The history of the pledge is interesting since it was codified by a Christian Socialist in the early 1900s and was accopanied by what we might call today, a Nazi Salute. The words "Under God" are also a new addition.
In fairness, the Nazis drew a great deal of inspiration from the Jim Crow south and the way the US had dealt with indigenous populations. Also, I'm sure you're well aware that eugenics was invented here! We are capable of great and terrible things, and even more so than any other nation that has existed, for we have the most power.
I like digging into all of this biographical stuff for the same reason I like to think about myself so much: it is the lens through which we view the world, and the US is the geographic place from which we experience it (most of the time, anyway).
We each have our own unique perspective on reality and hopefully we are forgiven for the one we have, and are forgiving also of those whose perspective differs from our own.
David, I'm not sure how I should take this comment! Am I the one who is unforgiving of folks who followed the rules, or should they be forgiving of me?
It makes sense. I made the comment wondering if you might be able to provide insight into an “unforgiving” that might reside in one’s stillness of heart. A dormant thing…
I see what you mean now. I think that does live inside all of us, to be honest, and there's nothing we can do to completely get it out of our minds. Having said that, we can certainly keep this impulse from getting in the driver's seat.
For me, Hanlon's Razor is the thing I keep on coming back to over and over again. People who judge me for whatever reason are rarely malicious, often misinformed, and I may not project myself into the world as accurately as i often believe. Simply knowing all of this is enough to keep me from being angry at folks these days, or at least the overwhelming majority of the time.
Good perspective. I have a Hanlon thing too: “We all judge on the basis of incomplete evidence”. What seems to emerge from this is that “everything belongs”, including what we term”the bad stuff”. As you say, we stay in the driver’s seat tho. Which points me in the direction of control and all its ramifications…
It's all tied up, isn't it? Determinism vs free will, illusion vs reality, perception vs cognition, life vs non-life. What a complex web of thought we have woven!
I don't think I was unforgiving, honestly, I don't feel that way. I like to revisit my past, but not to relitigate trauma. Instead, I just want to place these events into the proper context of my own story, so I can know who I am better. I hope that makes sense.
I have a variation for you. I always say the pledge, but I leave out the under god line because the USA is not a religious based nation, I'm not pledging allegiance to that version of the USA, and 'under god' was added in the 50s. I've gotten a couple looks over the years.
This is very well said, especially in the current political climate. Patriotism is not the same thing as blind nationalism. I'm personally not overly patriotic (I don't even live in the US anymore) but I have learned over the years to be grateful for the country I was born in. Despite the flaws that seem so easy to find, I can't deny that I have certain freedoms that I would not have had somewhere else. Even the fact that we are allowed to not recite the Pledge is not something we should take for granted. Thanks for your thoughts on the topic!
I agree completely, Michael, and just want to point out that I was exercising the very freedom everyone was affirming their love for and belief in. I was right there being a good American, setting an example for them!
I think a big part of it is shorter and shorter conversations happening everywhere. I think places like Substack offer room for nuance, so I'm here! But yeah, Idiocracy turns out to have been about 300 years early.
In like 4th grade my kid was absolutely obsessed with basketball. So after his school season ended (yep i coached) we signed him up for more with CYO. First game comes and after warmups, all the coaches and kids go to center court and hold hands for some kind of prayer. I’ll never forget the look he shot me up in the stands like wtf is even going on here, we ballin or no?
Feels a bit like the "fellowship" aspect kinda gets forced onto kids sometimes too, right? I would prefer to see organizations simply doing good, not forcing a particular worldview on anyone in order to participate or get assistance or whatever. I like the approach of the Red Cross/Red Crescent in that regard - they just go help whoever needs it however they can.
I still say the pledge and sing the national anthem because I have a soft spot for irrational traditions and to think it’s a good thing to affirm republican virtue, but would gladly stick up for anyone’s First Amendment rights if they want to opt out for any reason.
My preferred method of staying true to myself and ruffling feathers is telling people I’ve voted 3rd party in every Presidential election since I turned 18, then offering to explain why.
