"Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America."

[rug]

Should the President say this in his school speech tomorow?

[virgogal]

1. Only if he wants to,it's his speech.

[enlightenment]

2. No.

He is representing the nation, not himself.

[rug]

3. In hundreds of public schools.

[Mojambo]

4. I'd rather he keep his sky god worship out of all of his speeches, but whatever. n/t

[ZombieHorde]

5. Depends on his goal.

If his goal is to be inclusive to as many Americans as possible, then no, he should not say it.

If his goal is to be generic and sound like all who came before him, then the quote would be fine. I would not blame him for taking this route, give a non controversial speech and then get back to work on health care reform.

[rug]

6. My money's on generic.

But it's so easy for politicians to drag God into their set speeches, disserving belivers and nonbelievers alike.

[struggle4progress]

7. I never much liked political use of G-d. I drop "under G-d" from the

Pledge if I ever say it, and I'd prefer "In G-d we trust" off the coinage. If public figures want to push their religion, I'd prefer that they do so by preaching "love your neighbor" by practical example, rather than with cheap pious words, which I tend to regard as meaningless noise

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. This stuff all dates back to the McCarthy era

"Under God" was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954.

I learned this when I was just eight or nine years old. For some reason, my mother had kept her fourth grade reading textbook from the late 1920s, and I enjoyed reading it because I liked the stories. (They were written on a higher level than the textbooks I was getting in school in the 1950s--the dumbing down of America has been going on for a long time.)

Anyway, one of the sections had "patriotic" stories and poems and the text of the Pledge of Allegiance--without "under God" in it. That's when my mom explained that "under God" had been added just a few years before.

What's really ironic is that the original pledge was written by a Baptist minister.

[onager]

9. A SOCIALIST Baptist minister!

Francis Bellamy. I found this interesting factoid:

Bellamy had initially also considered using the words equality and fraternity but decided they were too controversial since many people still opposed equal rights for women and African Americans.

Congress passed the "under God" bill on June 8, 1954. My birthday. Thanks, assholes.

Any mention of Francis Bellamy gives me an excuse for one of my favorite "six degrees of separation" rants:

Francis Bellamy's cousin was Edward Bellamy. Edward was also a Socialist and the author of the utopian science-fiction novel Looking Backward (From The Year 2000).

Bellamy's novel inspired the futuristic architecture of the Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles, which was built in 1893.

The Bradbury Building has been used in many sci-fi movies, most notably Blade Runner.

But it has another sci-fi connection I like even more.

The self-taught architect of the Bradbury Building had a grandson who built his entire career around science fiction and horror entertainment. That was the recently deceased Forrest J. Ackerman, founder of Famous Monsters magazine.