Antiwar.com contributing editor Lucy Steigerwald joined Adam Camac to talk about her article, The Religious Fervor of the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem.
You can follow her work at her blog, The Stag Blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter
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We the peasants, not only constrained to pay to watch a show (sports is entertainment) at a.. well, a live concert. That’s what it is. Nothing more, nor less than any movie or play. We also have to pay to watch it on TV. We also, even if we DON’T participate, pay for it in subsidies. Start with crowd control or traffic management around big COMMERCIAL gatherings, tax breaks for the CORPORATE ENTITIES to build the stadia, relaxation of sales tax and liquor licenses, “live commercials” for the U.S. Government which are paid directly from taxes. We all pay these very few corporations for what, in most of sports, paying millionaires to prance around on grass chasing a ball.
Just throwing that onto the pile. Forcing people into an essentially idolatrous ritual of a violent religion which worships the Empire. Paying government agencies to investigate people who don’t participate or, heaven forfend, actually state before during and after that they’re not going to participate, as some sort of treason, and traitors. Some would say it’s up to me to prove that a secretive collection of agencies actually do that. “We have secrets which we pay a bunch of YOUR money to hide from YOU, but YOU have to prove each little detail of it or be ridiculed as a ‘conspiracy nut’ and possible arrested. And we have it in our charters that we can arrest people without due process and secretly, but hey, it’s up to YOU to prove it”
There’s a difference between evidence and proof. Proof is usually not attained.
Frank DeFord: The National Anthem, And The National Pastime
http://www.npr.org/2014/09/10/347100345/the-national-anthem-and-the-national-pastime