Saturday, July 3, 2010

Taking The Pledge


"I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
- Francis Bellamy, "Pledge of Allegiance" (original version)
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republicans for Richard Stands, one nation invisible, with liberty and just us for all."
- The "Pledge of Allegiance" as many school children remember it
Massachusetts state law requires that teachers lead their class in the "Pledge of Allegiance" every day. The courts have ruled that a teacher or a student's right to choose not to recite the pledge is protected by the first amendment of the constitution, so the law has fallen into disuse. Every few years, some sort of drive pops up to bring back the recitation of the pledge in schools.
Now an Arlington teenager is spearheading such a drive.

Most of the challenges to the pledge have been on religious grounds. The words "under God" were added to the pledge in the 1950's, raising establishment clause issues. In courts, defenders of the pledge have argued that these words do not favor any particular religion, since followers of any faith can interpret the phrase "under God" to be the god of their faith. This argument ignores the rights of atheists and agnostics, as well as those religions that are not centered around the worship of one deity. What would the phrase "under God" mean to a Buddhist, a Confucian, or a Taoist? And for a Hindi, which god does the pledge refer to?

Advocates of reviving the school-led pledge assure us that no student or teacher will be forced to take the pledge. But the history of the commonwealth of Massachusetts suggests otherwise. In 1984, Randolf high school senior Susan Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, objected to the pledge. She believed that pledging to an inanimate object (the flag) would be a form of idolatry. Her home room teacher berated Susan for her beliefs in front of the class. Later she found herself bullied by her fellow students, and her family started receiving anonymous threatening, and often anti-Semitic, phone calls. Eventually Susan received police protection. These were the consequences of a student declining to take a pledge that was promoted as "voluntary".

Although most critiques of school-led pledging center around religion, the strongest critique of this proposal, ironically, comes from the pledge of allegiance itself. The pledge concisely but eloquently expresses why our country deserves our allegiance in its final six words: "with liberty and justice for all". Our children should learn how valuable liberty is, how rare the freedoms we enjoy today are in human history, and why this nation's founders fought so hard for it. But what would witnessing fellow students being pressured to recite a pledge against their will teach a child about liberty?

All too often, these mass rote recitations of the pledge result in children mouthing the words without really understanding them - witness the generations of kids who thought the pledge had something to do with "Richard Stands". At its worst, this ritual can deprive a student of his or her freedom, ironically in the name of a pledge about liberty. Let me suggest an alternative: why don't we have our grade school and high school curriculum include one week where the students learn about liberty? Our schools should have an annual "Freedom Week" where the students will be taught how liberty played a vital role in virtual every subject they are studying, including history, science, music and literature. There are dissidents who have come to this country to escape repression who would make excellent "Freedom Week" lecturers. If we could really impress our children with the importance of freedom, they would gladly and voluntarily pledge to this country.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Black Gold And Red Tape

"A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy."
- John Stuart Mill, "On Representative Government"

"Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress."
- James H. Boren, "When in Doubt, Mumble: a Bureaucrat’s Handbook"
The BP gulf region oil spill has released a sticky substance has rendered pelicans, crabs and sea turtle immobile. There is also something sticky that has immobilized those who should be responding to this crisis: Washington bureaucracy. Efforts to minimize the damage have been thwarted by existing regulations, mindlessly applied to a situation where they are clearly inappropriate:
  • French oil skimmers offered to help with the clean-up, but were turned away because of the Jones act, a maritime protectionist measure that requires such work to be done by American labor;
  • The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 prevents U.S. oil skimmers from other parts of the country from being dispatched to the gulf; and
  • In an attempt to prevent the oil from reaching the shores, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal wanted to build sand berms, but that solution was delayed by the Interior Department over concerns whether the sand berms would comply with environmental regulations.
What is particularly frustrating about their application of these regulations to the golf oil spill actually undermine the original purpose of these regulations. The Jones act was intended to preserve American jobs, and yet its application to the BP spill endangers large numbers of American jobs. And sand berms, a low tech barrier made of sand and hay, may have some negative ecological impacts, but can anyone seriously argue that the berms would do more environmental damage than a coat of oil on the Louisiana shores?

In an interview with "Today" show host Matt Lauer, President Barack Obama said, in defense of the federal response to this crisis
"I don't sit around talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."
The president caught some flack for the crudeness of his "ass to kick" remark. But there is a far more serious problem with this remark. Finding someone's ass to kick may be emotionally satisfying, but it does nothing to clean up the mess. To get this job done, the president should issue waivers to some of these regulations that are hampering the needed rapid response to this spill. Instead of asking whose ass to kick, the president should have asked "whose hands should we untie?"