(Via Lew Rockwell 2008-05-09: Young Heretics vs. the Flag Religion.)

I spent my first few years of school in a Montessori co-op school with a large contingent of aging New Leftists and burned-out hippie types among the parents. But after that it was all government schools, and, as far as I can remember, every government school I ever attended started business each day with the Pledge of Allegiance. I started having problems with the Pledge around the time I got to junior high school; I didn’t like being expected to chant out one nation, under God, and I figured it violated my religious liberty, so I stopped saying that. In high school I refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance at all, and I usually wouldn’t stand up, either, unless I felt like someone in the room was eyeing me. It’s not that I was trying to make some kind of anarchist protest; I was a fairly boring sort of Democratic Party-identified state Leftist for most of the time I was in high school, and didn’t become an anarchist until after I spent a couple years kicking around more radical forms of Leftism in college. But even then I considered the whole ritual Strength-Through-Unity exercise stifling and creepy, and I didn’t want to participate. So I feel a lot of personal, not just political, solidarity for these three teenagers in western Minnesota:

Three small-town eighth-graders were suspended for not standing at the start of the school day Thursday for the Pledge of Allegiance.

My son wasn’t being defiant against America, said Kim Dahl, mother of one of the students, Brandt, who attends Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High School in western Minnesota. She said her son offered no reason for sitting.

Brandt told the Fargo Forum that Thursday’s one-day in-school suspension, was kind of dumb because I didn’t do anything wrong. It should be the people’s choice.

Kim Dahl said the punishment didn’t fit the crime. If they wanted to know why he didn’t stand, they should’ve made him write a paper.

— Paul Walsh, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribue (2008-05-09): Principal who punished 3 who sat pledge foresees policy rewording

I understand the desire to try to protect your son from abuse in a case that’s sure to draw the howling attention of the Patriotic Correctness bellowing blowhard bully brigade. But, in all honesty, what would it matter if he were being defiant against America? Everyone’s got the right their convictions and nobody should be forced to participate in theo-nationalist rituals that violate their conscience. I also understand the desire to try to get a lighter punishment for your kid when the school is so clearly throwing its weight around in an attempt to bully and intimidate through a heavy punishment. But, in all honesty, what possible justification could there be for forcing this kid to take on extra academic work or to explain himself any further than he cares to do so freely?

She said that Brandt has not been standing all year, and all of a sudden it became an in-school suspension.

The district today is defending the punishments. The school’s handbook says all students are required to stand but are not obligated to recite the pledge. The same is true for all four schools in the district, a school official said.

These three [students] didn’t, and they got caught, said Mel Olson, the district’s community education director. He said he backs the punishment, being a veteran and a United States of America citizen, absolutely. Olson served in the Marines in Japan during the Vietnam War.

— Paul Walsh, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribue (2008-05-09): Principal who punished 3 who sat pledge foresees policy rewording

Another thin-skinned Veteran Against Individual Freedom, I guess, who has nothing better to do with his time than rant and cry about how nobody gives the military and its obsessive flag protocol the respect they allegedly deserve.

One of the things that makes me happy to see is that there is vigorous debate in the comments section on this story, with many posts from people who condemn the school’s actions (and the very idea of forcing children to recite a pledge of loyalty to the federal government on a daily basis), with reasonable argument and also, at times, with the ridicule and withering sarcasm that this asinine school administration deserves. The only thing there that’s irritating is the number of people who feel compelled to say things like, Oh, I think that everybody ought to jump up and shout Sir, yes Sir! when it comes time to say the Pledge, but I’m not sure that it’s really right to force people…. Whatever your personal views about flag protocol may be, this is an argument that can and should be made without doffing your hat to Patriotic Correctness.

As for the commenters who have posted in defense of the school’s actions, they’ve offered three different sorts of arguments, each one of which is beneath contempt. In order of increasing outrageousness, here are some examples of each.

