I pledge allegience

The "promotion ceremony" this year for departing 5th graders at Capitol Hill Elementary School in Portland, Oregon did not include the Pledge of Allegiance, as the ceremony has in previous years. Instead, the students sang the Preamble to the Constitution.

Naturally, some people were upset. I heard some discussion about this issue on a radio talk show last week. And of course, this discussion led into a rehash of the case Michael Newdow brought to a court in California, claiming that recitation of the Pledge in public schools, including the phrase "under God," in an un-Constitutional endorsement of religion. People get very touchy about the Pledge. About the flag. There are a lot of people who will state, who wholeheartedly believe, that anyone who does not honor and pledge allegiance to the flag is un-American, anti-American, and any other (negative)-American you can come up with.

Here's the thing. And here's why I like what the school in Portland did. I have no allegiance to the flag. None. Not to the flag. I know all the arguments. It's a symbol of what this country stands for...our brave young men and women have died defending the flag...et cetera, et cetera. I disagree that our troops have died defending the flag. Because, as was stated, it's a SYMBOL. To quote the late, great George Carlin, "I leave symbols to the symbol-minded." What our troops have defended, and what I do offer my allegiance to, are the principles that we as a nation and a people stand for, that we strive for. That is why I think the Preamble is a good, if not perfect, replacement for the Pledge. I think it says a lot more about who we are than pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth. I mean, if our flag was changed tomorrow, if it was decided that instead of stars and stripes, our flag would be fifty rainbows inside a circle in the lower right corner, of a solid yellow rectangle, or an iceberg carved into Mt. Rushmore with 2 bespectacled hippopotami dancing the Jitterbug atop Teddy Roosevelt's head, it would not change my feelings about my country, or my life in any way. Because my allegiance is not to the flag! The flag only matters because the flag means USA. If we decide that something else means USA, that other something will matter, but again only to that extent. It's like when a sports team changes their logo. The fans don't stop rooting. Conversely, if we decided tomorrow that the principles we stand for are suddenly different --- say, for example, that the far-out wing nuts on fringe of the Christian Right were able to succeed in officially and completely making us a Bible-based theocracy, I would have to reconsider my allegiance. (And my address. But that is another story.)

There was no such thing as this pledge of allegiance to our flag until 1892. Before then, we were able to break our ties from Britain, defeat them in a war and establish this nation; we survived a 2nd war with Britain and our own Civil War, where roughly half of the nation seceded and were repatriated; we had at least one Presidential election that was not decided by the Electoral College and had to go to the House of Representatives, and one where the winner of the electoral vote, and the Presidency, did not win the popular vote; we survived the first death of a President, and the first assassination of a President; we welcomed 31 new states into the nation. All of this was done without anyone pledging allegiance to the flag. It was done by holding fast and true to the Constitution (more or less, in some of the above examples), and to the principles upon which we were founded - or at least the ones under which we operate, which I admit sometimes differ from the former.

I think what gets me most is that, in a way, the recitation of the Pledge is what seems to me to be somewhat un-American. At least it's un-what-"American"-should-be. It's very much what the current crop of right-wing, mostly Christian, Republicans publicly consider to be "American." It just seems a little bit off to me. Through 12th grade, I, along with my schoolmates, recited the Pledge at the start of every school day. I never really thought about it. It was just something that we did. I looked up at the flag, put my hand over my... well, most people will say they're putting their hand over their heart, but more often than not it's put roughly over the aorta... and recited the words, roughly in unison with the others in my homeroom. Now that I think about it, in adulthood, such a rote, daily recitation of a pledge of allegiance to a nation's flag seems to me to be the kind of thing that we would chide our enemies for making their nations' school children do. Think about it. If we didn't have daily Pledge recitation in our schools, don't you think that's the kind of thing we'd claim was done (true or not) in Nazi Germany, in Cold War Era Soviet Union, in modern Islamic nations maybe, as a way of brainwashing, indoctrinating, maybe even programming their young? Can't you picture the grainy, black-and-white film footage of German kids, about 8 or 9 years old, standing rigid in their rows next to their desks, right arms thrust outward pointing slightly upward, eyes fixed on the swastika at the center of the flag in the front of their class, under the approving yet sternly watchful gaze of the schoolmaster... and, from the portrait just to the right of the flag, der Führer.

Is that the way things are supposed to work in this country?