Query Re The Pledge – Now that required recitation of The Pledge has been kicked out of school, it occurred to me that perhaps the Gettysburg Address might be satisfactory as a some-time stand in, especially since most students are already required to memorize it sooner or later. But that won’t work. Poor Abe, no doubt because he had other things on his mind, did not anticipate the future course of church-state relations and thus slipped up near the end when he urged his audience to “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom….”
Under the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, and under its logic elsewhere, can students still be required to memorize and recite the Gettysburg Address? Could a judge insist that a framed copy of it, and/or The Pledge, be placed on the wall of his courtroom?