First, there’s the standard Patriotic Correctness argument, along with several direct invocations of love it or leave it, some bizarre non sequiturs about caring about the Constitution (which is nowhere mentioned in the Pledge of Allegiance, has nothing to say about the Pledge or about flag protocol, and seems to mean absolutely nothing in the mouths of the people citing it except as a synecdoche for the authority of the United States federal government), and the usual long litany of demands for unearned respect in return for unasked-for services. The idea here is that the kids ought to be punished for daring to hold, or at least to express, anything other than glassy-eyed unquestioning loyalty to the federal government of the United States of America:

Out of respect for our country..

Its really not that hard to stand up and show some respect- not merely for the flag, but for the values that the flag represents: liberty, justice, and truth. Yes, this is a free country, but that also means that these families are free to leave if they cannot respect our nation.

—olin157 @ 9 May 2008, 10:07 AM

And:

Snot Nosed Brats

These snot nosed brats should not only stand but they should gladly participate in the pledge. At a minimum they should obey the rules of the school which means get off you rear and stand. You don’t have to harm your little sensibilities by actually pledging allegiance to the only country you have, just stand up for goodness sake. The school was right, ACLU and these punks are legally wrong.

—seanintucson @ 9 May 2008, 12:21 PM

Not to mention:

Idol Worship?

Are you people serious? It has nothing to do with the sort. You are not idolizing anything by standing up during the pledge. Hey, you don’t have to say it, the all powerful Supreme Court has brought that commandment down, if you will. Have we forgotten so soon what the Standard represents? Have you Baby-Boomers forgotten your parents who fought to raise that same flag during WWII? How about the current generation, your grandparents fought for it in WWII or Korea, parents in Vietnam and your friends now in Iraq and Afghanistan. I AM a current soldier, not retired, and HAVE served two tours in Baghdad. I truly believe you have the right to free speech, which is why you can go ahead and not say the pledge, but for the sake of my brethren who have fallen and those in the past who have died, show THEM the respect they deserve. Parents, you need to be teaching that this country isn’t about the government, but the people, and the people who formed it. This country’s freedom has, and is, constantly being paid for with the lives of its fighting men and women. While you may have the luxury of sitting back and saying its a free speech thing, just remember who gave you that same free speech.

—SGT_M on May. 9, 08 at 12:26 PM

I should pause to note that my father was indeed in the Army in Vietnam, and my father’s father was in the Army in Korea. The claim that either my father, or my father’s father, fought for free speech, or this country’s freedom, is absurd. Neither the North Korean government nor the North Vietnamese government, let alone the occupied countries of South Korea and South Vietnam, ever posed any threat to free speech or freedom in the United States of America. They did nothing in the Army to give me free speech because freedom of speech in the U.S. was not at risk in the first place.

The claim that either my father or my grandfather fought to raise a damned flag on the other side of the world is also absurd. The reason that my father and his father were in the Army is because the federal government sent each of them a letter announcing that if he did not join the Army, he would be arrested and thrown in prison. I’ll be damned if I sit around and listen to some sanctimonious volunteer soldier talk about how the United States Army, which conscripted both my father and my grandfather against their will, deserves my respect and gratitude for guarding individual freedom during the wars on Korea and Vietnam

As for the statement Parents, you need to be teaching that this country isn’t about the government, but the people, and the people who formed it, I’m inclined to agree, but I think the upshot is not quite what SGT_M takes the upshot to be. And I certainly don’t know what any of it has to do with standing during the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance is not about the country, much less about the people; it’s about loyalty to *the government*, and it says so right at the beginning:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

And to the republic, for which it stands.

Anyway.

For the second argument, there’s the These snot-nosed punks got no respect line. This is, honestly, even worse than the belligerent appeals to American theo-nationalism, because, as disgusting as the latter is, the former involves singling out harmless kids for sneering speculation on their motivations and character. And also because they are is no longer attacking a difference of view and an exercise of liberty because they think something more important (love of the government and its symbols, or whatever) overrides it, but rather attacking difference and liberty just as such, because these teenagers are acting like free human beings instead of doing as they’re told by the wise and powerful authorities. Thus:

Respect!

