By: Chris Cantwell (Chris is a libertarian constitutional activist, author and host of the blog and internet radio show “The Revolution Report!”)
It is rare today to find a conservative who doesn’t think, that anyone who refuses to say the pledge of allegiance is traitor or a socialist or both. The pledge is recited at the beginning of so many different types of gatherings from public schools to “Tea Parties” to you name it. Try to find an American who doesn’t know the words by heart, let me know how that works out for ya. If only more Americans knew their Constitution this well, or for that matter, the truth about the pledge of allegiance, I am certain that America would be a wonderful place to live.
But the fact of the matter is, America is not a wonderful place to live, and it is completely because of that ignorance. People say the pledge of allegiance and think America is the greatest country in the world, the freest, but the fact of the matter is, America ranks 9th in world Freedom according to the Heritage foundation. Mind you this is not some UN Study that gauges freedom by how good your socialized medicine works, or some libertarian conspiracy theory, this is an American, conservative, thinktank! Americans say the pledge and think about the military and how it protects our freedoms, neglecting to take into consideration that War is the biggest enemy of freedom and that one reason their taxes and inflation are so high is because we do 70% of the worlds military spending, partially because we have not known a period of peace longer than 33 years since our inception, and the last time it was that long was after the Civil War. Since World War 1 we haven’t gone more than 21 years, and since World War 2, we literally haven’t known a single 10 year span of peace. I could go on infinitely with this portion of the article, but I want to get to the subject of the title. I felt it was necessary to get these few points out though, because I want you to stop for a minute and think about just what it is you are pledging allegiance to, your flag is a symbol of your Federal Government, which has completely disregarded the Constitution and the sovereignty of the states, and is the source of so much misery both here and abroad it is a wonder to this author how so many well meaning Americans can see themselves in league with it.
This sort of thing wouldn’t happen in an educated society. So let me do my part to increase the peace by giving you some education on your pledge of allegiance. This is by no means an exhaustive history, but you could find most of it within a few minutes of Googling, or you can read the book “The Pledge of Allegiance, A Revised History and Analysis” by Dr. John W. Baer. I hope you will do your best to prove me wrong, and get a great education in the process.
“The Pledge” was originally written in 1892 by a man named Francis Bellamy, a Baptist Minister, and a “Christian Socialist”. Francis Bellamy worked for a magazine called “The Youth’s Companion” (Socialists influencing children) which originally published the pledge in that year’s September 8th issue. The original text went as follows “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”. Interestingly, despite Francis Bellamy’s religious roots, the precious to conservatives “Under God” line, wasn’t added until quite some time later. He had considered adding “equality and fraternity” after “Liberty and Justice” but decided against it since most people were still against equality for women and blacks at the time.
Francis Bellamy’s socialist viewpoint was heavily influenced by his cousin Edward Bellamy. Edward was a socialist American author of books like “Looking Backward”, the third best seller of its time, in which a man falls asleep for 113 years and wakes up in a socialist utopia in the year 2,000 (perhaps this book should be re-categorized to non-fiction!). That book went on to form the Nationalist Movement, which, as patriotic as it sounds to people who don’t comprehend the virtues federalism, was not about improving the country, but nationalizing industry (Socialism), and enforcing the supremacy of the Federal Government over that of the states, completely contrary to the US Constitution.
In an effort to promote Nationalism, (and the magazine) Francis Bellamy and James Upham (Editor of “The Youth’s Companion”), worked with the National Education Association to get the Youth’s Companion and the pledge to be sponsors of the Columbus day celebration, and then lined up Congress and President Benjamin Harris to proclaim that public school flag ceremonies, which would involve recitation of the pledge, would be the center of the nations Columbus day celebrations. And so it went that on October 12th 1892, public schools were first dictated by the Federal Government to use the pledge.
Today we salute the flag with our hands over our hearts, but that’s not how it always went. Originally we used, the “Bellamy Salute”, which given his socialist leanings, it shouldn’t come as a total surprise to us that it looked a lot more like the Nazi salute. Pledgers were instructed to hold their arms straight out and upward in the direction of the flag with their palm down, and end with their palm up, as illustrated in the image above.
The switch from the old Nazi salute to what is now customary, came under the administration conservatives love to hate, that of Franklin D Roosevelt. Congress passed a law altering the Flag Code on June 22nd 1942 that civilians would hold their hands over their hearts while saying the pledge.
The Phrase “Under God” was not officially incorporated into the pledge until 1954, though organizations like “Sons of the American Revolution” and “The Knights of Columbus” had been using it in their pledges starting around 1948, and had been pushing since then to get the flag code amended as such.
In summary, contrary to most Americans beliefs, the Pledge of Allegiance has nothing to do with the Revolution, the Founders, or the Constitution. It wasn’t even written until more than a century after the Constitution was ratified, and it was done so by socialists in order to promote socialism and undermine the constitutional limits on the federal government, by teaching children that their allegiance was not to their State Government, but to the Federal Government, in the name of Nationalism. Not that Liberal Democrats should take this as a reason to celebrate, as Bellamy was staunchly anti-immigrant and was cooperative with, if not in favor of suppressing women and blacks, and the pledge is now used to cram the idea of monotheism down the throats of children with the legally disputed “under god” phrase. Indeed the history of the pledge of allegiance is one wrought with government control of all aspects of our lives, and should be repugnant to people on the left and the right. But I’m sure that won’t stop people from saying it proudly with illusions of freedom blinding them from the reality that we are all slaves to a global corporate totalitarian state.