I think it's very reasonable to admit having a soft spot for irrational traditions! I also think that, as long as we're aware of them being exactly that, the potential for brainwashing can be negated in the same way that it was negated by my stubborn resistance. We're kind of doing the same thing, but from different approaches.
I had almost the exact experience! One of the first things I remember questioning was pledging allegiance to a flag! I didn’t understand what that even meant. As I got older, I also wondered about liberty and justice for all, since it seemed to not apply to a lot of people.
When I was 18 and was about to be drafted, I came to the realization that having people repeat a thing from early childhood on, had a way of sinking in and making the thing unquestionable. I always did and will be skeptical of any idea or statement that is to be memorized by force. It leads to the acceptance of cultish thinking and zombie-like behavior.
I didn’t wait to be drafted and enlisted in the Marines instead, because I knew I would have trouble getting into a college due to the many times I got in trouble for bucking the system; naturally my experience with the Marines didn’t work out real well either, and I had a feeling it wouldn’t, but I had joined because I was afraid that draftees wouldn’t be trained well enough to survive.
I think you made it pretty clear why it isn’t a good idea to just repeat things you don’t believe. I dropped religion for the same reason: my parents sent me to Catholic school and I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to carry anyone else’s baggage. I carefully examined the Bible and related teachings and concluded that I couldn’t accept them as they were self-contradictory and also didn’t agree with the science I have learned.
In any case, I’ve come to believe that everyone should base their personal philosophy only on beliefs they’ve carefully considered and have actively chosen. Otherwise you really have nothing to stand for, and are seriously open to manipulation.
I've thought a great deal about this, and I tend to agree. Maybe an even more fundamental way to put it is that the most important thing in the world is being able to tell the difference between what's real and what's made up. You have to be relentless with that particular lens, or else it doesn't really work at all.
Jack, this was precisely my point today, and I'm glad it resonated with you. Reading and responding to some of the comments makes me wonder whether I was all that clear in making my point, but I think I was.
Did you end up being drafted and serving in Vietnam?
Ha! Pretty far from the case for me, but I do understand that that's common for Jehovah's Witnesses. Then again, they are also practicing a form of civil disobedience.
I was born in 1948. When I was about six, after attending a Sunday morning Methodist church service with my Mom, she said to me that I always seemed uncomfortable during the service, and would I prefer not to attend. I jumped at the chance to avoid it in the future. My Dad never attended church, as far as I can recall. One of the things I can recall from my six-year-old thinking was "Where was God standing when "HE" created the universe?" After the war I went back to college and majored in philosophy, and spent much time pondering that question.
My next "non-conformity" was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in grade school. Pledging allegiance to a flag was not my first objection. My first problem was with "...under God...", which seemed to conflict with my 10-year-old notion of a deliberately secular nation. I like the critics who suggest that it would probably be better to pledge allegiance to the Constitution. I can easily think of some people in public life who should have practiced pledging allegiance to the Constitution since early childhood.
Another problem is the national anthem. "...God shed HIS grace on Thee..." etc. Although our spiritual and ideological ancestors had to fight a war to establish our nation, our national anthem might instead point to our noble aspirations.
I was going to add a link to an article on the "non-conformists" in the UK in the 1600s, but it's easy enough to find.
As an adult I became profoundly grateful for my mother's wisdom in freeing me from the prevailing societal sensibilities. For example, after returning to "The World" after my tour in the war, I had more than a year to serve in my 4-year enlistment in the Army. I decided to apply for discharge as a conscientious objector, and succeeded, shortening my enlistment by about seven months. Stand on principle.
Thanks for sharing all this, David! I felt that same objection under religious grounds too, but my upbringing was very different than yours. I was able to shake free of those mental shackles only by the time I was 17, and frankly I think I was lucky to have escaped at all. I can easily envision a life where I was never introduced to so many of these ideas to question things I was previously afraid to question.
If my folks had even hinted at the possibility of staying home on Sundays, I would have cut my hand off in exchange for that.
I should be clear here: I love America and the American experiment, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have been a part of it for my whole life! What I'm trying to articulate (this type of writing is very tough for me) is that I think patriotism is like love, and you can't force someone to love you. And, further, you can't pledge your allegiance to something at the point of a gun. That's not a pledge of allegiance so much as a response to a threat.