Even if you do not like the Pledge of Allegiance for what ever reason. You should respect others who care and stand! The lack of respect is the main part of our trouble in this rough times.

—hussman02 @ 9 May 2008 10:05AM

And:

If it’s a school rule and he doesn’t have an answer as to why he didn’t stand – then he clearly is just being obstinate. I can’t believe a parent would support their kid in this situation!!!

—Cartert1 @ 9 May 2008, 9:55 AM

And:

$10 says these are pain-in-the-rear kids with pain-in-the-rear parents that hover around their kids and never make any acknowledgment that their kids could ever do anything wrong. If these kids were formally and legitimately protesting the United States they should not have been punished, but the tenor of the article suggests they are just smart asses and that they did not have any political/personal convictions when they sat out the pledge.

—pipress1487 @ 9 May 2008, 10:23 AM

I don’t think that Brandt Dahl’s statement that I didn’t do anything wrong. It should be the people’s choice. suggests they are just smart asses without any political/personal convictions. But suppose this were true. Then so what? Freedom of speech and expression don’t depend on you having something to say that fits some highly stylized model of formal and legitimate protest. The chief value of freedom of association just is being able to be a lazy smart-ass and live your ordinary life as you see fit, rather than spending your time protesting and fighting an overbearing, invasive government. While the right to speak out against injustices is vitally important, what’s even more important, and in fact what makes the right to speak out against injustices as vitally important as it is, is the right to just be left the hell alone and not be subjected to the officious demands of busybodies and blowhards on your time and energy.

If these kids are just trying to be pains in the ass over a ritual that they find stupid and tiresome, I support them and salute them. I can think of no better reason to refuse to participate.

The third, and worst, of the arguments seems (surprisingly, for me, anyway) to be the most common: the idea that even if the school policy is unjustified, and even if schools oughtn’t force students to stand, and even if the kids have got a legitimate beef with the school board, it does not matter, because they broke The Rules, and you got to punish anybody who steps out of line, even if they had a perfectly good reason to object. Now it’s no longer a matter of attacking them for having the wrong beliefs about public political devotion, and no longer a matter of attacking them for being thoughtless or not following orders that the authorities had good reason to hand down. It’s a matter of attacking them for not subordinating their own considered judgment and obeying orders which are admittedly arbitrary and perhaps even wrong in themselves. (If you have some free time and a high tolerance for pain, feel free to count the number of times that people repeat, verbatim, the phrase rules are rules.)

Thus:

he wasn’t protesting.

he didn’t have a reason why he didn’t stand, he just didn’t want to! what happens when mom and dad have house rules that he doesn’t want to follow? should they force him to follow their rules? life is full of rules that different people think are pointless, it just depends on whose ox is being gored. so now he’s learning that he doesn’t really need reasons for his actions, just whether he wants to do it or not. and we wonder why our youth have become so complacent today!

—K_Zemlicka @ 9 May 2008, 10:37 AM

And (all-caps is from the original):

RULES ARE MEANT TO BE FOLLOWED!

RULES ARE RULES, FOLLOWED THEM OR YOU’LL DEAL WITH CONSEQUENCES. BOTTOM LINE ! THAT CHILD DESERVED IT, I BETCHA HE’LL STAND NEXT TIME.

—securpo on 9 May 2008, 10:43 AM

Of course, there are two kinds of consequences in this world. There are the natural consequences of an action, and then there are the artificial consequences that people attach to an action by their chosen responses. In this case the only natural consequence of not standing for the Pledge is getting to spend a minute longer sitting rather than standing. The consequences that these three teenagers are being forced to deal with are better described as the choice of school administrators to flip out and try to make teenagers suffer in the name of Old Glory. In any case, statist logic aside, the fact that school administrators flip out when you don’t obey this stupid policy can hardly be used as a justification for their flipping out, without making your argument do doughnuts around the parking lot.

And then there’s this:

I find it interesting that the school has a policy that students must stand during the Pledge. But, policy is policy and rules are rules, so I agree that the students should be punished. I do think it’s an anti-patriotic policy though and standing for the Pledge would be made more meaningful if kids are allowed to do it through free will.

