Ignorance is strength

By Capt. Fogg

Although the news of her written response to a questionnaire that was part of her 2006 gubernatorial campaign has been out for a day, little seems to have been made of it. I think that's a terrible mistake.

Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not? asked the form.

Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance,

answered the Republican Party's candidate for vice president.

The Pledge of Allegiance was first published in a children's magazine in 1892 by Francis Bellamy. For you Republicans, that's over a hundred years after the Constitution ( which deliberately avoids mentioning God) was ratified. Bellamy had the decency not to include his God so vainly in his suggested pledge of patriotism. In the late 19th century, being a Christian Socialist like Bellamy Seemed natural, Jesus having stressed the communal life and demanded that his followers give all their property to the poor. That was of course when history was still deemed relevant and many ministers and Christian leaders were more interested in their flocks than in political insurgency.

I was aware of this in 1954 when Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to insert "Under God" as a response to the rise in political power of the Christian Right and serve the need to differentiate ourselves from the Russians. it was discussed in my 5th grade social studies course. Of course the pledge is not and may legally not be an official government statement or requirement, and is hardly the property of the State, so he was free to do it.

In America the Stupid, that's not widely known. Teachers still harass children who refuse to recite the doggerel and the public defends Eisenhower's unofficial inclusion ferociously. Obviously our current high level political contestants are less educated than a 5th grader in the 1950s. Fox News even lists Palin's blatant ignorance as strength possibly assuming you never read 1984 and won't gag at the reference.

Today, nearly all of us believe that the pledge was part of the literature left us by Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Franklin. That includes particularly the Republicans. That includes Sarah Palin, the woman whom John McCain insists is ready to have her finger on the button and her black leather mini skirt on the president's chair.

Frankly that degree of ignorance coupled with the willingness to fight for it and against the constitution, makes her appointment not only an egregious mistake, but a deliberate act of treason and sabotage by a party more loyal to falsely fabricated history, more loyal to their own parochial ambition than to the United States of America.

It's time we recognized that John McCain, Fox News and their mini skirted marionette Sara Palin are following a secret aganda and are enemies of America. These people have the obvious priority of outlawing all abortions and they place it far ahead of any priority that concerns our country including attack from abroad, government incompetence and corruption or economic collapse. They don't care about anything else and they have just proved it. There is no time to lose and it's easier to vote them into oblivion that it will be to start a revolution if they win.