Terrorism, Patriotism and the Farce of the Pledge of Allegiance Essay

Terrorism, Patriotism and the Farce of the Pledge of Allegiance   It is unfortunate that the terrorists did not attack and destroy the Pledge of Allegiance instead of the World Trade Center.  nevertheless politicians and zealots have perverted patriotism to include a blind veneration of the United States based on an oversimplified conception that disregards current laws and social customs, a perversion evident in the idolatry performed regularly by most American citizens during the Pledge of Allegiance.   When he authored the pledge in 1892, Christian Socialist and Baptist minister Francis Bellamy treasured to capture the spirit of indivisible union that the Civil War had validated a generation earlier. Bellamy was a radical of his time, however, and intended to emphasize the socialist prescript of equality and a utopian, nationalist sensibility. This point has accumulated fine layers of irony with time, and I intend to show the extent to which the pledge is among t he most ironic and sorry of texts.   There are some intrinsic problems with Bellamys original draft, which reads I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. But to do Bellamy justice, it should be noted that in 1923 and 1924, the National Flag Conference changed his my Flag to the Flag of the United States of America, and Congress, influenced by the Knights of Columbus, more curiously added under God. I leave analyze the Pledge as it currently exists with the spirit of a vivisection. I want to show the dynamic affect of the Pledge on American sentience and vice versa, and as usual I offer no anesthetic.   I pledge allegiance to the Fl... ... form a disgraceful lie, you need only eye and the capacity for thought. Did Amadou Diallo receive justice? How do Native Americans feel about the pledges insistence of universal liberty? What have homosexual faculty members and their partners, who ha ve been told by the University that their unions, however legal, only constitute three-fifths of a marriage, to say about the pledges notion of equality? We would love to believe that liberty and justice for all is a reality, just it unfortunately fails to constitute even a priority our reciting makes it real only in the imagination, a daily narcotic liturgy that blunts our reaction to injustice and the misdemeanor of liberty. The greatest service that we can provide for our country and our people is to utilize our critical faculties and to resist appropriately, regardless of how un-American this use of reason seems.