—ttepley @ 9 May 2008, 10:28 AM

In other words, God forbid that anyone should sit down when there are rules to be followed. Students should be punished for refusing to co-operate with a policy which you yourself believe to be foolish and wrong, because rules and authority need no rational justification, and indeed can defy any rational justification, and they ought to be obeyed nevertheless.

And then there’s this:

My son wasn’t being defiant against America

My son wasn’t being defiant against America, said Kim Dahl, mother of one of the students, Brandt, who attends Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High School in western Minnesota. Yet The school’s handbook says all students are required to stand but are not obligated to recite the pledge. So her son wasn’t being defiant against America, but defiant to the school policy itself. Ignorance is not a justifiable defense.

—pizann0 9 May 2008, 12:12 PM

I can’t stand flag creeps. I think that kind of belligerent theo-nationalism is absurd, contemptible, and dangerous. But what’s even worse than those who believe that every individual conscience should be turned towards a servile worship of the State, are those who believe that whatever your individual conscience is turned towards, you damn well ought to ignore it and follow the rules, because being defiant to authority is itself a mortal sin, whatever that authority may be and however pointless or wrong may be the rules that they are trying to impose. Where the complaint is not that they ought to be worshipping the one true God, but rather that they had damn well better bow down, no matter what may be before them at the altar.

Incidentally, the state ACLU says that punishing these students is against the rules, as set out in the U.S. Constitution and in rulings by the Supreme Court. I don’t care, and neither should anybody else.

See also:

• GT 2008-03-09: The purpose of government schools is to train your children to love the government.
• GT 2007-12-03: Veterans Against Individual Freedom
• GT 2006-06-14: Festive occasions
• GT 2005-03-09: The Most Depressing Photograph in the World

As far as I can tell, Jamie Kirchick, assistant editor for The New Republic,^[*] has devoted most of his young professional life to becoming exactly the sort of bright boy at the The New Republic whom Randolph Bourne had in mind when he wrote The War and the Intellectuals, and who, decades later, would make the best and the brightest into a bitter national joke. In any case, here’s something from his latest, a TNR blog post on Barack Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his recent speech on race:

Finally, what concerns me most about the Wright controversy isn’t the Pastor’s racist statements or even his unhinged views of Israel. I don’t think Obama agrees with any of that nonsense. What concerns me is the sort of comment that Wright made about Harry Truman’s ending World War II, that We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. This smacks of the Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky/Nation magazine wing of the American left that Democrats serious about this country’s security (and winning in November) should not want within 100 miles of the next administration.

— James Kirchick, The Plank (2008-03-21): Thoughts on a Speech

Let’s set aside, for the moment, Rev. Wright’s confusion about personal pronouns. I didn’t bomb Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and I don’t think that he did, either. But that’s apparently not what Kirchick has a problem with. What he has a problem with is what such statements about the U.S. government smack of.

But, Mr. Kirchick, no matter what it may smack of to mention it, isn’t it true that the United States Army bombed Hiroshima?

No matter what it may smack of to mention it, isn’t it true that the United States Army bombed Nagasaki?

No matter what it may smack of to mention it, isn’t it true that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed somewhere around 210,000 civilian men, women and children — about 70 times the number of civilians killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

As far as I can tell, nothing that has provoked Jamie Kirchick’s outrage here is actually, you know, false. Perhaps he thinks that these are facts which it is rude to mention in public. But if being taken for serious about this country’s security (which is TNR-speak for this government’s wars) requires not mentioning them–that is, if being taken for serious requires silence or dissembling about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people for the sake of a shared vision of American power, then it is well worth asking just who the hell these assholes are who we’re supposed to prove our seriousness to. And what their notion of seriousness really amounts to. And why anyone should think she has to prove a damned thing to them.

(Via David Gordon, via Lew Rockwell 2008-03-23.)

