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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!qantel!dual!decwrl!mahoney@bach.DEC (Be verwy verwy quiet I am hunting wabbits)
From: mahoney@bach.DEC (Be verwy verwy quiet I am hunting wabbits)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: DIR/NEW
Message-ID: <495@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Sep-85 10:43:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.495
Posted: Thu Sep 19 10:43:05 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Sep-85 07:11:39 EDT
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Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
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>>Yes, Armstrong, but you do not have to join the Boy Scouts
>>nor are you required to sing "God Bless America".
>>There's the difference.
>>T. C. Wheeler
 
 
>In my elementary school, we WERE required to sing "patriotic" songs
>every day.  We were also required to salute the flag.  I remember we used sing
>one about the Green Berets, and how great is was to be one.  If this isn't
>militaristic indoctrination, I don't know what is.
> 
>Although my parents found the idea of my joining the cub scouts somewhat
>distasteful, they allowed me to do so, since it was considered almost "de
>rigeure" for boys my age.  Had I not, I would have ended up a social outcast.
> 
>In the USSR, no one is forced to join the Young Pioneers.  But those who
>don't do so suffer quite a bit of scorn from their peers, as well as 
>unfavorable offical attitudes as a result.
> 
>Please don't tell me that there is no political indoctrination in our
>schools, I lived throught 6 years of it.

    There is a large difference now compared to a few years ago.  Number one
it is unconstitutional now to force some one to sing or to say the Pledge of
Allegiance. Number Two your future in the US is not wrecked if you donot
sing or recite the Pledge of Alliegence and they do not write down in your
history refused to join the Cub Scouts.  Believe me if you didn't join the 
Young Pioneers in the Soviet Union you would get more then a few raised eyebrows
What you call political indoctrination in the US is a little mote yes they
try to say the country is great and so forth but what country doesn't do that.
What they do in the Soviet Union and countries in that gendre is to mold the
child to think of the state first and for most above family and personal 
feelings. That seems to happen in the US but it is not express purpose of 
saying the Pledge of Allegience (Something I usually refused to do) it
is just a rminder of what this country is about.  Personally I would rather
go through our indoctrination rather than some of the other countries.

   As a disclaimer I don't see the SOviet Union as an evil empire. It is just
another Right Wing Dictatorship trying to establish itself as the most powerful
nation in the world. I don't agree with our policies toward Nicaragua and
think that US should stand trial before the World Court for its arbtrary misuse
of power.  (that way people still now I am a liberal).


                          Brian Mahoney
                          "I have been told I am bleeding heart Liberal
                           But I still don't see any blood"


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