Is it disrespectful to sit during the Pledge?

[San Montalbano]

Nothing is stopping the individuals who do not want to be there from leaving.

I am sitting in a restaurant, somebody not me flies into such a rage that he becomes a public nuisance. Should I and the rest of the guests - except this one raging person - be forced to decamp to another restaurant and leave this person to his barbaric antics? Is that what you think?

That depends, is it a private business or public place and is that person harassing or making death threats.

If it is a simple disagreement, thats another story

[Plzen]

Presumably, you have answers to most of these questions if you're are not an incorrigible post-modernist who strives to dismantle all meanings and all boundaries. The community is meaningful in that it exists apart from other communities, ties individuals together in a common dialogue on identity, history, values, etc., and gives rise to organs that structure society. In a word, it gives us a sense of who we are as individuals and as a group. When we move between communities, we can see pretty stark differences in how people identify, what people value, what languages and dialects people use, what political structures people manifest, etc.

Most people seem to inherit a lot from their community without realizing it. I've noticed that practically everyone in the West will make political or economic arguments that only make sense in the context of their communities. If you rambled about freedom to an average Saudi, they'd look at you like you'd grown a pair of horns a lot of the time because the liberal conception of freedom does not shape how they perceive themselves and the world as much as, say, obedience to G-d and his laws does.

I'm a liberal and progressive. The values I stand under are that of freedom, equality, and solidarity. A "national community" is not helpful in tying me together with people I can have a meaningful dialogue with concerning my values. It serves only to separate people who would otherwise be in agreement with each other. The specific policies and decisions that we support may differ, but the general values that an American voting Green, a Swede voting Left, or a South Korean voting Justice are pretty similar - certainly a lot more similar than the difference between your average American Green and American Republican. Why, then, is "nation" a useful proxy for values? Why exactly is pledging allegiance to a nation a meaningful expression of values?

Yes, of course values are sometimes horribly incompatible - you mentioned religiously devout people. But such divisions run as deeply within a conventional "national community" as between them.

[Tekeristan]

Haven't we all?

Apparently, we're whitewashing history in some places.

They skip over a lot or soften them

[The Strangers Club]

It's because America is secretly an authoritarian democracy.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

I am sitting in a restaurant, somebody not me flies into such a rage that he becomes a public nuisance. Should I and the rest of the guests - except this one raging person - be forced to decamp to another restaurant and leave this person to his barbaric antics? Is that what you think?

That depends, is it a private business or public place and is that person harassing or making death threats.

If it is a simple disagreement, thats another story

Oh you and I both know that what goes on in your proposed "free speech sites" is far beyond mere disagreement.

[Fahran]

I learned about the Trail of Tears in 5th grade and about slavery in 7th grade...

You've hardly started

Slavery and Jim Crow are probably the greatest evils the US ever committed to be honest.

[Neutraligon]

No it really isn't since the US history taught in school specifically ignores many of the internal struggles the US faced (besides slavery of course).

Australia's also a great example. The Aboriginal peoples have lived in this continent for 60,000 years, with complex cultures, ingenious knowledge such as nomadic agriculture, and a million other interesting things, but they basically don't get a mention in our school system apart from "colonizers killed them sometimes oof".

The native Americans tend to get a bit of focus as individual groups (culture and all that before the settlers), and then are lumped together as a people who fought the US and where later oppressed, with little said about them after they where moved into reservations.

[True Refuge]

That's not what I was asking.

Why should someone, a private individual (or private organisation) be forced to give a platform to someone else? Is that not restricting their freedom of expression too?

Sure, but that sword cuts both ways, are you saying it would be okay to deplatform others because you disagree with them?

If they are receiving any federal money then that should not be the case since everyone pays into that.

It's distasteful, but private individuals and organisations do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt others or discriminate.

That's not inherently correct. Receiving federal money does not make a person or organisation part of the government, or it would be illegal for most people to deplatform others.

[Tekeristan]

You've hardly started

Slavery and Jim Crow are probably the greatest evils the US ever committed to be honest.

The U.S gov't and its ruling classes have committed a lot of evils, but that doesn't necessarily make those two any less awful by shifting the window a bit or anything

[Biscany]

That's fair, but honestly it's up to the individual to take the pledge lightly or not.

