Pubdate: Sun, 30 Jun 2002
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Webpage: www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E150%257E702538%257E,00.htm
Copyright: 2002 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Ed Quillen

PARSING THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

During my grammar-school days, we faithfully recited the Pledge of 
Allegiance every morning, although I can't remember whether it happened 
before or after the teacher took attendance - perhaps that was left up to 
the schoolmarm.

Of course this made my baby-boom generation into a cohort of wholesome 
patriots who would never question the righteous wisdom of American 
involvement in Vietnam. Nor would we ever even think of violating the 
humane and sensible drug laws of this great republic. And there was no need 
for those Civil Rights laws in the 1960s, since America already had 
"liberty and justice for all," despite the firehoses and police dogs we saw 
on television.

Can we get a little bit real here?

That's going to be difficult, given the current furor over a decision last 
week by a federal circuit court in California that the recitation of the 
Pledge of Allegiance in public-school classrooms is a violation of the 
constitutional separation of church and state, thanks to the "under God" 
phrase.

The decision has been denounced 99-0 by the U.S. Senate, and if anyone has 
praised the ruling, the fact has escaped my notice. And I'm not going to 
praise the court's decision. As far as I'm concerned, the constitutional 
guarantee of freedom of speech means you have a right to recite the pledge 
or not recite the pledge, and I am unaware that anyone has been fined or 
imprisoned in recent years for failure to recite the pledge.

But that seems to evade the bigger issue: What purpose does the pledge 
serve? That is, what is supposed to be accomplished by recitation of the 
Pledge of Allegiance at the start of the school day?

If the idea is to produce wholesome youth who rush to the military 
recruiters' offices, never question authority and attend church regularly, 
then it was a miserable failure 40 years ago.

And if that's not the idea, then why are conservatives like our own State 
Sen. John Andrews so eager to require the pledge as part of the Colorado 
school curriculum?

It's not as though the pledge was a creation of George Washington, Thomas 
Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln. It wasn't part of the Federalist Papers; 
indeed, it didn't emerge until 1892 when it was published in the "Youth's 
Companion" magazine and proposed as part of the celebration of the 400th 
anniversary of the day that Christopher Columbus blundered into America 
when he was aiming for Japan.

Most historians credit it to Edward Bellamy, a Baptist minister. Despite 
his clerical calling, though, he wasn't the one who made "under God" part 
of the pledge -that didn't happen until 1954, as a result of a campaign by 
the Knights of Columbus, presumably to differentiate God-fearing Americans 
from those atheistic commies.

Bellamy was also a socialist. Our right-thinkers have never been in any 
hurry to require the recitation of other socialist works. Just think of the 
alarm if our schoolchildren started the day by reciting "Workers of the 
world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains."

But parse the pledge as I might for any subversive socialist message, I 
can't find one. Granted, the pledge does not extol the virtues of insider 
trading, asset looting and price rigging, but on the other hand, it does 
not call for public ownership of factories, mines and utilities, either.

The pledge does stress that the United States is a republic, not a 
democracy or an empire, and that's a distinction which is important to 
conservatives like Pat Buchanan.

But the main reason that the pledge is a pet conservative cause, according 
to historian Garry Wills in his excellent 1990 book, "Under God: Religion 
and American Politics," is the phrase "under God."

According to Wills, our right-thinkers would rather have school prayer, but 
since the courts have thwarted them in that crusade, they've settled for 
pushing the pledge, because they think it's important to remind children 
that they're "under God," and for some reason, they can't trust parents or 
churches to do that.

But before there was a pledge, Americans prayed and tithed. Even if the 
rag-tag soldiers at Valley Forge never recited the pledge, they did defeat 
the superpower of the day. Despite their lack of a pledge, American 
soldiers performed heroically in the Mexican War, winning battle after 
battle even though they were outnumbered and deep in enemy territory. More 
than 600,000 Union solders were wounded or killed in the process of keeping 
this "one nation, indivisible," and not a single one of them ever recited 
the pledge.

So America managed just fine without a pledge, and it's safe to predict 
that the federal circuit court's ruling will not be upheld on appeal. Thus 
all the uproar and chest-pounding last week was mostly for show.

The pledge will remain enshrined in American public life. But no matter how 
often it is recited, it won't make much difference, one way or the other.
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