Further reading:

• GT 2006-02-06: Dr. Strangeread, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Our Troops

Cops are here to protect you by looking in on an upset young man who locked himself in a room with a small kitchen knife, then drilling a hole in the wall and spraying pepper spray to force him out from the room when he wouldn’t come out voluntarily, then shooting him to death when the pepper spraying forced him out of the room, because he brought out the small kitchen knife that he had taken in with him.

All for his own good, of course. It became necessary to destroy Scott Rockwell in order to save him.

Cops are here to protect you by using handcuffing and arrest to put an end any argument. Even if you’re a firefighter who’s busy trying to rescue an auto accident victim.

Cops are here to protect you by dumping you out of your wheelchair onto the jailhouse floor, and breaking two of your ribs. Just to make sure you weren’t lying, when you told them you can’t stand up because you’re paralyzed from the shoulders down.

Cops are here to protect you using pain compliance, for example hitting you with 50,000-volt electric shocks at least three different times to make you do what they tell you to do, even when you pose no threat of violence to anyone, when you already have your hands cuffed behind your back, and when you are already surrounded or even pinned down to the ground by three armed professionals.

Cops are here to protect you by pinning a 13 year old boy to the ground and choking him for the crime of skateboarding. Then grabbing a teenaged girl in a chokehold for trying to walk away from the scene. Then wrestling down another teenaged boy who tried to protect her from getting manhandled. Then arresting the lot of them on the grounds that failing to immediately obey a cop’s arbitrary orders is a violation of city ordinances against disorderly conduct.

Cops are here to protect you by threatening a 14 year old boy with juvi for backtalk, threatening to smack your mouth for attitude, wrestling him to the ground to steal his skateboards, screaming in the boy’s face for being addressed as dude, and then turning around to threaten another teenager who happens to be filming their professional conduct.

Cops are here to protect you by trashing your college art project and threatening to beat the hell out of you for using public space in ways that confuse and enrage them.

Please note that if you or I or anyone else without a badge and a gun acted like this, the people around us would more or less universally conclude that we’re belligerent and dangerous lunatics. In fact, if you or I or anyone else without a badge and a gun acted like this, and it was caught on camera, we would soon be in jail for on a charge of assault and battery. When someone with a badge and a gun acts like this, and it’s caught on camera, with a very few exceptions, the worst that ever happens is that they might get fired. The most common response from the powers that be is either to do nothing at all, or else to give the pig a paid vacation and a verbal reprimand. Meanwhile, state legislators propose laws to withhold records of the abuse as classified information for reasons of state security. Fellow cops and freelance sado-fascist blowhards can all be counted on to make up any excuse at all, even in defiance of the clear evidence of their senses, in order to get the pig off the hook, no matter how obviously out-of-control the cop may be and no matter how obviously harmless or helpless his victim.

The mainstream newsmedia writes stories with clauses like this:

The skateboarders, who were violating a city ordinance, are claiming police brutality and some say the pictures back up their claim.

The video shows a 13-year-old being held to the ground by his throat. It also shows a girl being held in what appears to be a chokehold.

— KTHV Little Rock: Video Brings Controversy To Police Department

Other cops say things like this:

Hot Springs Police Department spokesman McCrary Means says, If a subject becomes confrontational, the officer has a right to defend himself. There are certain steps: first of all a verbal command. Like I said, if that subject becomes combative, that officer needs to do all he can do to get that subject under control.

— KTHV Little Rock: Video Brings Controversy To Police Department

Please note that Hot Springs Police Department spokesman McCrary Means believes that police officers have a right to grab you and beat the hell out of you in order to defend themselves against a verbal confrontation.

And freelance police-enabling blowhards write in with letters like this:

In regard to the YouTube video in which the Baltimore police officer seems to go overboard in his actions regarding a teenage skateboarder, I’d point out that teenage boys typically resent authority, often continue to do the wrong thing even after repeated instructions to stop and are, in general, a minor menace to society until they grow out of their teenage years.

When they’re doing something wrong, you can ask them to stop over and over again, and they’ll often simply ignore you until you get loud or otherwise assert your authority.

