What Do Eugene Oregon, The Pledge of Allegiance, Marx and the Matrix Trilogy Have In Common?

The Con

The Pledge of Allegiance is once again receiving no respect.  This time the culprits aren’t the atheist parents in a wildly leftist suburb of the People’s Republic of Northern California.  Nor are they the insensitive functionaries at NBC Sports who forgot to include a whole line (Under G-d.) while running a montage of kids saying the Pledge over pictures of Golf highlights.

No, this time to the offenders are the elected representatives of the people of the city of Eugene, Oregon.

(From FoxNews.com)

An Oregon town’s City Council voted down a proposal to say the Pledge of Allegiance before every council meeting, but later passed a compromise that seemed to make no one happy.

The approved measure allows the pledge to be recited at just four Eugene City Council meetings a year, those closest to the Fourth of July, Veterans Day, Memorial Day and Flag Day.

It was supposed to be simple, but Councilman Mike Clark soon found out when you’re dealing with God and country, nothing in Eugene is easy.

Clark says all he wanted to do was unite the council and show his more conservative constituents that in this city where diversity is celebrated, their more traditional values also are important.

“It’s a little ironic to see those who have championed the idea of tolerance be less tolerant on this question,” Clark Said.

A nice touch brought about by a man and elected official who truly believes in the American experiment.  However his peers appear to feel differently.

Mayor Kitty Piercy called the Pledge of Allegiance divisive. “If there’s one thing the flag stands for,” Piercy says, “it’s that people don’t have to be compelled to say the Pledge of Allegiance or anything else.”

Under Clark’s proposal, saying the pledge would be voluntary not only for the public at the meetings, but the council members themselves.

Councilman George Brown voted against the compromise, saying the Pledge of Allegiance had no place at City Hall. “People can say it in their front yard or backyard,” Brown says. “It really doesn’t help move the city business forward. It does not unite us.”

Another pledge opponent, Councilwoman Betty Taylor compared saying the Pledge of Allegiance to reading from “The Communist Manifesto.”

Just to remind ourselves we weren’t reciting a Commie-Pinko/Leninist/Trotskyite/Stalinist verse from Kindergarten straight on through to 6^th Grade, here is the Pledge of Allegiance:

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

And to the republic for which it stands.

One nation under G-d, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.

Obviously, the real subtext of the Pledge is the American version of Workers of the world Unite!  You have nothing to lose but your chains!

But not even the famously wacky 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals found anything wrong with the Pledge of Allegiance as currently spoken.

A California atheist challenged the pledge, arguing it amounted to the U.S. government establishing a religion in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately ruled 2-1 the Pledge of Allegiance does not violate the Establishment Clause.

More recently, NBC found itself in a pledge controversy during this year’s U.S. Open golf coverage. The network produced a montage with kids saying the Pledge of Allegiance while showing pictures of golf highlights.

But when viewers noticed the words “under God” were edited out, many complained. Three hours later, NBC made an on-air apology saying it had “forgotten” to put the whole pledge in.

Of course, a far right knucklehead statement of intent must follow any far left knucklehead play:

Jordan Sekulow, director of policy and international operations for the American Center for Law and Justice, sees the Eugene case as political correctness trumping American values.

“It vindicates all of us who say our Judeo-Christian heritage is under attack,” Sekulow says, “sometimes it’s in the courts, sometimes it’s elected officials and sometimes it’s the media.”

But the folks in Eugene want us to know this isn’t about G-d.  This is about getting back at the Man.

In Eugene, the opposition was less about religion than anti-establishment.

Resident Anita Sullivan summed up a common viewpoint: “So you say I pledge allegiance and right there I don’t care for that language,” Sullivan says. “It sort of means loyalty to your country; well, I feel loyalty to the entire world.”

I find the problem here to be glaringly obvious: the good people of Eugene led by Anita Sullivan have seen The Matrix trilogy one too many times i .e. twice. So when al-Qaeda decides to blow up something in Eugene, can we save throw the Emergency Relief Funds they will surely ask for at the debt and tell them to go to the UN for cash instead or perhaps they should just wait for the rise of ‘the One.’