There is a certain category of things which over the years and through common use have become thought of in the minds of the American People as patriotic. I’m all for true patriotism when it is something that is supported by the ideas expressed within the Constitution.
There can be problems when something comes up that sounds patriotic to one’s country which is in actuality contrary to the principles in which that country was founded. The problem can be further exacerbated when the contrary idea is preached over and over again, into the minds of the people, as a legitimate principle of what the country is. Again we come across the old Joseph Goebbels idea that a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth; not in actuality but at least in the minds of the people repeating the lie. Consequently I look for the kinds of things that we say over and over, without thinking them through, and often enough I find that there is some subtle mistruth embedded within.
Just to be clear about what I’m talking about I offer for the sake of discussion the definition of patriotism as being loyal to one’s country and its principles in actions or words.
I may be somewhat unusual in my thinking of what the United States is. Most people will look at a map and see there the shape of the United States outlined and point to it. Most people will look at the place where they are standing, point around them and say “this is part of the United States.”
While what is called the United States can be pointed to on a map, today, it is not consistent with the passing of time. The United States of 1791, for example, is not the same United States of 1959. You can look at a map of Alaska and Hawaii circa 1958 and they are still there, still the same shape, just not part of the United States. So every time a State was added the United States changed shape and grew.
Since 1959 the United States has not grown. The unpleasant side of this is that nothing in nature is ever static; staying the same, neither growing nor shrinking. The United States has stopped growing. Why and how this happened is another topic which I have already covered in this article. It’s a simple and predictable fact of nature that if it doesn’t start growing again it will at sometime begin to collapse. States can and will leave the Union, again. The United States will again change size and shape.
To me the real United States is not a position on a map surrounded by borders. I think of the ideas within the original Constitution plus the first twelve amendments as the real United States. There are some problems with many of the amendments after the Twelfth Amendment which I’ve written about in these four articles.
As a military man my oath was not to a president, nor a country, nor a government, nor a position on a map.
It was to defend a specifically defined set of principles outlined and enumerated within the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.
I took that oath of my own free will, knowing full well what it was that I was swearing my loyalty to. I was as very clear on that point then as I am on it now. This is the way that oaths should be administered.
Just to be clear what I am talking about here, the definition of an oath per Oxford is: “a solemn promise, often invoking a divine witness, regarding one's future action or behavior.”
The definition of a pledge, again per Oxford, is: “a solemn promise or undertaking.”
It is clear from these definitions that we are in fact talking about the same class of thing.
The wrong way to administer an oath is to have a bunch of people, especially really young ones, mindlessly chant it, day after day, without them understanding what it is that they are making their solemn promise to uphold, support or defend. That’s not the administration of an oath or pledge. It’s brainwashing.
How can someone who doesn’t even understand the words of the pledge, or the history and principles of the country which they are given, promise solemnly to support it?
I think there’s something else at work here which has nothing to do with actual analytical understanding. Putting on the tin foil hat I would say that there is something that someone is after here and they want it reflexively understood in knee-jerk fashion rather than through any kind of well thought out principle.
What I’m going to do here, for the sake of brevity, is copy the following paragraph from the Wikipedia page for him. (This, because Wiki frequently changes, is current as of 12/17/22.)
“Bellamy was a Christian socialist who ‘championed “'the rights of working people and the equal distribution of economic resources, which he believed was inherent in the teachings of Jesus.”' In 1891, Bellamy was ‘forced from his Boston pulpit for preaching against the evils of capitalism’, and eventually stopped attending church altogether after moving to Florida, reportedly because of the racism he witnessed there. Francis's career as a preacher ended because of his tendency to describe Jesus as a socialist. In the 21st century, Bellamy is considered an early American democratic socialist.”
For the purposes of this article is all we really need to know about him.
The author of the Pledge of Allegiance was a card carrying hard core Socialist. AOC and Bernie have nothing on him as self professed followers of Marx. The author of the Pledge of Allegiance has more in common with Nancy Pelosi than George Washington.
The Pledge of Allegiance as written by him was, “I pledge Allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” He had written this and it was published in September of 1892.
In 1923 “the flag of the United States” was added. The words “of America” were added in 1924.
In 1942 the Pledge was formally included in the US Flag Code. The official name was added in 1945 along with the words “under God.”
