The following is a transcript, originally presented as The Pledge of Allegiance, Episode 57 of The AnarchoChristian Podcast
The United States Pledge of Allegiance is something that has been baked into our identity as Americans since birth, and for as many generations as we have alive today. It’s no wonder that the topic of the Pledge elicits a deep emotional response from many of us. Everyone who is alive today to discuss the meaning or ideas of the Pledge of Allegiance has had the Pledge worked into their memory for as far back as they can remember.
It is doubtful that there is anyone alive today who remembers a time before the Pledge of Allegiance. Anything can become a very passionate topic in this sense. Things that are with us from the earliest times in our lives– from the time that we start education, from the time we start speaking and memorizing, the Pledge of Allegiance has been there, and it was there in the same way for our parents, and their parents, and their parents, and depending on how old you are, maybe even their parents.
If you have heard political pundits speak about the Pledge, you may have experienced a passionate commentator in a fit of rage, yelling into your eardrum and causing a lot of emotional response without much education. It is fair to assert that these excitable, uninterrupted dissertations such as you would find on AM talk radio are at least partially to blame for the current inability of people to have rational discussions on politics.
So, as we take an objective look at the Pledge (sans the soul-stirring, opinion laden rant), we will allow the facts to speak for themselves and the reader will be free to look at the Pledge critically and honestly. I want you to make your own decisions based on those facts. Maybe you and I will come to the same conclusion. Maybe we will part ways – But whatever we do, it will be because of the acceptance or rejection of the facts, not because we are fighting over the way the facts make us feel.
So, where to start? Even though we are stating facts about the Pledge of Allegiance, it is important to tackle rhetoric rather than list historical facts alone. Historicity matters, but also all the little rhetorical things that get brought up when discussing the merits of the Pledge of Allegiance. To do this, we will use 3 distinct categories when questioning the Pledge:
What it isn’t, what it is, and where it came from.
What it isn’t
The Pledge of Allegiance was not written or performed during the time of the American Revolution, or the founding of the United States. It was not written by any founders. It is not found in the Declaration of Independence, nor the Constitution. It was not written by Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin, and it wasn’t recited by George Washington, nor the Continental Army. We are presented with the Pledge from a very early age to accompany all of our learning of American history and citizenship, but we are not presented with its history. The assumption left behind can be that it was always there. It’s very similar to the slogan “In God We Trust,” which we may address in a later publication.
It also isn’t “no big deal.” This is often an objection to objections over the Pledge, and at the risk of editorializing, anything that elicits the type of argument the Pledge does and is considered a requirement for various school and civic responsibilities definitely is a big deal. This should actually be something that both sides of the Pledge debate agree on: It is a big deal.
The Pledge of Allegiance isn’t found in the Bible either. Sound absurd? There are actually bibles marketed to American Christians that include it. Pause to think about what that means. Even if you love the Pledge of Allegiance and what good and noble qualities you might think it can bring to individuals and communities, why put it in the Bible? What does that do with the position of the Pledge of Allegiance in comparison with Scripture? We are told, and typically affirm that Scripture is God breathed. What do you think we are implying when we bind the Pledge together with God’s Word?
Imagine a few other Bibles that may, or may not have been bound throughout history, and think to yourself, what would this mean? How about an English bible with the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen? How about a 1940’s German bible with a pledge of allegiance to the Reich? How about two different bibles printed in the 1860’s, one with a pledge to the Union, and one with a Pledge to the Confederacy. What about a Russian Bible printed before the Bolsheviks that included an oath to the Czar? What about the Apostles’ epistles starting or ending with a pledge to Rome? If you cringed at any of those ideas, and if you had not been brought up with the Pledge, would you not find the idea of it bound in a bible today to be equally cringeworthy?
What it is
We’ve heard it a million times. We can recite it even if we haven’t said it in years.
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
That’s what is says (rather what we say when it is recited), but what is the Pledge?
Objectors to the Pledge may be met with the response “it isn’t a pledge to the government…” This is usually associated with an additional defense that it represents an allegiance to your fellow countrymen and ideals of freedom and such. The thing is, it is exactly a pledge to the government. As stated above, we memorize the pledge from a very early age. When we do that, we tend to not pay attention to the meaning. This sort of conditioning leads to us put our own projections onto the words, rather than paying attention to what we are actually saying.
