I saw this several days ago, and have spent a lot of time trying to puzzle my way through what is an incredibly baffling argument. It was originally posted on a Tumblr called “instaconservative,” but like most small-time conservative blogs, the moment it got any sort of attention, the post disappeared. Still, it has been preserved where I found it.
The liberals have preached forever that god has no place in society. Well then, why do they force public school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day?
It’s not that I’m against the Pledge of Allegiance, but the union teachers force children to recite this, and then yell at the students if they even make a reference to God in conversation.
The children will be accused of ‘shoving their religion down everyone else’s throats.’ LITTLE CHILDREN, shoving their religion down the throats of other little children. How can a leftist be so uneducated.
If a student simply said “oh my god”, the teacher will immediately report this student, and he or she will receive a more severe punishment that an actual diversion from the established rules. Well, not that this is a major accomplishment, because the punishments for in school offenses are so mild, that they don’t detour the the students from doing anything bad anyway. But god forbid you mention god.
People, this is how stupid it is. And this goes back to the whole idea of liberal and union hypocrisy. The students get in trouble for saying ‘God’ in the classroom. What will the liberals think of next?
Now, because I’m pretty small time myself (or, as I like to think, I have an exclusive fan base), and I find it entertaining, I thought I’d fisk this one a bit.
The liberals have preached forever that god has no place in society. Well then, why do they force public school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day?
This beginning really took me off guard. Other than the obvious problem that liberals don’t preach that god has no place in society, and the idea of god having no place in government is fairly new in and of itself, who’s forcing students to say the Pledge? It’s been illegal to do that since 1943.
This really weird diatribe seems based on the premise that liberals like teachers and unions and public schools, and public schools pledge every day, therefore liberals force students to say the Pledge every day. This is truly baffling because liberals, and especially liberal atheists, tend to be at the forefront of making sure that students are not forced to take daily loyalty oaths, especially ones that specifically invoke god. I’d venture to say that the only thing the extreme right wing likes about school is that kids are often coerced into a daily affirmation of their deity.
It’s not that I’m against the Pledge of Allegiance, but the union teachers force children to recite this, and then yell at the students if they even make a reference to God in conversation.
If this were the case, I would be worried. It’s not, but it would kinda be like all the heart-hardening Yahweh does in the Old Testament: force somebody to act a certain way, then punish them for doing so.
This is the part where our friend goes really off the rails.
The children will be accused of ‘shoving their religion down everyone else’s throats.’ LITTLE CHILDREN, shoving their religion down the throats of other little children. How can a leftist be so uneducated.
If a student simply said “oh my god”, the teacher will immediately report this student, and he or she will receive a more severe punishment that an actual diversion from the established rules. Well, not that this is a major accomplishment, because the punishments for in school offenses are so mild, that they don’t detour the the students from doing anything bad anyway. But god forbid you mention god.
I honestly don’t know how people live in such frightening fantasy worlds. In my fantasy world, they have replicators (Star Trek, not Stargate ones). And luminous fish as night lights. And I can walk through walls. And Firefly is still on television.
And that’s really the difference, isn’t it? People like this random moron represent a deeper desire to be a Mary Sue hero of your own story. For guys like instaconservative, it is vital that he’s smarter, stronger, and more clear-sighted than his perceived enemies: liberals. In order to maintain that fiction, he has to create strawmen that set the bar so amazingly low that even a talking snake can cross it easily.
When I think of myself in terms of heroism, safe in my own head, I imagine myself helping people, not lording my superior intellect and foresight over others. When I or other liberals are right about our dire predictions, we don’t take pleasure in that fact. Instaconservative gets off on it.
I suppose there’s no deeper point to this other than to share a bit of a laugh and to think about the difference between heroism being part of a quest for glory instead of a quest for justice. Or maybe I’ve been watching too much My Little Pony.
Reasonable Conversation 
There is a difference between heroism and calling out those you think belong to your out-group. Idiots like this person do not have enough common sense to have a conversation with a cup of coffee. Yes, it doesn’t take much for that.
The whole “saying god gets a kid punished” thing confounds me. Where does that happen?
Unrelated: I wasn’t too fond of the Mare-Do-Well episode. It wasn’t Dash’s best moment.
It doesn’t happen anywhere, or at least is generally solved pretty damn quickly. I haven’t seen any court cases the way we see them for the other side, at least.
Not my favorite episode, either. As an RD fan, I liked the fan club (and the word “awesomazing”) at the beginning, but yes, it was hard to see her being a jerk.
Oh, no, it happens. ACLU has a whole bunch of examples in our Religious Freedom files. Occasionally it really is an atheist teacher trying to impose hir beliefs on the students; more commonly, it’s a well-meaning teacher who honestly thinks they’re doing the right thing but doesn’t realize it’s protected speech.
And of course what happens is, the student contacts the ACLU, we come tell the teacher “uh hey, what you’re doing is, like, totes unconstitutional,” and they stop it and sometimes face repercussions. Which is exactly what should happen.
If I had to venture a guess, the reason we don’t see the highly-publicized court cases has to do with privilege. Atheists and other liberal-types don’t traditionally enjoy the same cultural hegemony as Christianity, so we don’t necessarily start from the assumption that we’re automatically right. So when someone can demonstrate to us that hey, no, we’re wrong, we tend to go “Oh, ok, my bad.” (We also have a whole lot of respect for the Constitution, so that really is the trump card.)
Christians, on the other hand, have been getting away with some pretty
unconstitutional shit for a while now. And they’re used to it. They take it for granted. They honestly think it’s the way the world is supposed to be. So when suddenly that privilege is taken away, it FEELS like unfair persecution, and they fight back HARD, and lash out at whoever they consider the main offender. So it becomes a media circus.
Actually I think Liberals really want to children to say the Pledge, without G-d in it! Replace G-d with Obama & you’ve every Liberal’s idea of their kind of “pledge”
Aww. You’re adorable. I can’t even be mad at you.