The Pledge of Allegiance

        

        I pledge allegiance to the flag…of the United States of America…

Is that something everyone should be forced to recite, even if the flag represents, say, despicable acts done by people working or fighting under that flag? For example, the repeated killing of innocent civilians by CIA-controlled drones in the Middle East, at My Lai in South Vietnam, No Gun Ri in South Korea, killing the original Americans during our westward expansion from the 17th to the 20^th centuries, or importing, enslaving, and mistreating millions of human beings forcibly taken from the African continent? Pledging allegiance suggests a ‘my country - right or wrong’ attitude implying that no matter what was done under that flag, it's okay; American exceptionalism means we'll gladly spill ours, or someone else's blood, for it regardless of what it may be.

If this is such a great country, (I think it is, but not because of the flag) why do we even need to pledge our allegiance to it? Wouldn't we simply love it or form a deep emotional attachment to the nation  - not because of a compulsory alliance?

Why not…”I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, a republic based on democracy, which offers liberty and justice for all…?

        That, to me anyway, makes far more sense than pledging allegiance to a piece of fabric. Because that is what it actually is demanding? Read it. It says “I pledge allegiance to the FLAG.”

The flag is several pieces of colored cloth sewn together. But that doesn't imbue it with any special power. It is no more the United States than the Statue of Liberty or singing Yankee Doodle. 

       Some advocates try to get around the flag pledge by claiming it follows the first line with …”and to the republic for which it stands…” But that follows the pledge to the FLAG; the “to the republic” business is an afterthought. It’s used as a stand-in for the sewn-together fabric banner. It’s one thing to align one’s self with an idea, or a nation. It’s quite another to an auxiliary imitation. The wisest thing I ever heard regarding the flag came from a retired World War Two Marine Corp Captain (Marshall Caitlin - who flew F4U’s over Bougainville and the Solomon Islands.) who said he “went to war to defend what America stood for, not what stood for America.”

        Nor do I think the word ‘indivisible’ should be part of that pledge. The Declaration of Independence clearly gives citizens of the states the right to break away or abolish the government if they feel it no longer represents them. Check the second paragraph of it if you doubt that. Clearly our Founding Fathers granted us the right to be divisible.

        People have forgotten how and why we even have a “Pledge of Allegiance.” The idea can be traced back to Daniel Sharp Ford, the owner of Youth’s Companion magazine. In 1892, he wanted to put American flags in every school in the country and sensed that the nation needed a dose of patriotism to heal the wounds from the American Civil War. So the sale of American flags was his initial the motivation. Sharp gave the assignment to write a patriotic pledge to a staff member, a former Baptist minister and Christian Socialist, Francis Bellamy. In Bellamy’s original Pledge, he expressed the egalitarian idealism of the French Revolution. He also drew on the socialist Utopian novels of his cousin Edward Bellamy, the author of Looking Backward and Equality. The pledge was also written to honor the 400^th anniversary of Christopher Columbus setting foot in the New World. Most today do not recognize Bellamy’s original Pledge.

Bellamy originally included 'equality, fraternity' after liberty.

        Bellamy organized a school program around a flag raising ceremony including a special gesture called the Bellamy salute while saying his 'Pledge of Allegiance.' The salute consisted of each person extending their right arm straight forward, angling slightly upward, with fingers pointing directly ahead at the flag. Does it look familiar? 

Let me juxtapose it with a similar salute…

        Yes, the fascists and Nazis began using the same gesture less than 30 years later, but from the beginning, the act seemed exploitative and authoritarian, even before there was such a thing as fascism.

        In the 1923 and 1924 National Flag Conferences, the leadership of the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution changed the Pledge's 'my Flag,' to 'the Flag of the United States of America.' Bellamy heartily disliked this revision, but his protest was ignored. Over a year after the U.S. became embroiled in World War Two, the Bellamy salute was finally dropped because it look like Americans were expressing solidarity with Nazism. 

