Fascism Already on the March in Michigan

This week just keeps getting worse.

The Michigan state Senate has just passed a bill that would require pubic school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. They did this during a quickie lame-duck session this week, without any advance notice. The Republican party has a majority, of course, so they can do that.

Most elementary school students already recite the pledge every morning. But so far, despite plenty of pressure on kids to say it - whether they mean it or not (hell, whether they understand it or not) - they've always had the right not to. There are some people who consider the recitation of an allegiance oath like that to violate their religious beliefs, which require them to give allegiance only to God. They may consider a pledge to a flag to be a form of idolatry. Then there are those who object to the "under God" bit in there, because it contradicts their belief that there is no such thing. (Ironically, one of the arguments for keeping "under God" in the pledge has been that no one's forced to say it. Until this.)

The principle of "free speech" includes the ability not to speak. It has to. Without that, you're just coercing people to say things they may not believe in. We have the right to remain silent, after all. Requiring someone to put his hand on his heart and say "I pledge allegiance..." when they don't mean it, is requiring them to perjure themselves, a form of self-incrimination. It's the Fifth Amendment being spat on along with the First.

The bill's primary sponsor is Sen. Patty Birkholz, a Republican and evidently a banner-saluting fascist. But she had plenty of company in voting for it. One more piece of evidence that the people we elect to our government either have no understanding of the principles this country was founded on, or they just don't give a damn. They should be recalled. They should be impeached for willfully failing to uphold the Constitution. Instead, they're going to stroked and fondled by their equally freedom-hating, flag-worshiping constituents. And this is in one of the states that Bush failed to win.