The Palm Beach Post reports on the student’s legal case:
The suit contends that the state law that requires Frazier and other students to stand is unconstitutional because it conflicts with the First and 14th amendments to the Constitution, which provide for the rights of freedom of speech and due process. Frazier should be able to sit quietly during the pledge.
In the suit, Frazier says that on Dec. 8, his math teacher, Cynthia Alexandre, scolded him in front of his classmates when he refused to stand for the pledge. Frazier said he told her he hadn’t stood for the pledge since he was a sixth-grader.
“See your desk? Now look at mine. Big desk, little desk. You obviously don’t know your place in this classroom,” Frazier says Alexandre told him. A few minutes later, Assistant Principal Richard Poorman, another administrator and a school police officer came to the class and told Frazier to go to the principal’s office.
Teachers who deserve respect don’t lord it over students and make a fetish out of their relatively greater power — all despite the fact that their job in school is to help children. Evidently, students in Florida need parental permission merely to abstain from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, but even then they are required to stand while others recite it.
This is Jay Stephenson’s erudite reaction to a student who doesn’t want to stand for the Pledge:
The left will hold this kid as a hero, and defend his actions as the epitomy [sic] of patriotism. They are absolutely backwards.
Refusing to violate your conscience is the opposite of patriotism; real patriotism means following the herd and doing what everyone else is doing in order not to be noticed or punished.
It is a free Country, and no one should be forced to love it. However, I highly suggest to those who don’t respect it to go live in some other Country.
America: love it as it is and don’t try to change it or act differently from others, or just leave it.
Why does Jay Stephenson capitalize the word country? It's not a proper noun, like Jay, it's regular noun, like idiot. Does he think he is making some sort of political statement by being ungrammatical?
If I had been one of his classmates, I would have made him see some stars he would respect. If I were his parents, he wouldn’t want to sit down after I showed him after the kind of red stripes I showed him.
People who dissent from the beliefs or practices of the majority should be physically assaulted and beaten. Parents should use physical force against children who have the gall to develop their own political and social beliefs.
Dissent is one thing, disrespect for the very freedom that gives you that right is another.
It’s OK to “dissent” from the majority’s beliefs and actions, but don’t do so in a way that actually causes you to exercise your constitutional rights because exercising your rights just isn’t right when it causes you to be different. Dissent is only justified when it doesn’t exhibit disrespect or disagreement — in other words, only pre-approved dissent should be permitted.
The Florida Masochist isn’t much better, writing:
This is just ridiculous. Everyone, myself included have to do things we don’t like.
Well, that’s true — trivially true, in fact, and completely beside the point. The lawsuit isn’t about a student being forced to do something he doesn’t want to do, it’s about a student being forced to do something which he believes is a violation of his constitutional rights. Perhaps he is wrong — perhaps it isn’t a violation of his rights — but the Masochist doesn’t come anywhere close to making an argument for that. Instead, s/he simply trivializes the issue by raising a non sequitur — a common tactic of those who don’t actually have case, but are unwilling to admit it (or perhaps unable to recognize that).
Ed Brayton has a lot of good comments about Jay Stephenson’s asinine ideas. The best is how he points out that Jehovah’s Witnesses were the victims of physical assaults and even murder when they refused to go along with the majority when it came to Pledging Allegiance to the flag.
Jay Stephenson is cut from the same mold as those “patriotic” Americans who beat and murdered other Americans for insisting on their religious liberty. Funny, isn’t it, that Jay Stephenson has a blog devoted to complaining about how the ACLU is infringing on Christians’ religious liberties?
Separation of Church & State:
- Separation of Church and State 101
- Secularism 101
- What is the Separation of Church and State?
- Religion's Place in the Public Square
- Myths About Church/State Separation
- Church and State News
- Church & State Polls
Religion in Public Schools:
- Religion in Public Schools: News
- School Prayer
- School Holidays: Good Friday & Easter
- School Holidays: Christmas
- Arguments Against School Vouchers
Pledge of Allegiance, Under Gods:
- Pledge of Allegiance & God
- Politicization of the Pledge of Allegiance
- Divisiveness of the Pledge of Allegiance
- Newdow vs. U.S. Congress: Summary, Analysis
- Jehovah's Witnesses & the Pledge of Allegiance: History
- Jehovah's Witnesses & the Pledge of Allegiance: Aftermath
Christian & Religious Privilege: