Students walk out during Pledge, recite own version

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I dunno; you can't be both a polarizing figure and way out of touch. She can, however, disagree with your entire circle of friends. This is not the same as out of touch with anything.

I've never accepted "In God We Trust" as a federal endorsement of anything. If it says anything of governmental significance at all -- and I doubt it -- it is that the government is not chiefly staffed by doctrinaire, devout atheists. People, in short, who aren't unwilling to pray now and again. The conscience clauses of the First Amendment apply just as strongly to government staffers and officialdom as they do to the private citizen -- and they flatly do not enjoin an official to say or believe anything one way or another of the supernal. Who needs to cultivate good ethics more than an official? And what are the mechanisms for doing so? You can use religion, or a sense of fair dealing, or minute regulation -- probably some other things that don't come to mind just now.

I don't despise you for your little quirk -- I just don't share it at all.