Author’s website: www.piecomic.com
A country that truly believes in freedom and democracy shouldn’t require you to take a loyalty oath every day.
The Conservatives here in the UK wanted to enforce something similar, but in the form of a patriotic song. Everybody just laughed. That would never fly here!
And it’s spreading. Denmark is pushing laws to restrict using other flags. It might be a dog whistle for anti-palestine but still. Rubs me the wrong way.
That’s how I feel about my state adopting laws saying Non-Citizens can’t vote. They already can’t, the only thing the law is accomplishing is a dog whistle.
And we’ve had multiple lawsuits decide exactly that - you do not have to do it.
In most schools it is. 46-47 states have laws requiring it.
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that the First Amendment protects students from being compelled to salute the American flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.
They can’t require participation.
It says I live in a state that requires it with no exceptions and that’s simply not true. In HS a lot of students didn’t participate.
Counterargument:
If no one believes or identifies with a nation, that nation will cease to exist.
The idea that “things don’t exist when we stop believing in them” is something that most of us outgrow at an early age.
Object permanence applies to tangible objects, basically things explained by physics and constituted from energy.
A nation is a construct of collective imagination, much like religion and economics.
National patriotism is a religion which worships dirt.