Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

It is only an interpretation, one that is law. BUT, I don't agree with that interpretation because if you read the first amendment it clearly states that CONGRESS will not make any law [blah], and if you read the Federalist Papers it elaborates some more.

So tell me, which way do you think did the Founding Fathers intend us to go? This ridiculous path where you can't even pray in school? Or the path I'm advocating?

Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

Who are the founding fathers?

Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

Many well-educated men, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Hancock, and Thomas Paine.

Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

Irreverent, it was a long time ago and they're dead, guessing at what they meant would be a pointless and controversial exercise. The constitution isn't suppose to be a holy text where you 2nd guess and take things differently.

Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

That document is responsible more than anything for making the United States the most prosperous nation in the world. It isn't irrelevant. It is the foundation of our nation.

Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

But what's so significant about them that they were given that name, or is it just a casual term?

Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

They founded the United States. They drew up the Declaration of Independence, created the Constitution, and brought the 13 States together to give us independence. They also threw your tea into the ocean. :P

Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

I thought we founded the United States??

Or perhaps that should be we found the United States :D

Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

No I meant, guessing what the founders wrote it for is irreverent. Whether they wrote it to prevent praying to schools etc.

Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

Clearly, it isn't, because it is being brought up today in courts. We know what the Constitution says, and we know what the Federalist Papers say, and we know what they meant. Yet the Supreme Court ruled differently. And that is the issue at hand. I fail to see how you can just say "it is irrelevant." It isn't!

Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

But the law is the law, you can't just say, I think it means this because the person who wrote it would have been inclined to do this.

If someone in 10 B.C wrote a law that said, anyone who commits a crime must be fairly punished. They probably would have meant a stoning. We may use the same law but do we interoperate it this way?

Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

He didn't make up the pledge, He actually recited the original. The words "Under God" are a 20th Century addition

Re: student reprimanded for modification of pledge.......
 

Correct; see here. To quote from the article:

The pledge of allegiance was first written - without the phrase "under God" - in 1892 in Boston, and recited by schoolchildren, a tradition that continues today.

The pledge was endorsed by Congress in 1942, just after the US joined the second world war.

In 1954, at the height of McCarthyism, "under God" was added to distinguish the "inalienable" rights of US democracy from those of communist states, where rights were conferred on citizens.