Why "Under God" must Not be in the Pledge of Allegiance

[cthulu2016]

First... Pledge of Allegiance? WTF? There shouldn't be a pledge of allegiance to the fricking flag. That's nuts.

Okay, having said that... even if, for some reason, one feels there should be a daily loyalty oath for school children (and childish adults, like those in Congress) it should not, can not, must not contain the phrase UNDER GOD.

RW kooks are currently upset about some kids doing the pledge with "under Allah."

The principal at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, Colorado, is facing a hailstorm of criticism from some very angry parents and residents.

The school recites the Pledge of Allegiance weekly, on Mondays. Last Monday, a member of their “Cultural Arms Club” led the student body in an Arabic version of the pledge, replacing the words “under God” with “under Allah.”...

http://gopthedailydose.com/2014/04/28/hs-students-say-pledge-in-arabic-one-nation-under-allah/

And you know what? Kids doing the pledge as one nation, under Allah, is, in fact, offensive. To everyone. Offensive to Muslims, Christians, atheists... whatever you've got, it's offensive. It's a "Two wrongs make a right" approach to the establishment clause.

The problem is that the kids wanted to do the pledge in Arabic, so they changed "God" (English) to "Allah" (Arabic)... which is complicated.

Does that mean ALLAH Allah, our the Allah that we call Jesus, or the Jewish Allah...? There is no constitutionally acceptable answer to that question.

And the obviously offensive "under Allah," really puts a point on why "under god," is so disgusting. Because Allah (which really is Arabic for God) is very loaded in a way that we somehow assume the English word "God" is not.

"Under Allah" is intolerable precisely because we cannot, for lingusitic and cultural and historical reasons, help but hear it as meaning something.

And if it MEANS anything then it is horribly offensive.

When people go to the Supreme Court to defend this crap they go to argue that it is utterly meaningless. That it doesn't refer to God at all, but merely some vague notion of who knows what... but we need it in the pledge because communism.

How can the USA be a nation "Under" some vague notion of who knows what???


So why did the founding fathers say it in the first place? They didn't. (Under God was added in the 1950s by RW bigoted morons and yahoos... to fight communism and integration.)

[Jackpine Radical]

1. OK, "God," "Allah," "Odin," and "Zeus" shouldn't be in the Pledge.

But I can think of about a thousand causes more worthy of my energy than this one.

Choose your battles wisely, fer Chrissake. (You should pardon the expression)

[IphengeniaBlumgarten]

5. Strongly agree

Congress added the "under god" phrase during the cold war to emphasize how much better we were than the "godless communists". I was in high school at the time and was aware that it was unconstitutional, but my remedy was to always fall silent during that part of the pledge. Would that more people did!

But plenty of better places to put your protest energy.

[progressoid]

11. True, but sadly this is the kind of thing that will whip up the knuckle draggers on the right.

[FiveGoodMen]

14. Many seem to use it as "proof" that this is a christian nation

and therefore should have theocratic laws.

Stopping that is more important than just about anything else.

[Glorfindel]

2. Thank you for this! You said it just right.

"First... Pledge of Allegiance? WTF? There shouldn't be a pledge of allegiance to the fricking flag. That's nuts."

Precisely.

[unblock]

4. and per west virginia v. barnette, you don't have to say it. and this was before the "under god"

part was added.

the jehovah's witnesses consider the flag a graven image and refuse to salute it a religious commandment not to salute it.

the court went beyond the specifically religious objection and struck down the right of the government to impose "compulsory unification of opinion".

[unblock]

3. i find the pledge, particularly in public schools, problematic on so many levels

not the least of which is the saying of it daily.

i mean, here i am *pledging* my *allegiance* to flag and country -- *under god*, no less; standing with my hand over my heart in front of my classmates....

and that pledge, that allegiance, is valid for only 24 hours?


what kind of loyalty are we even pretending to be teaching to our kids if this needs to be reaffirmed on a daily basis??

of course, the answer is it's nothing of the sort. it's just the kind of horse-hockey jingoism that opportunistic politicians peddle in lieu of actually helping people and country because they can score points doing so and no one can reasonable object without suffering the voting wrath of mindless nationalists.

i can't even fathom the notion that there might be a single person who is more loyal to the united states because of reciting that pledge than they would have been had they never said it. can't you imagine anyone saying, yeah, i was gonna betray the united states, but then i remembered that pledge i took, so i said forget it. i mean, really?

[X_Digger]

6. My elementary school teachers despised me for being the little shit who wouldn't say it..

.. after about the second grade, when I actually understood it.

Not that I'm a religious person at all- quite the opposite. But even before I knew about the first amendment, I understood that it was unfair to force a belief or promise on a person.

One particularly snotty teacher- Penny Jenell was her name- bitter, pinched little tyrant now that I'm thinking about her- frog marched me into the office, called my mother, and my mother's response was, "SO?!? What skill does repeating the pledge demonstrate?" (or words to that effect.) Completely flustered her.

[Laelth]

7. Remember the purpose of the pledge.

Its purpose is to ameliorate the fears of a suspicious American public so that we don't have mass persecution of immigrants and others who seem to not "fit in" the great American melting pot. It doesn't matter what the thing says if it keeps down persecution. If it does, I have no problem with public pressure to say it. Those of us who would prefer to have "under God" removed from the Pledge are the very people the Pledge was designed to protect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance

So, just say it. We have bigger things to worry about.

-Laelth

[cthulu2016]

8. Your priorities, as expressed in that post, are worthless.

[Laelth]

9. I think you underestimate the insanity, jingoism, and blind hatred ...

... of a lot of Americans. For all we know, the pledge has been saving us from them for years.

-Laelth

[unblock]

17. in part by making social outcasts out of jehovah's witnesses, atheists, and others?

[Laelth]

35. Or ...

... by allowing those same people to blend in and not be such an obvious threat to the majority. That, I think, was the original purpose (of the Pledge).



-Laelth

[unblock]

37. the wiki link seems to emphasize promoting patriotism and nationalism as the intent

aside from the argument that coercing conformity isn't "allowing" immigrants to "blend in", it's not clear to me that bellamy actually had your aims in mind.

[Laelth]

39. I know.

The wiki article has changed since I first found it (years ago). It used to be more explicit about the author's actual intent. If you want, I can do some research on this for you, but I distinctly remember reading about the author's intent to protect new immigrants from persecution. Don't know when or why the wiki article was edited, but I would swear that it has been over the past couple of years.



-Laelth

[Ms. Toad]

30. It is the most jingoistic among us who are demanding it be said daily in schools

And ostracizing, as a practical matter, those of us whose moral compasses don't stop at the Mexican border or our shores.

My allegiance is not to the flag, or to the United States - it is to my fellow human beings, wherever they are found. There are times in the past that has required me to defy my government - and there may well be times in the future. I cannot, in good conscience pledge something I am not willing to carry out.

That means that, as a child, when I refused to say the pledge of allegiance I was made fun of. As an adult, it means as a reporter for local school board and township meetings, as hard as I tried to be unobtrusive about not participating (standing politely, trying not to draw attention to myself), I because the story rather than reporting on it.

It is an abomination, and - whatever its initial intent - it is now used to exclude those who define our loyalties by something other than the country in which we live.

[Laelth]

34. Quite true, and I agree, mostly.

My allegiance is to the Constitution and not to the flag. That said, on this one issue, I am willing to throw a bone to our more "patriotic" fellow Americans. Of all the bones we could throw them, this one hurts the least, and the Pledge may actually still fulfill its original purpose to some extent (i.e. it may be socially useful in creating the sense of a united community).

I admire your refusal to lie (your refusal to take an oath that you don't genuinely believe or intend to uphold). I see the Pledge less as an oath and more like a national ritual, but, for those of us with the highest integrity, I can see how saying the Pledge would be offensive. I used to feel that way about it as well.

-Laelth

[unblock]

38. it would certainly be better didn't have so many flaws in it for such a short oath -

perhaps something like:

i honor the flag of the united states of america, and pledge my allegience to the republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

this would at least get the god and idolatry issues out of the way. i hear you about the constitution, i believe in that as well, though i'm not sure "the republic for which it stands" is too far removed for that, as the constitution is a vital part of the republic.

still, it's the daily ritual aspect of it that bothers me. if it were something recited only a few times a year that would be more reasonable. to me, daily recitation of a loyalty pledge simply screams nationalistic indoctrination.

[unblock]

16. you're being generous, i'd assign a negative value.

coercive comformity of opinion is a minus in my book, to steal a phrase from west virginia v. barnette.