Setting aside the fact that the words of the Pledge have been thoroughly ingrained into the American consciousness by the use of techniques that are covered in the style of Orwellian fiction, what are the problems that I have with it?
The first is that a flag is a symbol of a country, not the country itself, nor the founding principles of the country. Let’s say for the sake of example that a flag is commissioned to be the symbol of a fictitious country called “Fictitioustan.” The constitution of the newly founded country, Fictitioustan, says that everybody has the right to freedom. So naturally everybody takes a pledge to support the flag of Fictitioustan, rather than the real estate or the constitution on which and under which Fictitioustan was founded. Fifty years later the government of Fictitioustan is infiltrated and overthrown by communists, a Soviet style dictatorship is formed, the constitution is rewritten but the flag and the borders of the country remain the same.
What is it the people of that country are then swearing allegiance to when they pledge to their flag? The previous country and all of its principles are gone, history, finis. Now they are sworn to uphold what? Well, their communist dictator of course!
Since countries change size and shape and governments, all of the time, all over the world, shouldn’t an oath or pledge be devoted to a given set of principles? That way they are always attached to the same thing and are much less likely to be interchanged covertly or overtly with something else.
This is the very reason the military oaths and presidential oaths are written the way that they are. They are to the fixed set of principles in the Constitution.
The second of my objections is that “one nation” is in direct contradiction to the Constitution. The United States, under the Constitution as originally ratified (plus the first twelve amendments) was not one country. It was the individual States as independent and sovereign nations under a federal republic called the United States.
The idea of “one nation” under the Constitution didn’t happen until sometime shortly before Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. There was once a document call the “Articles of Confederation” under which the original thirteen colonies formed in opposition to the British Empire. That document did contain the words that “the union shall be perpetual” but those words were debated and dropped at the Constitutional Convention.
This leads me right up to my third objection; indivisible with liberty is a contradiction of terms.
The word liberty means the quality or state of being free and doing as one pleases. This would include as a fundamental right the freedom to leave or disassociate from someone or something.
Indivisible means “unable to be divided or separated.”
Certainly they sound all good and patriotic in an emotional sort of way, largely because we have repeated them over and over again until they are practically etched on the inside of our skulls, but indivisible with liberty cannot happen in a logical universe.
If somebody does something that is objectionable to you then you have every right to leave them. If half a country does something that is objectionable to you then the other half has every right to leave them. It is a human right to associate or disassociate with someone. It’s a unique thing in this universe, recently discovered and rarely found, and it is called freedom.
I’m not particularly fond of conspiracy theories but sometimes things just fit too well to be ignored.
Within fifteen years of the end of the Reconstruction Era of United States history, and when Marxism was really beginning to take hold in the world, a Socialist writes a pledge telling us all that we have to believe that the country is represented by a flag that we all have to swear to, rather than any fixed set of principles. We are one nation in spite of what the Constitution and US history have to say about it and we somehow have liberty without being able or allowed to declare our independence when that country starts stepping on our individual and State’s rights. Then as grade school children we are all practically forced by law to recite these words over and over again, every day, without understanding their meaning or the meaning of the words of the Constitution that really represent the country that we live in.
These are irrefutable and well documented facts.
Also, all these years later, an irrefutable fact is that those supporting socialism are trying to overtake the United States, and it could be said that they are largely succeeding.
Well that kind of change doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a long time and a very clever campaign to talk people out of their freedom. Part of the trick is to make the slow change sound wise and patriotic.
How would one reverse such a trend?
Currently it is my thinking to learn and teach the Constitution as a set of principles that we are supposed to follow when engaging in political life. That would include challenging any principle contradicting the Constitution and removing it from public discourse wherever possible.
For me I refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance as it was originally written and as it is recited today. I, if I had my own way, wouldn’t allow it to be mandated in school even if the contradictions were corrected. I would however recommend that schools encourage it to be recited, after the contradictions are corrected, and even then only after its words are completely understood by the students and the students have passed a course on the Constitution which teaches directly from the Constitution itself.
Speaking of correcting the Pledge of Allegiance, here’s how I would rewrite it.
“I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the republic which it defines, a nation of sovereign States, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”
It’s not an instant fix. There is no such thing as an instant fix. However if we rid ourselves of things that are not in keeping with the Constitution and encourage that same thinking with other people the current trend of this country will eventually reverse.
Then maybe the United States will begin to grow again.
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