Let’s just look at it simply, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America”. This is where we project our images of homeland, freedom and countrymen, but let’s look at the very next line… “and to the Republic for which it stands.…” There. Right there is your pledge to government. Most of us would agree that the Merriam-Webster dictionary will give us an accurate definition. It defines a Republic as:
1a(1): a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president(2): a political unit (such as a nation) having such a form of government
Maybe you’re comfortable with that, but we need to honestly say that the Pledge of Allegiance is in fact a pledge to government. If you’re not ok with it, and likely for the reason you would make the defense that it isn’t a pledge to the government in the first place, well, we need to be honest about that. If pledging allegiance to any other government rubs you the wrong way, do we admit that it’s the same, or do we make no such admission because our Republic is the best government we can see or imagine, therefore we should pledge allegiance to it, lest it fall into some less desirable form of government?
The Pledge is also a promise to an object, the flag. It’s in the first line. “I pledge allegiance to the flag,” and then again, when we say, “and to the republic for which it stands,” (“It” being the flag). One could insert any number of his own opinions of what pledging your allegiance to an inanimate object could also be called. Instead, let’s just look at some definitions of the words in the pledge. A pledge is a promise, and what are you promising to the flag and to the government for which it stands? Your allegiance. What is allegiance? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines allegiance as:
1a: the obligation of a feudal vassal to his liege lord1b(1): the fidelity owed by a subject or citizen to a sovereign or government1b(2): the obligation of an alien to the government under which the alien resides2: devotion or loyalty to a person, group, or cause Instead of the words we memorized from childhood, try inserting any of the other synonyms – I promise my loyalty, my devotion, I am obligated to the flag and the government for which it stands in the same manner as a feudal vassal to his lord.
Think about our loyalty to an object of government – I pledge my allegiance, my loyalty and devotion to THE flag– the flag itself and the government for which it stands. The code book from the government for which the flag stands describes the flag that stands for it. In the US Code of Law, Title 4, Chapter 1 is where we find the Pledge of Allegiance and the Flag codified. Section 4 has the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag and its instructions for delivery. Section 8 is interesting though, as it lists all manner of how you must show respect to the flag. It says in line J:
“The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing.” That is interesting– an inanimate object endowed with the position of reverence due to it being a “living thing.”
We’ve grown up with the flag just as much as the pledge we make to it, so it’s no wonder we don’t think twice about it. Granted we don’t go around stating that it is a living thing, but this is the foundational doctrine of the flag. This is why the government for which the flag stands, both of the things we are pledging our loyalty and allegiance to, say are the reasons why we owe it so much respect and allegiance – because it is a living thing. Similar to how we imagined the binding of the pledge in a bible, what would you think if it were a statue that we pledged to instead of a flag? I pledge allegiance to Mount Rushmore, or I pledge allegiance to a smaller statue of an eagle or the Statue of Liberty. What if we said this statue or other symbol were the living embodiment of the nation that we are pledging too? How would you feel if it were some material other than cloth?
Finally, the Pledge is the acceptance that the nation of the United States is indivisible. This is interesting because there are a couple of things that come to mind when you think of the nation as divisible – The Civil War and Secession.
The Civil War is something most people today affirm as sad and that we wish wouldn’t have happened. Many people look at the Civil War as necessary to keep the union together. It seems strange further still as we look at secession. It’s a popular ideal for freedom loving Americans, but it is interesting how the rhetoric never comes full circle. Secession seems to be this agreed upon method of preserving freedom, yet any enthusiastic support fizzles out when we are confronted with a divisible union. Does this have anything to do with the grateful rhetoric of saving the union, or the memorization of a line proclaiming that under God our nation is indivisible?
Where it came from
Although, there was a pledge written during the Civil War by Captain George Thatcher Balch, the pledge that we say today is primarily the work of Francis Bellamy in 1892, and then later adopted as the Pledge by Congress in 1942. Just so we are keeping our dates straight – that means it was written over a hundred years after the American Revolution and officially recognized by the government over 150 years after the American Revolution. Furthermore, the words “under God” were added in 1954, almost 10 years after its initial adoption. Who is this Francis Bellamy?
