“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas


Thursday, October 07, 2010

The Pledge of Allegiance in the courtroom?

I'm not sure the courtroom is the appropriate place for the Pledge of Allegiance....

From TheSmokingGun -- OCTOBER 7--A Mississippi judge yesterday jailed a lawyer who refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in his courtroom.

Attorney Danny Lampley, 49, was taken into custody Wednesday morning after Chancellor Talmadge Littlejohn cited him for criminal contempt of court for failing to recite the 31-word Pledge at the outset of the morning’s proceedings at the Lee County courthouse.


Kids learning the Pledge in school as part of an American history curriculum is fine, but I still have reservations about forced pledges of allegiance. Like a torture confession, if it's forced how sincere is it?

Citizens volunteering to recite the pledge is terrific. I'm just not sure what making everybody recite the Pledge before holding court has to do with Constitutional jurisprudence. Maybe I'm missing something. If anybody can relate what the Pledge of Allegiance has to do with the adjudication of conflict and the rule of law, I'd like to hear it.

2 comments:

Bill said...

I don't have a problem with the judge in this case. What goes on in the courtroom derives from the constitution and laws of "the Republic for which it (the flag) stands" and thus the courtroom would not exist without allegiance to the same.

Abby Normal said...

Yeah - I mean - if you're in the courtroom to overthrow the republic and the flag that stands for it - then obviously you're going to have a problem in a moral and a legal sense.

There's other stuff you're forced to do as well in court: answer questions truthfully - failure to do so gets you thrown in prison.