Here in the US, one of the main things we do well is not to force people to think a certain way. I guess that's sort of the thorny mess of weeds we find ourselves in today, at least vis a vis my writing and ideas! I hope it comes across more clearly in this explanation. I'm a punk, but I'm a patriot too.
Rebellion for rebellion’s sake? Customs can come about through much trial and error, being the best course of action for both individuals and communities. Would you agree that the peaceful transfer of power is to be preferred over a violent transfer? Where do you draw the line in rebelling? Does rebelling against the majority’s decision include you coercing your will upon others?
Dale, these are really interesting questions! I'll try to give a good TL;DR so the conversation doesn't get bogged down here.
Many customs are important and worthy of keeping around. I might even say this is true of most customs, and that certainly includes the peaceful transfer of power.
ALL questions, by contrast, are worthy of consideration. We should always feel free to ask whether we should be doing a thing in the first place, and I think that's what was most notably absent during those middle and high school years, at least as I saw it. It wasn't really okay to question why we were all standing up and just saying this chant over and over again every day.
I hope this answers the other questions you had! The last thing I wanted to do was to give the impression that I think all institutions should be torn down everywhere. My anarchism and nihilism days are way, way behind me!
Your article had me bouncing all over the place. A big influence for me was following parental control via our family business. Even before preschool, my siblings and I would help carrying supplies to help complete a job. I sat on my dad’s lap pulling levers to operate heavy equipment because my legs were too short to reach the pedals. My dad bought another piece of equipment when I was 12 so we could operate them at the same time to finish a job quicker or for me to complete jobs by myself. We would do the job the right way, whether we got a permit and had an inspector or not. In the end, I rebelled in several areas of life, including against my dad in high school to the point just short of physical harm, rejecting my role of taking over the business. Unfortunately my dad died shortly thereafter and I ran the business for co-op high school credit till I graduated.
Another area of consideration is being the first born and setting an example for your siblings. Rebelling against customs and getting into drugs had repercussions beyond myself. Thus my area of thought until I reread your article and saw the focus on patriotism and the relation to government.
This is very helpful from a technical (writing) standpoint, Dale. I am learning how to convey the message I want to convey, and to me that's the truly important thing. I think I write some pretty decent prose, mind you- I've worked hard at making my words sound pretty, so to speak, but to me, that's just icing on the cake of discussing ideas together.
I think my main thing is to help folks to see nuance whenever possible. I enjoy helping others to discover the hidden complexity in things that tend to make us mad or confused... it's like turning a negative into the most amazing positive ever, transforming anger into curiosity and even excitement.
It's pretty poopy that the US makes kids do this. I mean, "makes" is a slippery word here, but if every other kid around you is doing it, there's a very real cost to choosing not to conform.
There's definitely something interesting in the slogan "freedom is slavery."
It might be interesting to go down the rabbit hole of "freedom from" vs "freedom to." I think that explains an awful lot of the whole communism vs capitalism debate in a way that's overly simplistic, but still useful to understand.
The history of the pledge is interesting since it was codified by a Christian Socialist in the early 1900s and was accopanied by what we might call today, a Nazi Salute. The words "Under God" are also a new addition.
In fairness, the Nazis drew a great deal of inspiration from the Jim Crow south and the way the US had dealt with indigenous populations. Also, I'm sure you're well aware that eugenics was invented here! We are capable of great and terrible things, and even more so than any other nation that has existed, for we have the most power.
I like digging into all of this biographical stuff for the same reason I like to think about myself so much: it is the lens through which we view the world, and the US is the geographic place from which we experience it (most of the time, anyway).
We each have our own unique perspective on reality and hopefully we are forgiven for the one we have, and are forgiving also of those whose perspective differs from our own.
David, I'm not sure how I should take this comment! Am I the one who is unforgiving of folks who followed the rules, or should they be forgiving of me?
What seems like a “knot” comes undone when gently “kneaded.”
Both, and…!
Did I leave the impression that I was still mad at those other kids? FWIW, I'm not!
