|
Let's not forget that the social contract thinking tradition started primarily with Thomas Hobbes as a way to justify government without relying on God to do so. Other contract thinkers (such as John Locke) following him had nicer views of the state of nature and a belief in God, but the whole movement began with a squirrely Englishman afraid for his life. The words in our Constitution and Bill of Rights contain a strange mix of the ideas of these thinkers. I don't particularly think that God needs to be in the pledge of allegiance (come on, the Cold War is over), but I think that looking at tradition to justify the removal of the line or keeping it is full of weird paradoxes. I have trouble having children say it, because of the Age of Reason problems with it. I know adults that have become so automated with the pledge that they don't realize that they're following in Hobbes's footsteps with the idea that for a government to be legitimate it needs to be agreed to by the citizens. This is an explicit change to how things were several hundred years ago, and people take it as a common everyday thing, as though it was always that way... it's a little troubling to me that something so profound as this kind of pledge has been reduced to this question of God and extreme patriotism. I think there's a lot more going on here...
__________________
Innominate.
|