Terrorism, Patriotism and the Farce of the Pledge of Allegiance Essay

Terrorism, Patriotism and the Farce of the Pledge of Allegiance It is unfortunate that the terrorists did not attack and destroy the Pledge of Allegiance instead of the World Trade Center. But politicians and zealots have perverted "patriotism" to include a blind veneration of the United States based on an oversimplified conception that disregards current laws and social customs, a perversion evident in the idolatry performed regularly by most American citizens during the Pledge of Allegiance. When he authored the pledge in 1892, Christian Socialist and Baptist minister Francis Bellamy wanted to capture the spirit of indivisible union that the Civil War had validated a generation earlier. Bellamy was a radical of his time, however, and intended to emphasize the socialist principle of equality and a utopian, nationalist sensibility. This point has accumulated fine layers of irony with time, and I intend to show the extent to which the pledge is among the most ironic and troubling of texts. There are some intrinsic problems with Bellamy's original draft, which reads: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." But to do Bellamy justice, it should be noted that in 1923 and 1924, the National Flag Conference changed his "my Flag" to "the Flag of the United States of America," and Congress, influenced by the Knights of Columbus, more curiously added "under God." I will analyze the Pledge as it currently exists with the spirit of a vivisection. I want to show the dynamic affect of the Pledge on American consciousness and vice versa, and as usual I offer no anesthetic. "I pledge allegiance to the Fl... ... form a disgraceful lie, you need only eyes and the capacity for thought. Did Amadou Diallo receive justice? How do Native Americans feel about the pledge's insistence of universal liberty? What have homosexual faculty members and their partners, who have been told by the University that their unions, however legal, only constitute three-fifths of a marriage, to say about the pledge's notion of equality? We would love to believe that "liberty and justice for all" is a reality, but it unfortunately fails to constitute even a priority; our reciting makes it real only in the imagination, a daily narcotic liturgy that blunts our reaction to injustice and the violation of liberty. The greatest service that we can provide for our country and our people is to utilize our critical faculties and to resist appropriately, regardless of how "un-American" this use of reason seems.