Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
by Jon on Sep.01, 2008, under Babble, Politics
Like, I’m like pretty, ya know, so like, I don’t have to be smart to be vice president.
Question: Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?
Palin: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.
Of course beyond just the astounding ignorance of the basic timeline, someone should really tell her too that the pledge was written by a socialist, that might really fry her noodle.
God, if you’re out there, please don’t let another one of these crazed religious-right nutjobs into the White House. It’s bad mojo for us and bad PR for you.
Edit: also be sure to read The Worst Vice-Presidential Nominee in U.S. History — not a lot of new input, but a great roundup humorously written. And he does mention one thing I hadn’t thought about — how fiercely motivated Hillary will be now, in needing to make sure this twit doesn’t upstage her.
Edit2: Heh. God-Being-Mentioned-in-the-Pledge-of-Allegience is younger than John McCain
September 7th, 2008 on 8:46 pm
while incredibly amusing, i think attacking her on this point is pointless. ten bucks says obama didn’t know it. ten bucks says you didn’t know it either.
i’ve always thought that the “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it” argument is rather thin. yes, it’s a beautiful piece of philosophical prose, but you cannot expect one human mind to retain all knowledge of the entire human race; even expecting all of one mind to be contained within that of another is absurd.
such is trivia.
to be honest, i was also under the assumption that the pledge, with the “under god” phrase, was established around 1776.
and, more importantly, what the fuck does it matter? it’s a stupid poem. the issue wasn’t ever been the words contained within, but whether or not it should be forced upon the population via state-funded institutions (read: taught in public school).
i went to a private catholic school from the second through sixth grades, inclusive, and we ALL were required to do the pledge of allegiance every morning at 8 am. and i’m no worse for wear. so, to the media, quit pandering to the separation of church and state hot-button and, to the left, quit attempting to paint pledge-of-allegiance trivia as central to the political readiness of potential vice presidents.
September 8th, 2008 on 6:32 am
I’m mostly enjoying it for the amusement angle. But yes, though I couldn’t have told you the exact year, I knew it was written much later by a socialist and that “under god” was added in the mid 20th century.
And I’m not even running for vice-president.
But what it really speaks to in my mind is her willingness to speak out of her ass. If you don’t know something, fine. Don’t say shit if you don’t know it’s true.
September 8th, 2008 on 8:06 am
>her willingness to speak out of her ass.
I feel like I didn’t explain myself well enough on this. She was asked “Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?”, and she could have taken the opportunity to make an intelligent argument for her position. But such an argument:
1) would go over the heads of many of her constituents (they’d call her an elitist!), and,
2) would be impossible to make coherently without explicitly admitting zero respect for the separation of church and state
So instead she threw out a red-meat soundbite that would play well with her base, with zero regard for the facts. This crap is Rove 101 and completely undermines any claim that she’s somehow a different kind of Republican.
Also, on the title, that was actually a bit of a head fake. Yeah, it was superficially on the first level a jab at her missing the history question, but the real admonition was for us to remember what happened the last time we elected a governor from an oil state who pandered to the religious wingnuts.