As the uncle of two teenage boys, I have no doubt that the officer reacted in a normal manner and that he should not be subject to disciplinary action.

Jerry Fletcher
Waldorf

And:

When YouTube recently showed a video of a teenage skateboarder being manhandled by a Baltimore police officer, public reaction was swift and severe.

Mayor Sheila Dixon called him a bad apple and the officer was immediately suspended.

I find this rush to judgment without a complete investigation disturbing, especially as the alleged victim had little more than his feelings hurt.

Police officers put their lives on the line every day, and the lack of public support for these men and women, especially from the mayor’s office, is an embarrassment.

Might it be possible that these kids were just punks harassing a veteran officer? And if these upstanding skater dudes were so in the right, why didn’t they file a complaint against the officer?

Let’s hear the whole story before destroying the career of a dedicated public servant.

E. Mitchell Arion
Goldsboro

If E. Mitchell Arion hasn’t watched the video that he speaks so confidently about, then why keep talking about it when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about? If, on the other hand, he has actually watched the video, he must believe that this hollering uniformed thug is in fact a dedicated public servant whose precious career needs to be handled with kid gloves, even though he watched Officer Salvatore Rivieri going up to one of the people he is supposedly serving, screaming in his face, ordering him around, insulting him, telling him to shut up, threatening him, grabbing him, wrestling him down, shoving him back down to the ground, robbing him of his private property, lecturing him, and getting up in his face about the proper titles to use when the kid addresses his putative servant.

It takes an awfully special kind of dedicated servant to treat you like that.

(Hat tips to Lew, Balko, Anthony Gregory #1, Anthony Gregory #2, Bill Anderson, Anthony Gregory #3, Anthony Gregory #4.)

Further reading:

• GT 2008-02-05: Rapists in uniform
• GT 2007-12-23: Law and Orders #5: Daytona Beach cop takes control at Best Buy by shocking an unarmed, retreating woman
• GT 2007-11-09: You got served and protected.
• GT 2007-10-02: Public schooling

Here’s a weird passage from Lew Rockwell’s article in the next-to-last Mises Institute newsletter. Not because the basic point being argued is false, but because of how the argument leaves off at the end:

Now, Ron Paul stands in this tradition of thinkers in every way. Even on the campaign stump, he speaks about the evil of fiat money and Fed management of the nation’s money stock. In a true sense, he says, we’ve put a cartelized gang of central planners in charge of the good that constitutes half of every economic exchange, and we are paying the price in terms of declining purchasing power, exchange-rate chaos, rampant debt, and growing crises in sector after sector.

Is there a way out? Most certainly! It goes by the name of gold. Make the dollar as good as gold and you eliminate the inflation problem and the business cycles that go along with it. Here is the great secret of the gold standard. The problem is not that it is unviable from the perspective of economics; the problem is that there are many people allied against it: the big banks, the creditor class, and government. You see, gold would provide a hard-core anchor for liberty. Under the right form of the gold standard, government could no longer spend with impunity or run up debt without limit. The resources it spent would have to be raised the old fashioned way.

… By stealing it?

I celebrated Roe v. Wade Day today by recalling the radical, anti-statist heritage of the pro-choice feminist movement. Lew Rockwell, on the other hand, celebrated it by reporting an anti-choice campaign endorsement for Chairman Ron’s Great Libertarian Electoral Revolution:

Today – the 35th anniversary of the Supremes’ Roe v. Wade usurpation – Norma McCorvey (Roe) has endorsed Ron Paul for president.

In passing, Rockwell describes the 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade as a usurpation. But a usurpation against whom?

The only thing that Roe does, legally speaking, is restrain the action of state governments, by forbidding them from passing certain kinds of abortion laws, on the claim that any such law conflicts with the requirements imposed on the several states by the United States Constitution. But depriving someone of a legal power can only count as usurpation if the person or people you’re depriving had some kind of legitimate authority for you to usurp. And since when do anti-war, anti-state pro-secession anarchists believe that state governments have any kind of legitimate authority at all?