Editorial: The Hartford Pledge
Friday, March 03, 2017
The Pledge of Allegiance, of all things, has emerged as a campaign issue in Hartford’s municipal election on Tuesday, with incumbent Selectwoman Rebecca White coming under fire on Facebook for declining to join her colleagues in reciting the Pledge before meetings.
“She stands and she places her hand over her heart, and she closes her eyes,” Lannie Collins, a Quechee resident who is running against White as a write-in candidate, told staff writer Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, behavior that he claims offends him as a military veteran. For her part, White says she means no disrespect but is an atheist who cannot in good conscience repeat the words “under God” contained in the Pledge.
We take no position on the merits of their respective candidacies. But we do object strongly to the notion that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is any kind of litmus test for holding public office. In the first place, those who have voluntarily put themselves in the way of hundreds of hours of work (much of it mind-numbingly boring) on behalf of their fellow citizens, as Selectboard members do, have no need to further demonstrate their commitment to the democratic project. They have answered the call of citizenship in their own way and are putting into direct action their faith in the ability of a free people to govern themselves.
Second, there is nothing in the Pledge itself that speaks to military matters. To contend that those who decline to recite it show disrespect to veterans is no less absurd than to claim that those who do recite it condone every use of American military power, whether wise or unwise. There is no link between the two, and it is spurious to claim one.
http://www.vnews.com/Let-s-Pledge-to-Stop-Pledging-8377964
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