It makes sense. I made the comment wondering if you might be able to provide insight into an “unforgiving” that might reside in one’s stillness of heart. A dormant thing…
I see what you mean now. I think that does live inside all of us, to be honest, and there's nothing we can do to completely get it out of our minds. Having said that, we can certainly keep this impulse from getting in the driver's seat.
For me, Hanlon's Razor is the thing I keep on coming back to over and over again. People who judge me for whatever reason are rarely malicious, often misinformed, and I may not project myself into the world as accurately as i often believe. Simply knowing all of this is enough to keep me from being angry at folks these days, or at least the overwhelming majority of the time.
Good perspective. I have a Hanlon thing too: “We all judge on the basis of incomplete evidence”. What seems to emerge from this is that “everything belongs”, including what we term”the bad stuff”. As you say, we stay in the driver’s seat tho. Which points me in the direction of control and all its ramifications…
It's all tied up, isn't it? Determinism vs free will, illusion vs reality, perception vs cognition, life vs non-life. What a complex web of thought we have woven!
What is “still mad”? It seems to imply more than an “ongoing attitude”…
I don't think I was unforgiving, honestly, I don't feel that way. I like to revisit my past, but not to relitigate trauma. Instead, I just want to place these events into the proper context of my own story, so I can know who I am better. I hope that makes sense.
I have a variation for you. I always say the pledge, but I leave out the under god line because the USA is not a religious based nation, I'm not pledging allegiance to that version of the USA, and 'under god' was added in the 50s. I've gotten a couple looks over the years.
Yes! This was one of the worst responses to the Cold War threat - let's sacrifice our values. Yuck.
This is very well said, especially in the current political climate. Patriotism is not the same thing as blind nationalism. I'm personally not overly patriotic (I don't even live in the US anymore) but I have learned over the years to be grateful for the country I was born in. Despite the flaws that seem so easy to find, I can't deny that I have certain freedoms that I would not have had somewhere else. Even the fact that we are allowed to not recite the Pledge is not something we should take for granted. Thanks for your thoughts on the topic!
I agree completely, Michael, and just want to point out that I was exercising the very freedom everyone was affirming their love for and belief in. I was right there being a good American, setting an example for them!
We need to remain a nation of thinkers.
The media fights against that, but I pray the people win. As long as we value free thought, we still have hope.
I think a big part of it is shorter and shorter conversations happening everywhere. I think places like Substack offer room for nuance, so I'm here! But yeah, Idiocracy turns out to have been about 300 years early.
In like 4th grade my kid was absolutely obsessed with basketball. So after his school season ended (yep i coached) we signed him up for more with CYO. First game comes and after warmups, all the coaches and kids go to center court and hold hands for some kind of prayer. I’ll never forget the look he shot me up in the stands like wtf is even going on here, we ballin or no?
Feels a bit like the "fellowship" aspect kinda gets forced onto kids sometimes too, right? I would prefer to see organizations simply doing good, not forcing a particular worldview on anyone in order to participate or get assistance or whatever. I like the approach of the Red Cross/Red Crescent in that regard - they just go help whoever needs it however they can.
Oh man right! I felt so bad for him; betrayal of the purity of the game of the highest order
I still say the pledge and sing the national anthem because I have a soft spot for irrational traditions and to think it’s a good thing to affirm republican virtue, but would gladly stick up for anyone’s First Amendment rights if they want to opt out for any reason.
My preferred method of staying true to myself and ruffling feathers is telling people I’ve voted 3rd party in every Presidential election since I turned 18, then offering to explain why.
I think it's very reasonable to admit having a soft spot for irrational traditions! I also think that, as long as we're aware of them being exactly that, the potential for brainwashing can be negated in the same way that it was negated by my stubborn resistance. We're kind of doing the same thing, but from different approaches.
I had almost the exact experience! One of the first things I remember questioning was pledging allegiance to a flag! I didn’t understand what that even meant. As I got older, I also wondered about liberty and justice for all, since it seemed to not apply to a lot of people.
When I was 18 and was about to be drafted, I came to the realization that having people repeat a thing from early childhood on, had a way of sinking in and making the thing unquestionable. I always did and will be skeptical of any idea or statement that is to be memorized by force. It leads to the acceptance of cultish thinking and zombie-like behavior.
