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Colorado's condition is starting to resemble one of
those Good news, bad news
jokes. I'll start with the
good news: Colorado no longer slavishly imitates
California.
That's especially good news now, because it means we don't have a gubernatorial recall election underway. What's with those fickle folks in the Golden State? Only nine months ago, they re-elected Gray Davis to another term, and now they're planning to decide if he should be recalled.
If there's a majority in favor of recall, then his successor is picked at the same election. It's fairly easy to get on that ballot, and at last count there were 135 certified candidates.
But until recently, we were pretty good at following California's lead. If they had freeways, so did we. If their schools focused on holistic conflict-resolution skills instead of reading and writing, then so did ours. If they relaxed in hot tubs, then so did we.
So, there's the good news. We Coloradans do not imitate California any more.
Now for the bad news. Instead of learning to think for ourselves, we're now imitating Texas, as demonstrated by our legislative session earlier this year.
We redrew our congressional districts with a GOP gerrymander that hit the floor running at the very last possible moment. This was not done because Coloradans were out in the street demanding better congressional district boundaries.
It was done because Texas Congressman Tom Delay wanted more safe Republican seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Colorado's new Seventh District was so competitive that the GOP would have to spend money here that it would prefer to spend elsewhere.
But not only was this process organized from Texas, they tried to start it there. That state's constitution differs from ours, so Democratic legislators fled the state to prevent a quorum that would have allowed the GOP gerrymander juggernaut to roll through. First they went to Oklahoma, then to New Mexico, and I hope they know that they'll be welcome in Colorado.
That was one stupid Texas trail to follow. Texas also passed a law requiring that the Pledge of Allegiance be recited every morning in all public-school classrooms, and of course, Colorado had to do the same thing.
If our legislature had to compel the recitation of something every morning, why not something useful like the multiplication table? That's something everybody needs, and it can be acquired only by rote memory.
Further, the Pledge was written in 1892 by a Socialist:
Frances Bellamy. We should be cautious in reciting it,
since he may have been trying to sneak in something
subversive, especially with that idealistic ending of
liberty and justice for all
as opposed to something
accurate about liberty and justice for all off-shore
corporations owned by the Americans who finance political
campaigns.
Bellamy was also a Baptist minister, so he was perfectly
capable of inserting the words under God
all on his
own without any help from the U.S. Congress, which made
that emendation in 1956. The original version also started
differently, with I pledge allegiance to my flag,
rather than I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America,
If our schoolchildren had to learn the history of the
Pledge and its useful political role (Why does my slimy
godless soft-on-treason opponent have a problem with the
Pledge?
), they might acquire some useful education. But
our legislature just wants them to recite without
thinking.
But there's more. Texas now requires two flag pledges:
the American and the Texan. The latter is short: Honor
the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one and
indivisible.
It's also false, since Texas is quite divisible -- it still retains the right, granted at annexation in 1844, to divide itself into five states.
The way things are going, if our southern neighbors have a pledge for the Lone Star flag, then we'll need one for our Centennial State flag. Knowing our legislators, a Colorado pledge will be silly or worse if they compose it. So as concerned citizens, we need to come up with our own.
I've had a few ideas, concerning 35-acre lots, Ludlow, and defending our homeland against invading People of Money, but I may have some attitude problems here.
So I invite your contributions, for a 100-word-or-less Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of Colorado. Email them to me, and I'll do my best to publish them before the legislature next convenes, so that there will be a choice of real citizen pledges, rather than some political football.
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