Which freedoms matter the most? Is it freedom from fear of criminal attack, or freedom to carry a gun if you so choose, or freedom to gather in groups to protest the government, or freedom to change address without having to register, or some other freedom that most defines a country which truley exists to serve it’s citizens?

In any case, this sort of freedom is probably not worth much on the truely-free-society-meter:

“The Justice Department will spare no effort to preserve the rights of all our citizens to pledge allegiance to the American flag”

— John Aschroft, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision that it won’t review a previous judgement, in which it was decided that the “one nation under God” section of the pledge of allegiance recited daily by US school children is unconstitutional.

It suprises me that adults say these sorts of things in public. As if anyone in the world was threatening school childrens “rights to pledge allegiance to the American flag”. I imagine they can all still pledge away till they’re blue in the face if they want to on their own time and in their own homes. Or even gather in groups and do it in public, though they’d better watch for those riot-armored men and woman who seems to make a lot of random arrests at public gatherings these days.