[unblock]

15. i don't understanding. the purpose of dictatorship is to make the trains run on time. so??

dictatorship is a horrible idea, notwithstanding that one could point to some efficiencies in the concept.

the way to handle bigots who are afraid of different people is to correct the behavior of the bigots, not to coerce the "others" to conform to a daily jingoistic ritual (nevermind a remarkably problematic one, given how short it is) to satisfy the flawed "needs" of bigots.

i'll just *not* say it, thank you very much. i do think, as you said, that we have bigger things to worry about; though i also note that you did worry about it enough to jump in add to the pressure on people to "just say it".

[shenmue]

10. It wasn't in the original pledge

And we got along just fine without those two words, from the 1700s to the 1950s. There were even churches and temples all across the country. Lots of 'em!

[scarletwoman]

31. 1700s?? Wow. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892.

http://www.ushistory.org/documents/pledge.htm

[shenmue]

32. Yeah :)

I meant to imply that we did okay from the founding of the country onwards.

[scarletwoman]

36. My apologies, I misunderstood what you were saying!

I see what you mean now, and I agree! Thanks for taking my error with such good grace.

[Bandit]

12. How about under "Intelligent Design"

[Auggie]

13. Robin Williams suggests we should change it to "One nation, under Canada …"

[npk]

25. "One nation, under China..." would be more appropriate!

[napkinz]

18. Conservative Christians Don’t Want You To See This Clip Of Porky Pig Reciting The Pledge (VIDEO)

Written by Baptist minister Francis Bellamy in 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance has been part of our nation for well over 100 years. But what most Americans don’t realize is that for half of that time, the words “under God” were never part of it. Not at all.

Porky Pig recites an original version of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Conservative Christians would have us all believe that those two words were always part of the pledge. But as Loony Toons character Porky Pig demonstrates in this brief clip, the Christian Right, as usual, is wrong.


http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/04/23/porky-pig-pledge-of-allegiance/

http://aattp.org/christian-nation-see-whats-missing-from-porky-pigs-pledge-of-allegiance-video/

[Blue_In_AK]

19. I'm old and I learned it the original way

which is how I still recite it, even if I do get "looks" from people around me.

And I'm with you -- who pledges allegiance to a FLAG, for Pete's sake. Ridiculous.

[starroute]

22. Even what you and I learned wasn't the original

When I was little, my mother told me how they used to say it in the 1920s, and it was a lot more stripped down. They kept loading in a little more extraneous clauses every decade.

[Jenoch]

20. When I was in the 2nd grade we said the pledge

and then the teacher played My Country 'Tis of Thee. This was in rural Minnesota when there were no minorities, Muslim, or Jewish students. That same school district is now 47% minorities with students who have parents who came to that still small town from all over the world. There are about 17 different languages spoken in the schools. The reason for the influx of immigrants is because there is a pork processing plant that processes 36,000 hogs a day, three shifts a day, 24 hours a day.

[starroute]

21. Justice Hugo Black told my high school class it was unconstitutional

My high school didin't have a senior trip per se -- but the two advanced placement social studies classes got to go down to DC and meet all sorts of cool people. When we got some time with Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, one of my classmates asked him whether "under God" wasn't unconstitutional. His answer was, "Of course it it, but I'd never dare to say that in public."

And that's how things still stand today. Even civil liberties-supporting Supreme Court justices (of which there are fewer now than there used to be) have their limits.

[roody]

23. If I have to say it to keep the peace,

I say "under Dog, invisible."

[oldhippie]

24. I don't and won't pledge allegiance to a flag ...

... even after 40 years with the military of the USA.

A flag is a piece of cloth. True, it is a symbol, it represents something, but that something changes. I reserve my allegiance to specific cases.

[npk]

26. The "Pledge of Allegiance" has always been a tool of indoctrination

It's just today the conservatives are trying to use at as another method to get god into our schools and indoctrinate children into conforming to their religious beliefs. This is precisely the kind of the thing the founding fathers feared.

[JoeyT]

27. The fits pitched when "under god" is changed to

absolutely anything else pretty much proves they're lying through their fucking teeth when they insist it's generic rather than to any specific god.

[iwillalwayswonderwhy]

28. I still remember my then 6 year old son asking me

Mom, who is Liberty and Justin Frall? Are they really invisible?

[Ms. Toad]

29. I'll just go with your first sentence, say agree, and stop there. n/t

[Recursion]

33. Politically, there are hills I would rather die on, but I never liked the pledge

I'd prefer

"I pledge allegiance to the Republic and Union"

or something simple like that, but it shouldn't be said en masse by school children; if at all, just when somebody becomes a citizen or maybe registers to vote.