Francis Bellamy was born on May 18th 1855 in Mount Morris New York, and died on August 28th, 1931 in Tampa, Florida. He studied theology at the University of Rochester, in Rochester New York and became a Baptist Minister like his father.
In 1889, Bellamy co-founded The Society of Christian Socialists in Boston with Episcopal priest William Dwight Porter Bliss. This society and the quickly produced monthly magazine titled The Dawn, espoused socialism from an explicitly Christian viewpoint. The Mises website has free copy of The Forging of American Socialism by Howard Quint if you would like to read more on the topic.
In 1891, according to the book Freethinkers by Susan Jacoby, Bellamy was “forced from his Boston pulpit for preaching against the evils of capitalism.”
Also in 1891, Bellamy was hired by Daniel Ford to work in the premium department for the children’s magazine Youth’s Companion. Three years earlier, in 1888, the magazine began a campaign called, “The School House Flag Movement,” or “A Flag Over Every Schoolhouse Movement.” It was intended to build subscriptions by selling US Flags to public schools. According to the National Museum of American History, “The magazine became involved with Americanization efforts in part because of the personal interest of the magazine’s leadership, but also because of the publisher’s desire to boost subscription sales through gimmicks and giveaways that appealed to the patriotic fervor of the times. These gimmicks included campaigns to distribute American flags to every school and the promotion of inexpensive images of George Washington to supplement other portraits gracing classroom walls. Both of the magazines’ efforts were successful in boosting magazine sales and, in the process, fostering a tradition of patriotic material culture in American classrooms.”
The Museum also says that in 1892, as a part of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ birth and the National Public School Celebration, the magazine published Bellamy’s Pledge of allegiance. It read, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”
Along with the words of the Pledge, Bellamy came up with a salute as well. It is called the Bellamy Salute and is exactly what would become later known as the Nazi salute, which is why it was changed to being a hand over your heart during World War 2. This begs 2 large questions:
- Would die hard conservative traditionalist patriots object to someone using the originally intended salute? If not why?
- Does it mean anything that the salutes were the same? Was the Nazi salute “no big deal”? Does it only matter that Nazi’s did it, or did they do it because that sort of pledging and saluting goes to some nationalistic heart of the matter? Did we change the salute simply because of the optics of being associated with Nazis, or are we also trying to hide similar motivations behind a nationalistic socialist movement in America and the National Socialist party of Germany during that same time?
In 1954, Congress added “under God” and therefore set the 31-word pledge that is still used today. When we consider that all of this came from a school campaign, targeted at kids, do you think it’s right to have kids memorize these words, making a promise to a flag and to the government for which it stands, when they do not even know what those words mean?
Bellamy isn’t alive today, but he did leave behind some thoughts on the matter. In the book, The History of the Pledge of Allegiance, Bellamy’s thoughts on the Pledge are quoted as,
“It began as an intensive communing with salient points of our national history, from the Declaration of Independence onwards; with the makings of the Constitution… with the meaning of the Civil War; with the aspiration of the people…
The true reason for allegiance to the Flag is the ‘republic for which it stands’. …And what does that last thing, the Republic mean? It is the concise political word for the Nation – the One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove. To make that One Nation idea clear, we must specify that it is indivisible, as Webster and Lincoln used to repeat in their great speeches. And its future?
Just here arose the temptation of the historic slogan of the French Revolution which meant so much to Jefferson and his friends, ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity‘. No, that would be too fanciful, too many thousands of years off in realization. But we as a nation do stand square on the doctrine of liberty and justice for all…”
The authors also stated in this book,
Bellamy “viewed his Pledge as an ‘inoculation‘ that would protect immigrants and native-born but insufficiently patriotic Americans from the ‘virus‘ of radicalism and subversion.”
When we consider the facts and rhetoric surrounding the United States Pledge of Allegiance apart from political ravings and emotional fervor—when we consider the words, where they came from, and what they mean, we find something that may seem more foreign to us than it did before.
Something this ingrained in our identity needs to be questioned, and isn’t that the essence of the American spirit, questioning something we are told to think? Were you brought up to pledge your allegiance before you knew what you were pledging and to whom? And in today’s environment (if you even question it), are you accused of being “insufficiently patriotic”?
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