Reflections on the Pledge of Allegiance this Fourth of July

As we celebrate the Declaration of Independence and birth of our great nation this Fourth of July with back yard barbecues, fireworks, and little children with hands over hearts reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, it is vitally important to remember also that the ultimate survival of liberty in the United States of America requires constant vigilance and critical thought.  

With this in mind, I reflect today upon how the Pledge of Allegiance is profoundly un-American in that it undermines and effectively negates everything our originally conceived nation represents, and is tantamount therefore to a political and religious declaration against individual freedom in America.

In short the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance represent two distinct philosophical concepts which are diametrically opposed.

The Declaration of Independence presents a rationale for individual political liberty as against an established authority. The Pledge of Allegiance satisfies a collective political (and presently overtly religious) demand for obligatory individual loyalty and conformance to an established authority, i.e. god and country. 

A cursory history of the pledge reveals that it was conceived in 1892 as a government loyalty oath by one Francis Bellamy, a committed socialist and Baptist minister, for the expressed purpose of inoculating immigrants and little school children with a sense of duty and obligation of conformity to United States government authority, as well as to have them embrace the ideas of nationalism, militarism, and socialism.

In its original form, the pledge was accompanied by the Bellamy salute; right hand outstretched to the flag with palm down, i.e. identical to the later Nazi salute to their swastika flag and Adolph Hitler.

The Nazi’s, in fact, borrowed the entire pledge of allegiance concept and authoritarian military style salute from the good old U.S.A. Yes, it was us Americans who were first to act like a nation of Nazi’s, and we who taught the Nazi’s how to worship god and country.

This Nazi style salute was mandatory and performed routinely by American public school children with the full force of law right up until 1942, when President Roosevelt initiated the change to right hand over heart. A refusal of public school kids to stand and recite the pledge with the rest of the class is a punishable offense in some jurisdictions even today, despite Supreme Court precedent to the contrary.

The Pledge of Allegiance is plainly and simply a loyalty oath - an anathema to freedom – the opposite of liberty. What is more un-American than a government sponsored loyalty oath? Fascists and communists insist on loyalty oaths.

The U.S. government was not conceived by the founding fathers as our master. It is, rather, our servant. At least that’s what it is supposed to be. “We the People” do not belong to this nation. This nation belongs to “We the People.” Government officials, agents, and bureaucrats, should therefore be pledging allegiance to their masters, the people -- not the other way around. School kids shouldn't be pledging their allegiance to the government. The government should be pledging its allegiance to them! 

Government is our servant. Why don’t we treat it that way?

Congress, and President Eisenhower, responding to the national “godless communist threat” hysteria and perennial American religious revival fever during the cold war with Russia, inserted the words "under God" following the word “nation” to the pledge in 1954.

A pledge of loyalty to a nation "under God" is even more egregious and un-American than a religiously neutral government loyalty oath, because it attributes the very creation control of the republic to God above all else, thereby contradicting the plain historical constitutional fact that “We the People” created and control our nation.

What better evidence is there of a government establishment of religion than for the state to proclaim as a matter of law that this nation is "under God?"  This is not a nation under God. This is a nation under law -- not men, kings, or gods. That is an historical fact which cannot be denied.  Yet the Pledge of Allegiance denies it. And the United States Congress and the President of the United States deny it.

To those good and honest people out there who desire the restoration of public school prayer, "under God" in the pledge, and the Ten Commandments displayed in public buildings, I ask you, with all due respect: Is your religious faith so pitifully weak and fragile that you need the government to support and promote it? 

On this Fourth of July, do you require a government God in order to believe in God?