The State of Ohio felt the need to have its own Patriot Act. Way ho way to go, Ohio.
As a result there’s a loyalty oath, of course. State employees have to certify that they’re not terrorists and that they don’t support terrorists. Sign here, please.
This is even more ridiculous than the Cold War loyalty oaths. Those at least had a tenuous connection to reality. There was a real war, and real Soviet spies operating in this country, and some of them were American citizens. The rest of it, well. Yeah.
The idea, though, that agents of terror are deliberately getting jobs with the State of Ohio in order to use their influence to cause terror to reign o’er the land, uh, no. If such people exist, lying on the loyalty oath isn’t going to be such a problem for them. Yeah, I’m leaving pipe bombs full of nails around in malls on weekends but due to this official form I’m now forced to admit it! GOT ME!
I took symbolic logic at UCLA from Donald Kalish. Kalish was a wonderful teacher and a very nice guy. He was also an old time radical (he hired Angela Davis) and had the genuine rebel spirit. One day he used loyalty oaths as a logic example:
“So, we have here the example of an oath which professors are asked to sign, certifying that they are not Communist agents. There are three groups here… [chalkety chalk] The secret Soviet Communist agents will of course sign the oath [chalk chalk], the collaborators and the weak will also sign the oath [chalk chalk!] but the idealists will neither sign the oath [chalk] nor speak to those who do! [furious chalking]
Be My Blog 
California has the same thing, though not specific to terrorism. It dates back from the McCarthy era IIRC. So when I was hired as a TA at Berkeley I had to swear to uphold the Constitution of the State of California (and the US, but the California Constitution is notable in that I don’t know what it says).
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I had to do that too, in order to change tapes on the mainframe computer at the ASUCLA Student Store for four two-hour shifts a week. No mention of Communists or Terrorisms though, just the State Constitution.
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Hell in a hand basket right this way folks, keep the line moving, hell in a hand basket, come one, come all.
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geez this makes me tilt toward terrorism now.
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Me too.
I think I shall form a Terrorist Organization. We will, of course, renounce violence of any kind towards persons or property. However we will remain true to the ideals of Terrorism. We will Hate Their Freedom, Respect No Laws of War, Threaten the Infrastructure, Make the Innocent Suffer, and most importantly Pose a Threat until Utterly Destroyed.
We can have picnics and outings, meet for lunch at chain restaurants, run for school board, and most importantly have cards so we can be card-carrying.
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Re: Me too.
Have you considered joining the Unitarian Jihad?
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Now More Than Ever….
Once upon a time I was a typical average all american 9 year old male person who was picking up his first american passport for the first run overseas, and the fine man asked me if I had now, or at any time been a member of the communist party, the communist party international, the international workers of the world, ….
and he went on down through the list of players in that tone which all will recall from the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, with full orchestration, and I turned to my father, and asked him if he was aware of any of these and he told me to just say NO!
But what I find most unpleasing about this way to go Ohio is that it fails to address the on going Holy Crusade Against All Iranian Flying Saucers!!!! Since it does not ask if any of the persons so swearing have not now, or at any time, been an Iranian Flying Saucer….
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