The Pledge of Allegiance was written by noted Christian Socialist, Francis Bellamy in 1892 for a children’s magazine’s promotion of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ sail “across the ocean blue.” School children recited the pledge while making the “Bellamy salute” which was an homage to an ancient Rome gesture of raising an arm in front of you with a flat palm with fingers closed. Later the Nazis and their fellow fascists adopted the salute and now it’s universally recognized as how you heil Hitler. It wasn’t until the middle of WWII that Congress adopted it as the pledge, later dropping the Bellamy salute and opting for a right hand over the heart. Then it wasn’t until the Cold War that “under god” was added because our enemies were godless commies. So the Pledge is a jingoistic chant created by a children’s publication to celebrate an explorer turned brutal torture-happy tyrant with a Hitler salute. It’s not the best tradition we have in this country. And it’s not that “under god” reminds politicians they can’t take away our rights. “Under god” is a reminder that politicians invoke faith as a first refuge of scoundrels.
I’ve always found the Pledge of Allegiance to be something very close to meaningless. Really; how can the rote recitation of a political pledge invoke anything but memories of totalitarian regimes (Nuremberg Rally, anyone??)? What is it about reciting the Pledge that connotes allegiance to anything but blind obedience? Like any other American, I can recite the pledge, because like most of us, I recited it with my fellow students every morning at the beginning of the school day. It was a ritual, devoid of meaning or value, something we were forced to do because someone somewhere thought that forcing students to recite it would turn us into loyal Americans. In reality, all it did was turn us into thoughtless automatons, reciting a meaningless string of words because that was what was expected of us.
Onward, Christian soldiers….
The current Far Right-wing freakout over the Pledge of Allegiance is indicative of just how thoroughly and utterly meaningless it’s become. Conservatives like Mike Huckabee have their panties in a wad over the American Humanist Association becoming involved in a case where a student in California was punished for refusing to say the words “under God.” Never mind that this sort of thing has been held to be unconstitutional. It’s a pledge, not a loyalty oath…and it’s a public school, not a church. An “under God” wasn’t even part of the original Pledge of Allegiance.
Did you hear atheists are suing god? According to Fox News’ for-profit preacher Mike Huckabee they do it all the time! “Dear Lord!” he tweeted this week, “Atheists are suing God AGAIN!”…. “The founders believed our inalienable rights derive from a power higher than government,” writes Huckabee. “‘Under God’ is a reminder that elected officials did not grant us our rights, and have no power to rescind them.”
No, despite the breathless capitol letters, atheists are not suing God…not now, not ever. The founders may have believed that “our inalienable rights derive from a power higher than government,” but they weren’t unanimous in agreeing on what that higher power is. The Founding Fathers were not uniformly Christian- Thomas Jefferson, for instance, was a deist- so for Huckabee to claim that American governance is a power granted by Almighty is
1) The height of arrogance and hyper-religious self-aggrandizement, or
2) Proof the Huckabee either doesn’t know his American history and/or that he’s chosen to interpret it in a way that buttress his prejudices and preconceived notions.
How ignorant and/or dismissive of American history is Huckabee? Enough so that he’s conveniently managed to blow right past three crucial facts when it comes to the Pledge of Allegiance:
1) The author, Francis Bellamy, was a Christian SOCIALIST. Under normal circumstances, the “s” word would have Huckabee frothing at the mouth…but since his dominant narrative depends on maintaining a myth, he’s evidently chosen to ignore Bellamy’s ideological peccadillo.
2) The pledge was originally recited with a salute that looked suspiciously similar to what we now call a “Hitler salute”- arm extended, palm flat and facing down, fingers closed. This become inconvenient during WWII, so it was replaced with a hand over the heart.
3) “Under God” was not even part of the original Pledge of Allegiance. Those two words were added during the Cold War because, as any red-blooded American patriot knew, our Eastern Bloc adversaries were godless Communists unworthy of God’s love and worthy only of total, abject destruction.
Perhaps the Pledge of Allegiance meant something once upon a time. To someone. As with the forced recitation of any oath, over time the Pledge has become just so many words, meaningless verbal vomit that no longer represents what Conservatives like Huckabee believe it to. It’s no longer about pledging allegiance to America, the flag, or any other patriotic b.s.; it’s about teaching children that blind obedience is both patriotic AND godly. It’s about mouthing words devoid of meaning and significance because those in authority demand it. More than anything, it’s about American Taliban zealots like Mike Huckabee who don’t know their American History and conflate what they do know with the Gospel. They care only about enforcing their intolerant brand of authoritarian Christianity, even at the expense of the Constitution they purport to revere, .
[T]he Pledge is a jingoistic chant created by a children’s publication to celebrate an explorer turned brutal torture-happy tyrant[.]
Indeed, which only proves how off base Mike Huckabee truly is. Religious faith really IS the first refuge of a scoundrel.
Zealots like Mike Huckabee do serve one useful purpose: they illustrate the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in introducing the separation of Church and State and establishing America’s governance as firmly ground in secular phiosophy.
