FLASHREPORT

The Newport-Mesa based Daily Pilot has a story on its website today about Orange Coast (Community) College Student Trustees voting three-to-one to eliminate the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance as a regular agenda item for its meetings.  It's now a Reuters story linked on Drudge.  The Daily Pilot subtitle says the "under God" part was the impetus for the removal of the Pledge, but if one read some of the student trustees' own quotes, one would find more pernicious reasons.

"Some of the arguments made were that the idea of nationality is divisive, and on a diverse campus such as ours, there's no reason to be divisive," [Jason Ball] said. "Another argument was that people shouldn't have to display loyalty to a country through public ritual on a regular basis. Another, of course, was the 'under God' section, which has become an issue all over the country. We do have an atheistic contingent who comes to our meetings regularly, of whom I'm a part."

The Reuters story has this juicy morsel from the same guy:

"That ('under God') part is sort of offensive to me," student trustee Jason Ball, who proposed the ban, told Reuters. "I am an atheist and a socialist, and if you know your history, you know that 'under God' was inserted during the McCarthy era and was directly designed to destroy my ideology."

One look at Student Trustee Ball, whose email is comradewho@gmail.com, gives me very little confidence that the young man has either his head on straight or that he may be reasoned with.  From the pictures, I'm sure readers can guess the other two trustees who voted with him.  One of the them, Coyotl Tezcatlipoca (not his real name of "Benito Acosta") will be very familiar to Orange County political-types, as he was arrested during a Costa Mesa City Council meeting earlier in the year after flamboyantly cursing councilmembers and resisting police.  Tezcatlipoca has become a sort of icon within the radical leftist "Chicano" critters in the county after he garnered a significant amount of media attention.

"Nationality is divisive." 

"That 'under God' part is sort of offensive."

"I am an atheist and a socialist."

Unfortunately, these are the ideas being propagated in higher education today.  A spokeswoman for the college, Martha Parham, responded to potential scrutiny of the place with, "It's my understanding that a few of the students, based on their own personal beliefs, are choosing to do this, and the district is not going to dictate personal beliefs."  It is precisely this lack of patriotic leadership on college campuses that has made many of them into degenerate alien landscapes, populated by those far removed from the "man of his nation" ideal of President/professor Woodrow Wilson.

Briefly looking over the Associated Students Orange Coast College (ASOCC) Constitution, there's little satisfying recourse for students upset at the trustees' move.  The trustee removal process (Article VI) is one of self-policing.  It's not a referendum of the student body as it should be.  I'm sure this situation is, as they say, developing...