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The Real Side | Commentary by Joe Messina
| Monday, Nov 18, 2013

joemessinamugIt seems there is no end to the stories highlighting what appears to be an all-out attack on Americanism.

A school district in Sioux Falls, S.D., has decided the Pledge of Allegiance is more of a bother than it’s worth. The school board voted 5-0 to stop the pledge from being recited in high school because they can’t find the 15 seconds to do it. One of the board members told a news source that in high school, there is little time in the mornings or afternoon to pull it off. Can you say “liar”?

These people need to be recalled. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, it takes two minutes from start to finish – from the kids getting on their feet, to saying it, and then sitting back down. Two minutes. Do two minutes less of morning news. Cut the lunch period by two minutes. Cut sex education by two minutes. How about we just shut down the school all together? Then we have all day to do it.

Do these administrators and educators understand that what the pledge stands for and what the flag stands for is what gives them the right to be idiots? The freedoms these things represent include people dying for them in other countries.

Then these yahoos say the pledge will have more meaning if we only do it once in a while. Really? How does that work? You mean I’ll understand something and learn it better if I’m not as exposed to it and don’t do it as often?

Don’t educators believe in learning through repetition? Repetition works. It helps imprint it in your memory. How about you use it as a teaching moment to explain how and why the pledge came about, instead of some other “elective?”

Even when a group of vets approached the board and pleaded with them not to nix the pledge, they were turned down, quickly and coldly. These people gave up years of their lives, families who gave up loved ones, and some of these men and women who gave up limbs (and still carry other injuries) just so that a cold-hearted, short-sighted school board could have the freedom to discard the Pledge of Allegiance as insignificant and not worthy of the 15 seconds (or two minutes) it takes to recite it.

In exercising their freedom to omit the pledge, this board is not only disrespecting this great country and those who secured our freedoms; they are also teaching the next generation to do the same.

This board needs to be fired, recalled and dropped into some Communist, third-world nation for “immersion study abroad.” Let’s see how long they last.

Sadly, they haven’t cornered the market on “stupid” by any stretch…

A school district in North Carolina has decided not to allow an American Legion post to put up banners with our national motto on them. Our national motto. When did that become illegal, immoral or just plain wrong?

Our national motto, approved by our Congress, upheld by the Supreme Court, is “In God we Trust.” Yes, believe it or not, it has been approved by the highest court in the land.

Apparently, the board members in the North Carolina school district didn’t take that class. They had the men from the American Legion remove them because … wait for it … It’s a violation of “separation of church and state” (that non-existent Constitutional clause).

The American Legion produced 16×20-inch framed posters for classrooms with the words “In God We Trust,” with an American flag in the background. At the bottom it reads: “The national motto of the United States, adopted by Congress, July 30, 1956.”

A spokesman for the school district told the local Watauga Democrat newspaper that “In God We Trust” was banned on the advice of their legal counsel on grounds that it might be “unconstitutional.” Their fear was that someone would misconstrue it as promoting a religion.

Seriously? First, fire the attorneys; they obviously have no clue about this. Any attorney worth his salt would have known within minutes of researching this issue that’s it’s already been tried and decided.

Second, please tell me what religion has “In God we trust” as part of its scriptures or writings? None.

The majority of our founding fathers were Christian, period. Deal with it. They wanted people to be able to worship as they pleased (or not pleased). “Freedom OF religion” and “freedom FROM religion” are two completely different things.

Teaching our nation’s history, national motto, Pledge of Allegiance and patriotism in general is not endorsing or promoting any religion.
As I keep saying: Americans wake up, rise up, and do the right thing or you will lose the country you love.

 

 

Joe Messina is host of The Real Side (TheRealSide.com), a nationally syndicated talk show that runs on AM-1220 KHTS radio and SCVTV [here]. He is also the current president of the Hart School Board. His commentary publishes Mondays.

 

 

Comment On This Story
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7 Comments

  1. Hello, I am that rear breed of artist from a big Liberal city. I have dedicated my creativity to promote America and our Flag. I fight PC anti-American idiots with paint and brush, throughout the states. I am driving from NYC to Sioux Falls to express my First Amendment right and let these ungrateful jack-asses feel shame.
    Google my name- images to understand my mission.
    Great story by the way.

  2. Mike Hawk says:

    I love this story so much. He knows how to be great. I am driving through the ocean from Jamaica to Sioux Falls to tell them thanks Obama.

  3. Ben Dover says:

    I agree with Mike Hawk. He had some valid points

  4. Dixie Normous says:

    I think it’s all Obama’s fault.

  5. Sally says:

    Amen to that!! I am Christian and I don’t care what anyone thinks. In God I trust! For some reason it’s wrong to be patriot in California and a Christian.

    Thank you for the article.

  6. “Yes, believe it or not, it has been approved by the highest court in the land.”

    Joe,
    I’m not sure that makes it right. Here’s another case approved by the highest court in the land.”
    Dred Scott v. Sandford
    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Scott v. Sandford
    Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court held that African Americans, whether slave or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court,[2][3] and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. Dred Scott, an African American slave who had been taken by his owners to free states and territories, attempted to sue for his freedom. In a 7–2 decision written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the Court denied Scott’s request and in doing so, ruled an Act of Congress to be unconstitutional for the second time in its history.[4][5]
    Although Taney hoped that his ruling would settle the slavery question once and for all, the decision immediately spurred wide public debate. Most scholars and many contemporary political figures (including the leadership of the then-new Republican Party) considered the ruling regarding slavery in the territories to be dictum, not binding precedent. The decision would prove to be an indirect catalyst for the American Civil War and was functionally superseded by the post-war Reconstruction Amendments. It is now widely regarded as the worst decision ever made by the Supreme Court.

  7. Erin says:

    Once again Joe can’t seem to get his facts straight. Probably because he only gets them from one source.

    http://freakoutnation.com/2013/11/21/school-board-members-threatened-to-be-lined-up-and-shot-after-fox-news-misreported/

    “A Sioux Falls school board member in South Dakota was hugely misrepresented by Fox News, and the result was, he and his colleagues have received numerous death threats. When a reporter asked if he wants an apology, he said, “When something is misreported, misrepresented, an incendiary headline that really doesn’t base anything on facts of the story, I would think that would be appropriate. But I’m certainly not expecting it anytime.”…”

    “A Sioux Falls television station reported that the board chose to drop the pledge at high schools, which was not true.

    Three-term Sioux Falls School Board member Kent Alberty told KSFY, ”It wasn’t dropped. That wasn’t true at all. And that is what people were reacting to was the headline – not what we actually did. And then Fox picked that story up – and again – it was the headline they used, not the actual facts of what we did at the School Board meeting.”

    Alberty continued, “The person that they gave the byline to wasn’t at the School Board meeting, didn’t interview any members of the School Board, didn’t interview the person who spoke to the School Board, but then they ran this story and didn’t have in the story the fact that we actually expanded the policy.”

    As a result, Alberty says, he and his colleagues have received a barrage of e-mails, phone calls, and even death threats.

    Alberty said, “The one that I guess got my attention the most was that this person feels that all five of us should be lined up and shot.”

    Megyn Kelly told viewers, “A school board there has decided there’s just no time in the day to recite the Pledge of Allegiance despite a desperate request from a local vets group to keep the pledge.” And yet they expanded it.”

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