Posted by
Recreational Ranter on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 4:53:08 PM
I'm rejecting yet another icon of "Americanism", the Pledge of Allegiance.
As we have been often reminded, "Words mean things." The Pledge was written by one Francis Bellamy, evidently a de-frocked Bostonian Baptist minister and socialist, who penned the original version in 1892. Okay, so nobody's perfect! Still, the portion that gives the chief offense is the phrase ". . . one nation under God, indivisible . . . [emphasis mine]"
The under God part is fine, but the indivisible thing sticks in my craw. I don't care that Lincoln's war "proved" we were one and indivisible (Read: "Stay in the Union and pay us your taxes and tarriffs or we'll kill you."); the framers of the Constitution maintained a different idea. As quixotic as that may seem in the twenty-first century, I'll stick with their quaint old idea.
If we must have a pledge, I prefer this one by Elizabeth Farah of World Net Daily:
I pledge allegiance to the Declaration and the Constitution of the United States of America and to the
unalienable rights for which they stand. I will proclaim them, I will defend them, in the name of truth
and of justice and of freedom for all. God bless America.