I didn’t wait to be drafted and enlisted in the Marines instead, because I knew I would have trouble getting into a college due to the many times I got in trouble for bucking the system; naturally my experience with the Marines didn’t work out real well either, and I had a feeling it wouldn’t, but I had joined because I was afraid that draftees wouldn’t be trained well enough to survive.
I think you made it pretty clear why it isn’t a good idea to just repeat things you don’t believe. I dropped religion for the same reason: my parents sent me to Catholic school and I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to carry anyone else’s baggage. I carefully examined the Bible and related teachings and concluded that I couldn’t accept them as they were self-contradictory and also didn’t agree with the science I have learned.
In any case, I’ve come to believe that everyone should base their personal philosophy only on beliefs they’ve carefully considered and have actively chosen. Otherwise you really have nothing to stand for, and are seriously open to manipulation.
I've thought a great deal about this, and I tend to agree. Maybe an even more fundamental way to put it is that the most important thing in the world is being able to tell the difference between what's real and what's made up. You have to be relentless with that particular lens, or else it doesn't really work at all.
Jack, this was precisely my point today, and I'm glad it resonated with you. Reading and responding to some of the comments makes me wonder whether I was all that clear in making my point, but I think I was.
Did you end up being drafted and serving in Vietnam?
When I was a kid, I just figured that all of the kids sitting out were Jay-dubs.
Ha! Pretty far from the case for me, but I do understand that that's common for Jehovah's Witnesses. Then again, they are also practicing a form of civil disobedience.
I was born in 1948. When I was about six, after attending a Sunday morning Methodist church service with my Mom, she said to me that I always seemed uncomfortable during the service, and would I prefer not to attend. I jumped at the chance to avoid it in the future. My Dad never attended church, as far as I can recall. One of the things I can recall from my six-year-old thinking was "Where was God standing when "HE" created the universe?" After the war I went back to college and majored in philosophy, and spent much time pondering that question.
My next "non-conformity" was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in grade school. Pledging allegiance to a flag was not my first objection. My first problem was with "...under God...", which seemed to conflict with my 10-year-old notion of a deliberately secular nation. I like the critics who suggest that it would probably be better to pledge allegiance to the Constitution. I can easily think of some people in public life who should have practiced pledging allegiance to the Constitution since early childhood.
Another problem is the national anthem. "...God shed HIS grace on Thee..." etc. Although our spiritual and ideological ancestors had to fight a war to establish our nation, our national anthem might instead point to our noble aspirations.
I was going to add a link to an article on the "non-conformists" in the UK in the 1600s, but it's easy enough to find.
As an adult I became profoundly grateful for my mother's wisdom in freeing me from the prevailing societal sensibilities. For example, after returning to "The World" after my tour in the war, I had more than a year to serve in my 4-year enlistment in the Army. I decided to apply for discharge as a conscientious objector, and succeeded, shortening my enlistment by about seven months. Stand on principle.
Thanks for sharing all this, David! I felt that same objection under religious grounds too, but my upbringing was very different than yours. I was able to shake free of those mental shackles only by the time I was 17, and frankly I think I was lucky to have escaped at all. I can easily envision a life where I was never introduced to so many of these ideas to question things I was previously afraid to question.
If my folks had even hinted at the possibility of staying home on Sundays, I would have cut my hand off in exchange for that.
Excellent. And yes, blind fealty to custom and tradition is exactly why our society is crumbling.
I was shocked when I discovered that American children have to pledge allegiance. That’s what the Fascists in Europe did in the 1930s and 1940s.
It still puzzles and shocks me.
It certainly seems antithetical to the whole American experiment, doesn't it?
Then again, we are a nation racked with contradictions. It's kind of our thing.
🤣😵💫
No it doesn’t. Loving your country and wanting to protect and honor it is in no way Fascist. Sheesh!
Why? It’s natural. And frankly it’s done in other countries. And not just by Fascists.
