Trust Pledge*
I can recite the pledge of allegiance, even though I am not American. I used to be able to recite the entire regular Catholic mass as well. Call it overexposure, on both counts. And in neither case did I necessarily believe in or even really understand what I was saying, or how it has changed over time. I am guessing that I am likely not the only person in this boat, so I decided to do a little research.
The pledge of allegiance was originally written by a Socialist Baptist minister in 1892. It originally read as follows:
I pledge allegiance to my flag, and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
That's right. Not the version millions of American school children recite every morning. And not the version that was ruled "unconstitutional" earlier this morning. That version has only been around since 1954, when the Knights of Columbus campaigned to have the words "under God" added to the oath. (The Daughters of the American Revolution had previously changed "my flag" to "the flag of the United States of America" in the 1920s.) Happily coinciding with the Red Scare, it was also a good tool to differentiate the leaders of the free world from the Godless communist enemy.
This ruling is likely to spark a huge public outcry. It will be seen as evidence of the further moral decay of America at the hands of liberals, hippies, and activist judges. I can already hear Bill O'Reilly's rant. If we remove the pledge of allegiance from public schools, all of our children will become gay, want to marry dogs, and spend all day smoking hydroponic weed like up in Soviet Canuckistan.
In all the furor, no one will think twice about the fact that the original author deliberately omitted God in an effort to create an inclusive oath for all Americans to recite together, nor the fact that he was a liberal; no one will see those ironies.
*A registered slogan and trademark of SC Johnson Wax
Comments