Never said it wasn't, just that I do not see it as necessarily disrespectful to refuse to stand during it. People can have any number of reasons for not standing, from not supporting the idea of pledging to anything, to trying to show respect for what it means to pledge your allegiance.

Well hey, that's whats so great about democracies, right? You can sit, I can stand, some want to abolish the pledge in its entirety and some want to make it mandatory for everybody (both kinda overkill imo), but at the end of the day the flag and the pledge all mean something different to us, whether its profound or not.

[San Montalbano]

Sure, but that sword cuts both ways, are you saying it would be okay to deplatform others because you disagree with them?

If they are receiving any federal money then that should not be the case since everyone pays into that.

It's distasteful, but private individuals and organisations do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt others or discriminate.

That's not inherently correct. Receiving federal money does not make a person or organisation part of the government, or it would be illegal for most people to deplatform others.

If you recieve tax payer funding and are a platform you shouldn’t be deplatforming people based on disagreements because the people you disagree with are also paying the tab and if they are paying the tab they should have a right to sit at the table.

[Neutraligon]

Never said it wasn't, just that I do not see it as necessarily disrespectful to refuse to stand during it. People can have any number of reasons for not standing, from not supporting the idea of pledging to anything, to trying to show respect for what it means to pledge your allegiance.

Well hey, that's whats so great about democracies, right? You can sit, I can stand, some want to abolish the pledge in its entirety and some want to make it mandatory for everybody (both kinda overkill imo), but at the end of the day the flag and the pledge all mean something different to us, whether its profound or not.

Me, I want to make it so that kids are not saying the pledge every day. I do not think children should be pledging allegiance to anything.

[Tekeristan]

It's distasteful, but private individuals and organisations do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt others or discriminate.

That's not inherently correct. Receiving federal money does not make a person or organisation part of the government, or it would be illegal for most people to deplatform others.

If you recieve tax payer funding and are a platform you shouldn’t be deplatforming people based on disagreements because the people you disagree with are also paying the tab and if they are paying the tab they should have a right to sit at the table.

There are things that are far more than mere 'disagreements', like, you know, peoples' right to exist or their humanity

[Arcturus Novus]

Honestly, who gives a shit whether it's respectful or not? The Pledge is just unnecessary. We don't need to have school days, local gov't meetings, etc. start with a prayer to one of the American civil religion's many icons.

[Arcturus Novus]

Honestly, who gives a shit whether it's respectful or not? The Pledge is just unnecessary. We don't need to have school days, local gov't meetings, etc. start with a prayer to one of the American civil religion's many icons.

[Plzen]

I usually interpret Cultural Marxism as denoting a wide set of ideologies and paradigms that divide society into oppressor and oppressed classes in imitation of proper Marxist theory, but a lot of those who seem to employ it often mutter about arguments related to critical theory and post-modernism. Really, it's a way of comparing the modern Left to the Maoists who hopped ship in the sixties and seventies. It works because a lot of those people are somewhat similar if not the same.

"The modern left" is hardly internally cohesive. If we simply run with your first definition, cultural Marxism being any ideological paradigm that divides society into oppressors and oppressed, then I can very easily fit the nationalist extremists muttering about a globalist elite into the category of cultural Marxism.

[True Refuge]

It's distasteful, but private individuals and organisations do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt others or discriminate.

That's not inherently correct. Receiving federal money does not make a person or organisation part of the government, or it would be illegal for most people to deplatform others.

If you recieve tax payer funding and are a platform you shouldn’t be deplatforming people based on disagreements because the people you disagree with are also paying the tab and if they are paying the tab they should have a right to sit at the table.

I would love to see if there's a SCOTUS precedent for this situation, actually.

[Tekeristan]

Slavery and Jim Crow are probably the greatest evils the US ever committed to be honest.

What is Vietnapalmam?
What is
Abandoning the Kurds to genocide?
What is
turning away Jews fleeing the Holocaust?
What is
couping the leader of Iran to make way for a murderous dictator who was overthrown by a more murderous dictator?
What is
Yemen?