        In 1954, Congress added the words, 'under God,' to the Pledge making it now both a patriotic oath and a public prayer. It is reported that President Eisenhower ‘enthusiastically endorsed’ this change but it turned out he was more concerned with being called weak on Communism or being labeled a ‘Communist” thanks to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare, and reluctantly went along with the change. Bellamy passed away in 1931 but his granddaughter stated he would have hated that change as well. He had been pressured into leaving his church in 1891 because of his socialist sermons but he would have considered making an appeal to God in his pledge a type of sacrilege.

What Christians see when they say the pledge 

        

        The Pledge was dreamed up to sell flags, to promote the discovery of the continent by a man who claimed it for his God - while taking several of its inhabitants and riches back to Spain, and to bind the wounds from a recent war that still divided the country. All you had to do was make a commitment, not to the American idea or its Constitution, but to a piece of representative fabric...sort of like pledging allegiance to the Bald Eagle.

        How about making this commitment: I pledge allegiance to the universe and all the life which it supports…one cosmos, in our care, irreplaceable, with sustenance and respect for all.

You WILL believe. It's in the Constitution

Speaking before about 400 students and faculty at Colorado Christian University this past Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that secularists are wrong when they argue the Constitution requires religious references to be removed from the public square. He opined that a battle is underway over whether to allow religion in public life, from referencing God in the Pledge of Allegiance, to holding prayers at school events and town hall meetings. “I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over non-religion.” Scalia said.

           …and yet the First Amendment clearly states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Where does it indicate favoritism towards religion? That a jurist on the Supreme Court can misinterpret the meaning is astounding! 

Antonin Scalia conjures up a whole new interpretation

Alright, let’s take Scalia at his word, that he really believes the First Amendment actually favors religion over non-religion. Which religion does it favor? There is not just one religion, so if we are to believe he means it, which religious faith is the one that guides us? Scalia is a professed Catholic, so should it be Roman Catholicism that is the moral compass and guiding light of our nation? Most Pentecostals, Baptists and Mormons will vehemently disagree with that idea. Should the Jews and Muslims be left out of Constitutional protection, or is it extended to them because they at least believe in some sort of supernatural entity?

                                     Whose altar do we bow before?

Scalia continued, “We do Him honor in our Pledge of Allegiance, in all our public ceremonies. There’s nothing wrong with that. It is in the best of American traditions, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. I think we have to fight that tendency of the secularists to impose it on all of us through the Constitution” meaning that in the past, secularists simply wanted the Constitution upheld. But no more. Upholding the Constitution has changed under his judicial guidance. It means the government is now free to impose religion, ill-defined though it may be, on all of us.

Justice Scalia suggests that we already acknowledge god in our pledge of allegiance, which is an odd position for him to take since during his school years the phrase ‘under God’ wasn't even in it. If we are one nation under god, which one do we stand under…Amon Ra, Wotan, Kulkukan, Zeus, Brahma, Quetzalcoatl, or The Great Spirit? It can’t just be the gods that Europeans brought over when they wrestled the American continents away from the original inhabitants. The native’s various deities were sacred and revered before the immigrants arrived, so those gods should be included in those we stand beneath. And it was only a year ago that Scalia admitted that he believed the devil was a real being, so he apparently recognizes Satanism as legitimate. Wouldn't it be logical then to include Satan as worthy of worship since Satanism is recognized as a religion?

Americas list of gods to worship continues to grow

Freedom of religion means the freedom not to worship at all. People can do what they like as long as they allow others to do the same without forcing it on anyone. Thanks to Scalia, we may have 'freedom of religion' re-interpreted as ‘we have to worship some god…but we have the freedom to choose which one.’ If the government gets to impose a religion on us, what happens if it turns out to be, say, the "Christianity" as practiced by Westboro Baptist Church? Would Antonin Scalia use the power of the court to force all Americans to adhere to Westboro’s concept of what god wants? In which case, who is going to protect us from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia?

Public Spectacles

While watching the local news Labor Day weekend, there were two stories that make me wonder if people really understand our Constitution and why we separate church and state in this country.

