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At Orange Coast College in Costa
Mesa California, student leaders voted to ban the pledge
of allegiance from their twice-weekly meetings. Their
reason? According to them, there is no reason to swear
allegiance to God or the U.S. Government. The change in
the school policy which had been in place since the
school’s founding in 1948 was led by three recently
elected student executive members:
Regis F. Jues, Coyotal Tezcatlipoca, and Jason
Ball. The three members on the board of five ran for
office wearing Revolutionary-Style berets in the fashion
of Communist leader Che Guevara. When asked about the vote
to stop the pledge, Jason Bell said he found the pledge
offensive because, “I am an atheist and a socialist.” He
went on to say the pledge is "irrelevant to the business
of student government. Nationalism is something that
divides people.”
Not everyone has let the issue
remain where it is. Vice president of the ASOCC
(Associated Students of Orange Coast College) Christine
Zoldos has vowed to attend every meeting to salute the
flag. Zoldos has started making good on that vow,
attending the first meeting since the ban and prompting
others to stand in the salute to the flag. "What I'm about
to say might offend some of you” said Zoldos. “If you get
offended by the Pledge of Allegiance, please leave the
room.”
Jues, Tezcatlipoca, and Ball did not leave the
room, but remained seated throughout the pledge. While our
freedom of expression and speech in this country
thankfully do not demand that we say anything we do not
believe in, it is customary to stand even during the
pledge or national anthem of another country while you are
present as a show of respect.
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IThe election of people like
Jues, Tezcatlipoca, and Ball at Orange Coast
College is, sadly, not the exception on today campuses.
The deconstructionist movement is powerful among both
educators and administrators. When surveyed, almost all
elite American colleges have shown that they no longer
require any courses in American History. Of those that do
still maintain American studies departments, many are
patently anti-American in nature. One of the History books
that consistently shows up on the top ten list of college
and high school AP history curriculum is Howard Zinn’s
A People’s History of The United States. Zinn’s book
is American History as seen through a
philosophy that incorporates
Marxism, anarchism, socialism, and social democracy.
The result is a history in which the Founders are villains
and the American dream is a nightmare of domination. The
end of A People’s History contains no references or
footnotes. It’s as if, to Zinn, none of the facts or
surviving documents is of any consequence.
With teachers assigning Zinn's People's
History and books like it as standard texts, can we
be surprised when these attitudes toward the country
become acceptable, even the norm, on campuses?
At BHI the battle to reawaken America to herself
and her history (before it is rewritten) continues. |