Operation Condor in of itself, let alone the Iran-Contra affair, neither of those are taught

[San Montalbano]

If you recieve tax payer funding and are a platform you shouldn’t be deplatforming people based on disagreements because the people you disagree with are also paying the tab and if they are paying the tab they should have a right to sit at the table.

There are things that are far more than mere 'disagreements', like, you know, peoples' right to exist or their humanity

Im referring to simple disagreements by conservatives

Not National Socialists, whom advocate genocide

[Neutraligon]

Slavery and Jim Crow are probably the greatest evils the US ever committed to be honest.

What is Vietnapalmam?
What is
Abandoning the Kurds to genocide?
What is
turning away Jews fleeing the Holocaust?
What is
couping the leader of Iran to make way for a murderous dictator who was overthrown by a more murderous dictator?
What is
Yemen?

Can we add the massacre of various Native American tribes and the placement of Japanese Americans in concentration camps, oh and the use of torture by Bush II?

[Plzen]

Can we add the massacre of various Native American tribes and the placement of Japanese Americans in concentration camps?

And how many democracies did the US help overthrow in the Cold War again?

[Fahran]

I'm a liberal and progressive. The values I stand under are that of freedom, equality, and solidarity. A "national community" is not helpful in tying me together with people I can have a meaningful dialogue with concerning my values. It serves only to separate people who would otherwise be in agreement with each other. The specific policies and decisions that we support may differ, but the general values that an American voting Green, a Swede voting Left, or a South Korean voting Justice are pretty similar - certainly a lot more similar than the difference between your average American Green and American Republican. Why, then, is "nation" a useful proxy for values? Why exactly is pledging allegiance to a nation a meaningful expression of values?

Yes, of course values are sometimes horribly incompatible - you mentioned religiously devout people. But such divisions run as deeply within a conventional "national community" as between them.

Because culture and identity extend well beyond one's political values in many regards. In terms of the food you eat, the language you speak, the books you've read, the religion you practice, the history you've learned, etc. you have a lot more in common with people from your own country than you do with a left-winger from another country. Pure civic nationalism has a lot of the same pitfalls that racial nationalism has, though, in many ways, it's less vile and less prone to failure. If you put the average American Green in Bulgaria, they would struggle to integrate themselves into the community there. It would take them years and quite a few dramatic changes to get adjusted. As a rule, people within a culture will relate to one another a lot better than they'll relate to people outside their culture when push comes to shove. There are exceptions for extremely margianalized groups, ideologues, and racists, but, on the whole, the standard seems to hold.

[Neutraligon]

Operation Condor in of itself, let alone the Iran-Contra affair, neither of those are taught

Can we add the massacre of various Native American tribes and the placement of Japanese Americans in concentration camps?

Forgot about those-though counted the massacre of various native american tribes as trail of tearsy.

But yeah, let's add them to the list.

The trail of tears is just one example of a huge number of things the US government did against the Native Americans, many of which get no mention.

[Tekeristan]

I usually interpret Cultural Marxism as denoting a wide set of ideologies and paradigms that divide society into oppressor and oppressed classes in imitation of proper Marxist theory, but a lot of those who seem to employ it often mutter about arguments related to critical theory and post-modernism. Really, it's a way of comparing the modern Left to the Maoists who hopped ship in the sixties and seventies. It works because a lot of those people are somewhat similar if not the same.

"The modern left" is hardly internally cohesive. If we simply run with your first definition, cultural Marxism being any ideological paradigm that divides society into oppressors and oppressed, then I can very easily fit the nationalist extremists muttering about a globalist elite into the category of cultural Marxism.

Nationalist rhetoric surrounding a 'globalist elite' doesn't follow any lines of logic. They do it because they hate the west or whatever reason. It isn't a form of analysis, it's as I've said, a reactionary jerking
"Kultural Bol-" sorry Marxism is based off a couple of philosophers and their critique of society - it's relations and structures within it

[Tekeristan]

There are things that are far more than mere 'disagreements', like, you know, peoples' right to exist or their humanity

Im referring to simple disagreements by conservatives

Not National Socialists, whom advocate genocide

Fascists are not conservatives.