Brighthouse Network’s Central Florida News 13, or CFN13, repeated the two stories every hour for about 12 hours. One involved Apopka football players being led in a Christian prayer before and after their games. The prayers made some of the players and fans, who were from different faith backgrounds, uncomfortable and they asked school officials to refrain from saying them. CFN13 covered the story from the outraged-Christian-point-of-view with interviews of people all but damning freethinkers and non-theists for interfering, and for what they perceived as “stopping kids from praying”. The people who objected to the prayers were only asking that school officials and coaches not instigate or give the prayers recognizing only one religion.

Can you imagine what would have happened if one of them began saying an Islamic prayer, started chanting a mantra to one of the Hindu gods, or conducted a Voodoo ritual? The same people who think there is too much fuss being made over simple prayers at school events would be livid, and would insist that only Christian prayers be allowed at these functions. In their view, prayers to Jehovah/Yahweh are acceptable but prayers to other gods are wrong. Yet Christians have the same evidence regarding their deity that other religions have of theirs. Zero!
        I’m looking forward to the day one of the cheerleaders does this at a football game: 

Several parents were quick to point out that atheists were in a minority in this country and insisted Christians had the right to pray anytime, anywhere, with the insinuation that atheists should keep quiet since they were outnumbered. A free society is one where it’s safe to hold an unpopular view, which makes me wonder if we're a free society anymore. Christians might want to consider that sometimes a majority only means all the mistaken are on the same side. Ignorance has become a point of view.

Winter Garden City Council opening the meeting with a Christian prayer

The second story involved a man named Joseph Richardson who attended a Winter Garden city council meeting. Winter Garden Mayor John Rees told Richardson that he “may rise or leave the room” as they gave the prayer and the Pledge.

“I don’t believe I have to do that, thank you,” was Richardson's response.

After the prayer in the name of Jesus was concluded, Richardson was again ordered to rise. “Now, sir, please stand while we do the Pledge… please stand. Children have to do it in school, too,” Rees said. "You don’t have to say it. Please stand.”
       Richardson stood his ground, responding “I don’t have to do that.”

Rees seemed to take this as a personal affront rather than a citizen exercising his rights.

Richardson was abruptly told, “You have one of two choices, sir. I'm asking you to either stand or be escorted out [as we do] the Pledge. It’s just not fair to our troops and people overseas, sir.”

When Richardson still didn’t stand, the Mayor turned to the Chief of Police and said, “Chief, ask him to either stand or please escort him out 'til we get through the pledge,” the mayor said.

The officer walked over and asked Richardson, “What do you want to do? Do you want to stand or leave?” The man was quickly escorted out of the room.
        As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1940, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us."

Mayor Rees should know that citizens are within their rights to remain seated for the Pledge and that it does not reflect a lack of patriotism. The fact is, refusing to stand and repeat it is more patriotic and respectful of our secular constitution than rising and declaring us to be ‘one nation under god.’ That 'god' part was only inserted in 1954 when Congress wanted to demonstrate the nation's piety as compared to Communism's godlessness.

The pledge seemed fine up until 1954

The mayor and those city council members should spend a lot more time studying the Constitution and its meaning. Nowhere is there anything that states 'not standing' is considered disrespectful to military personnel. The flag does not equal the military, nor is it written they, or any American, needs to be respected just because they are posted on foreign soil.

The Mayor’s judgment really needs to be scrutinized when he insists American citizens should stand when he makes an appeal to the Christian god.

Some Americans think this should be our flag.

Anyone who doesn’t see a threat in religion had better take notice of these events. When Christianity and politics were previously blended together it was called the Dark Ages and Europe eventually suffered over 600 years of the Inquisition. In nations where politics and religion are one in the same today, you have places like Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. 
     People insisting that Christianity is harmless are deluding themselves. It is not harmless once someone in power decides to do exactly what the bible says, as the Crusades, the witch trials, the killing of heretics, the slavery issue, and even opposition to gay marriage shows. If the new Christian-politicos gain control of the government, the old Inquisition will pale in comparison to what they will do with that power. These 'religion trumps secularism' events are happening more and more frequently. Those who believe a wall should permanently separate church and state need to stand their ground. Our future depends on it.
       Don’t misunderstand; anyone has a right to their beliefs, but they don’t have a right to force it on anyone else or to have them respect it. We might acknowledge it, but we also then have the right to say “Are you kidding me? Your belief is stupid.”