I should be clear here: I love America and the American experiment, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have been a part of it for my whole life! What I'm trying to articulate (this type of writing is very tough for me) is that I think patriotism is like love, and you can't force someone to love you. And, further, you can't pledge your allegiance to something at the point of a gun. That's not a pledge of allegiance so much as a response to a threat.
Here in the US, one of the main things we do well is not to force people to think a certain way. I guess that's sort of the thorny mess of weeds we find ourselves in today, at least vis a vis my writing and ideas! I hope it comes across more clearly in this explanation. I'm a punk, but I'm a patriot too.
Rebellion for rebellion’s sake? Customs can come about through much trial and error, being the best course of action for both individuals and communities. Would you agree that the peaceful transfer of power is to be preferred over a violent transfer? Where do you draw the line in rebelling? Does rebelling against the majority’s decision include you coercing your will upon others?
Dale, these are really interesting questions! I'll try to give a good TL;DR so the conversation doesn't get bogged down here.
Many customs are important and worthy of keeping around. I might even say this is true of most customs, and that certainly includes the peaceful transfer of power.
ALL questions, by contrast, are worthy of consideration. We should always feel free to ask whether we should be doing a thing in the first place, and I think that's what was most notably absent during those middle and high school years, at least as I saw it. It wasn't really okay to question why we were all standing up and just saying this chant over and over again every day.
I hope this answers the other questions you had! The last thing I wanted to do was to give the impression that I think all institutions should be torn down everywhere. My anarchism and nihilism days are way, way behind me!
Your article had me bouncing all over the place. A big influence for me was following parental control via our family business. Even before preschool, my siblings and I would help carrying supplies to help complete a job. I sat on my dad’s lap pulling levers to operate heavy equipment because my legs were too short to reach the pedals. My dad bought another piece of equipment when I was 12 so we could operate them at the same time to finish a job quicker or for me to complete jobs by myself. We would do the job the right way, whether we got a permit and had an inspector or not. In the end, I rebelled in several areas of life, including against my dad in high school to the point just short of physical harm, rejecting my role of taking over the business. Unfortunately my dad died shortly thereafter and I ran the business for co-op high school credit till I graduated.
Another area of consideration is being the first born and setting an example for your siblings. Rebelling against customs and getting into drugs had repercussions beyond myself. Thus my area of thought until I reread your article and saw the focus on patriotism and the relation to government.
This is very helpful from a technical (writing) standpoint, Dale. I am learning how to convey the message I want to convey, and to me that's the truly important thing. I think I write some pretty decent prose, mind you- I've worked hard at making my words sound pretty, so to speak, but to me, that's just icing on the cake of discussing ideas together.
I think my main thing is to help folks to see nuance whenever possible. I enjoy helping others to discover the hidden complexity in things that tend to make us mad or confused... it's like turning a negative into the most amazing positive ever, transforming anger into curiosity and even excitement.
Having grown up in Soviet Ukraine, I have a well-developed allergy to forces displays of patriotism, so I'm 100% with you.
Also...uh..."poop," I guess?
Well, since you brought up poop....
It's pretty poopy that the US makes kids do this. I mean, "makes" is a slippery word here, but if every other kid around you is doing it, there's a very real cost to choosing not to conform.
Did you have to wear matching dark-blue uniforms and little metal pins in the shape of a red star with young Lenin's face on them?
Then you ain't seen nothing, my evil capitalist pig friend. Sorry, force of habit.
Yes and no here.
Yes, Soviet thought control was vastly worse than American thought control. That is undeniable.
No because the US is supposed to represent freedom of thought itself.
Freedom is slavery, dude.
Big Brother is watching you while you watch "Big Brother."
It's propganda turtles all the way down, man.
Left is up. Right is blue.
There's definitely something interesting in the slogan "freedom is slavery."
It might be interesting to go down the rabbit hole of "freedom from" vs "freedom to." I think that explains an awful lot of the whole communism vs capitalism debate in a way that's overly simplistic, but still useful to understand.
Or is there even free will, from a theological or materialistic point of view?
Obviously, the correct answer here is: yes and no.
I recall watching fellow students hear the bell and race out of the classroom like lab rats.
Oh yeah, there was like NOTHING a teacher could do or say to keep us in there!