Please rise and remove your caps

dankind said:

HesCalledDyer said:

I remember saying the Pledge in school during the morning announcements.  We did it all the way thru high school.  I never knew what any of the words meant. It just seemed like a bunch of drivel, like a drunk person just shouting out random comments with no meaning.  If those were PJ song lyrics we'd be ripping this website apart.

I sat during the pledge from fourth grade on. It wasn't a forced thing in my school districts. I took more shit for it from other kids than I did from the teachers. The teachers knew it was horseshit. The kids who gave me shit just needed their noses bloodied so that they'd leave me the fuck alone.

i_lov_it said:

jeffbr said:

oftenreading said:

pjhawks said:

brianlux said:

What about toupees and wigs?  Should they be removed during the National Anthem?  I yes "yes".  And while your at it, take off your shoes and socks.

do you talk during moments of silences? how about during a Eulogy?  I'm just wondering where you guys draw the line on acting with respect?  what do you do and don't do?  do you hold the door for women and the elderly or is that too much to ask you to be respectful for those thing?  just curious...seriously.

I hold the door for anyone behind me. I give up my seat to someone who needs it (not at a PJ show, though; that seat took work to get!). I obviously don’t talk during a eulogy - what sort of question is that? 

The difference is that all of those have real world consequences if you don’t do them. Taking off a hat or leaving it on has absolutely no real world consequences to anyone except possibly a warm head, and objecting to leaving a hat because it might cause offence is a baseless as prior generations objecting to a woman’s skirt length showing her ankle.

Yeah but as we've learned, ankles were the gateway to the knees. Now you see knees everywhere! 
Oh, and I do take my hat off, but only so that I don't have to have a political discussion at a ball game. I don't sing the anthem, but if we're playing a Canadian team, I'm all over that one. It's a much better tune.

You need to get over this fixation...it's unhealthy...

brianlux said:

I would be OK with this pledge of allegiance.

brianlux said:

my2hands said:

brianlux said:

I am worldalistic, bioregionalistic, and communitialistic.  The only -istics that make sense to me.  Countries are simply artificial lines on a map.  They have no basis in reality. 

I'm more down with this than most others... people's think I'm crazy when I go off on my soap box about this

Made up lines that really don't mean a damn thing... we are one race floating around on a rock... 

Cool!  Nice to know I'm not alone on this.  I rarely hear anyone say likewise. 

We're indoctrinated by artificial political barriers from the get go. 

What is one of the first things they teach you in school?  Naming states and countries.  Doing jigsaw puzzles of states  or provinces.  Given a globe to study. 

What is one of the last things we are taught (if taught at all)?  What a biome is.  What comprises and ecosystem.  What an ecological community is made up of and how it keeps in balance. 

We are taught the most artificial things first and the most natural last.  No wonder we are at odds with the world we live in. 

PJ_Soul said:

mcgruff10 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

mcgruff10 said:

rgambs said:

mcgruff10 said:

rgambs said:

mcgruff10 said:

rgambs said:

mcgruff10 said:

I don't understand why this is even a big deal; take your hat for 90 seconds.

Some people don't understand why this is even a big deal, who cares if your hat is on or not?

I always thought you take off your hat to show respect to the flag and our country. 

So you've been told and you listened, and it ties in with the funny "hat rules" that were imparted by your religion so it made sense.
Not everyone thinks like that.

Some people see these sorts of rules and rituals as relics of a past which needs let go, or they are just very resistant to examples of groupthink like this where people follow blindly in footsteps they don't understand.  

My religion?  
My grandfather (ww2 vet) and dad (vietnam vet) instilled this thinking, and i'll do the same to my kids.  I really don't see the harm in it.  It is all of 90 seconds.

Aren't you Catholic?
They have rules about hats so it would make sense that you wouldn't be inclined to question it.

Nationalism is ugly and many people want no part of it.

Yeah I am catholic but I don’t Associate the two together. I see nothing wrong with nationalism, I am proud to live in the United States. 

I always find this statement, "I am proud to live in (this country)" very interesting. I mean, what is there to be proud of? Pride generally stems from something you did or had a part in doing that is positive. 

if you were born there, you had zero part in choosing your geographical location. and you also had zero part in what the US is today, in the grand scheme. 

I am not proud to be Canadian. I'm happy to live in Canada, but I wouldn't use the word pride. 

as to your previous statement, "I don't see the harm in it". I agree, there really is no harm in it. Unless you couple it with a message of derision of places that aren't the US. 

You wouldn’t use the word pride but I would. Yeah I am proud to live here and Be aus citizen. I dis not do anything huge in the grand scheme off things but I do educate 100 8th graders a year and it is my hope that the majority of them do something positive for this country. So yeah, I am proud. 

I just hope that you aren't teaching those 8th graders that "there is nothing wrong with nationalism" without qualifying the statement in GREAT detail, given the role that nationalism has had in some of the most horrific events in human history.