im 20 for reference. ever since i was a kid, up until hs, we were forced every morning to stand, look at the flag and hold our hearts and say:
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”
i didnt stand a single time because i disagreed with being forced, and i was berated by the teacher in front of everyone, and he threatened to kick me out of class if i ever did it again. i was about 11-12 then, it was 2015.
As an outsider, I find it very cultish to pledge to a piece of cloth.
no doubt, i 100% find it very cult-like and disgusting, and i had realized it then too.
It’s very strange. It’s a very doublethink cult. The same people who worship the flag will vote to not give health benefits to 9/11 first responders. Those same people will then use american flag napkins.
It absolutely is, doubly so because of the added and unneeded “under god” bs that gets shoved into everything…
That’s actually relatively recent, which is way, given the meter of the poem, it feels a little shoe-horned in. It was.
I wanna say it was in the 60s or so? Essentially as a way to promote a devout Christian image of America to contrast against the godless Soviets.
The pledge was written, by a minister in 1891 without the “under God” part. It was added by Congress in 1954 in the midst of Macarthyism and the Red Scare. In 2002 an appeals court said that forcing public school students to recite it was went against the separation of Church and State, and it was but stayed. The Supreme Court overturned that in 2004, but I think a lot of schools may have dropped it then.
that was a huge issue i had with it too, but i omitted that so i didnt seem like an edgy tween atheist (though its a 100% valid criticism that i should have included).
Since I became an adult I always found it kind of strange. I did not realize just how strange it was until I dropped my son off at Pre-K a little late and walked in to a whole class of 4 year olds hands on hearts mumbling through the pledge. It was sooo eerie.
As a genX-er, I grew up having to say it through elementary and middle school. I quit participating in the mid ‘80s. We were forced to attend John Birch Society events in school hat would talk about how horrible Russia was and how they fed propaganda to the kids from an early age. Reagan would always talk about all the horrible things USSR would do with their childhood propaganda too. I realized right away that everything the school was doing was the same thing.
I got labeled as a bad kid. Not Christian enough and not obedient enough.
I attended a school board meeting recently and they asked everyone stand and recite before the meeting would begin. I got so many dirty looks for refusing.
To watch a room full of adults look and pledge to a flag was comical and disturbing
I went to elementary school in the late 60s and early 70s and yes, we said the pledge every day. I didn’t think anything about it back then.
As a Boy Scout in the mid 70s, we said the pledge at every meeting. Again, I gave it no thought.
In the 90s, I was in a Ham Radio club and they said it before every meeting. I found it odd, but went along with them.
In the last few years, I joined the local HOG (Harley Owners Group) chapter and they said it before every meeting. Now I’m beginning to question why, as an adult in a seemingly innocuous club, am I supposed to pledge my allegiance to the flag. This isn’t the military, there’s no reason for it.
If you’re wanting me to say the pledge to the flag, you’re just wanting me to show my patriotism and that word is about as vile to me now as a racial slur.
If I ever find myself in an organization that wants me to stand and recite the pledge, I’ll be walking out the door.
Good for you OP! I stopped standing to pledge around when I was maybe 10 or 11, when I learned it was illegal to make standing for it mandatory & about how the words ‘under God’ were added later and the pledge violated separation of church and state. I come from a very liberal area and all my teachers were quite proud of me I think, especially my 6th-grade teacher. But a lot of my classmates didn’t understand and I got bullied a lot for it. But I refused to do it. My mom was teaching public policy so…that probably influenced it a lot haha
As a German, this entire things feels always so bizarre to me. If a teacher “over here” would try and make their students do something similar for the German flag, said teacher would get kicked out of the faculty pretty quickly.
The same goes for religion by the way. While we did have classes about religion for a while (Katholischer / Evangelischer Religionsunterricht), the teachers were more or less just explaining what certain passages of the Bible meant, how they had been misinterpreted in the past, what is similar or different between certain religions etc. but not even they were allowed to make their students actually pray.
PS: and those were optional classes by the way. If your parents didn’t want you to attend, you didn’t attend. No discussion.
Non american here. I have a few questions.
- What exactly does it mean?
- What if you don’t agree with it, for example the “under of god” part.
- Does it have a legal status? For example can you be arrested for not pleging allegiance, or failing to have pledged at some point in your life?
- What about freedom of speech? How can one force you to express yourself? I feel like freedom of speech goes both ways : I’d like to have the same freedom of “not speech” as well.
- As school children, we swore this oath. It describes loyalty to the flag and (more importantly) the nation and ideals that the flag represents.
- As a child, I would just be silent during the ‘under god’ part. No one noticed. If they had, there isn’t really anything they could do about it.
- There have been lawsuits. Basically, you are not legally obligated to say it. There would be a lot of peer pressure to do so, because each of our school days would start with the whole class saying it.
- Again, it is controversial, but you are not technically forced to say it.
Here is a breakdown of what the pledge means:
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America”
I swear loyalty to the flag
“and to the Republic for which it stands,”
and to the government it represents
“one Nation under God,”
a country guided by the Lord!
“indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”
united, with freedom and justice for everyone**terms and conditions apply
