’s according to “The Pledge of Allegiance: A Centennial History, 1892-1992.” Author John W. Baer is a retired Air Force brigadier general. Although our republic flourished for a century without the pledge, it still became a routine fixture in (especially) the classroom. And an empty ritual for many.

I suspect that most of the Pilot’s pledge defenders are fixated on trappings and symbols; they’re more “patriotic” than their neighbors if their American flags are bigger. Or their lapel pins glow in the dark.

Hence their emotional dyspepsia over the issue.

I think it’s time to give this debate — and the pledge — a rest. The phrase “one nation under God, indivisible” is a contradiction; religion is as much a divider as a uniter. Is our patriotism (and religiosity?) so tenuous as to require incessant reaffirmation?

DICK LEWIS

Balboa