I, an American citizen who is proud of his nation, confess that I have completely lost the vibe on the Pledge of Allegiance. Seeing an announcement like this from the Governor of North Dakota…
America is the land of opportunity. And students in every public school in North Dakota, along with elected governing bodies and those who attend their meetings, should have the opportunity to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and express support for the American ideals upon which our country was founded. To that end, our administration is creating a framework for legislation to guarantee that the opportunity exists to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, as other states have done. …
…I just rolled my eyes. I just don’t understand it. N.D. Governor Doug Burgum isn’t even up for re-election, so why the grandstanding? Why fetishize the Pledge now? What, politically, is being accomplished here? North Dakota is a deeply red state with a relatively small population. What is the goal line Burgum is hoping to move to ball towards? Being picked as Ron DeSantis’ running mate in twenty-two months? Maybe. But it seems like it’s really in reaction to this:
[Fargo School] Board vice president Seth Holden motioned to axe the pledge, saying it was inconsistent with the district’s “philosophy.” Holden said the pledge “violates board policy” because “there is text within the Pledge of Allegiance which is simply not true.” He argued during the Tuesday board meeting that because multiple religions are practiced within the United States, the country can’t be “one nation under God.” Holden also said it is an “indisputable fact” that “not all U.S. citizens have liberty and justice.” According to Holden, reciting the pledge violates district policy that “school board members should be honest.” ¶ … Holden also argued the phrase “under God” is “non-inclusionary,” as it only applies to Christian and Jewish students. He cited the district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion statement to support this argument.
N.b.: after some public criticism of this move, the Fargo School Board is reconsidering this decision on its own. But that said, not all of Holden’s arguments are wrong on their face, and that’s probably fuel for the fire powering the backlash. Perhaps it’s easier to venerate the symbol than to defend the thing symbolized, at least in this case.
On a policy level, there’s old-to-nearly-ancient Supreme Court jurisprudence to the effect that students cannot be forced to recite the Pledge. I presume that Burgum would aim at doing that if he thought he could. Even so, it may be possible that Burgum is trying to tee up a challenge to the Barnette decision and reverse that now eighty-year-old precedent in favor of a new way of interpreting the First Amendment. That’d not be an entirely insane hope, given recent SCOTUS activity in other policy arenas. But there doesn’t seem to be any real push in that direction that I’m aware of. Maybe that’s something that’s coming down the pike?
There may be confusion in some peoples’ minds–although there ought not–that somehow the Pledge has been banned in schools or that what the Fargo School Board did is somehow part of a trend to try to ban it. Maybe they heard this on some questionable news or opinion source.
But in fact, public school students are still punished in this day and age for not reciting the pledge. In 2017, a Houston, Texas are high school student refused to recite the Pledge or participate in an assignment revolving around writing an essay about the Pledge and a teacher-sponsored listening of Lee Greenwood’s song God Bless the U.S.A.. She got zero grade and later, a $90,000 civil settlement. In 2018: a different Houston-area teenager was expelled from school for her refusal to recite the Pledge of Allegiance; Texas AG Ken Paxton intervened to defend the expulsion. In 2019, a sixth-grader in Lakeland, Florida was punished for “disruptive activity” following his refusal to recite the Pledge of Allegiance after the teacher argued with him about why he chose not to recite it and told him to “go home” if he didn’t like the country; the student was arrested (although the charges were later dismissed). And in 2020, a Lebanon, Pennsylvania teenager was suspended from school for his refusal to recite Pledge of Allegiance, also inspiring civil rights litigation.
I could probably find more examples of this if I dug around for more than literally five seconds; these were the top four hits I got on a simple Google search before I hit a more general policy discussion and decided that was enough for this article’s purposes. The reality of what goes on daily in our public schools is the opposite of banning the Pledge: these are examples of schools requiring recital.
Maybe there is confusion about the Pledge and prayer in the schools; one suspects the Venn Diagram of people who think prayer should be part of public schools again is probably all but completely within the Venn Diagram of those who think the Pledge ought to be mandatory. Of course, prayer in public schools is not and has never been banned. Just ask the Federal government. What’s been banned since 1962 is mandatory, school-sanctioned prayers, and even this appears to be a weakening interpretation of the Establishment Clause since we learned at the end of this Term that instructor-led prayers that are effectively mandatory by being strongly encouraged are allowed, so long as they aren’t formally mandatory.
Which seems to be where Gov. Burgum wants the Pledge to be, too — it’s not like the pledge was banned in Fargo schools, it’s just that the teachers aren’t making any more special time for it to be “voluntarily” recited. That’s the position prayer holds now, to the objection of certain political types, of which I suspect Burgum is one, and certainly one of the groups whose support Burgum craves.
I could understand why people would think the Pledge of Allegiance is a kind of prayer. Now, with courtesy to my religious friends and readers, that last sentence isn’t meant to be understood as a good thing. This is what I learned about prayers and the Pledge as a child:
“Ready? Begin. [Chorus of third graders:] 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.” [Third-grade Burt raises hand.] “Mrs. [CCD teacher]? What does “Allegiance” mean? “It means loyalty, Burt.” “Oh. Mrs. [CCD teacher]?” Another question, Burt?” “What’s a Republic?” “It’s a kind of government.” “You mean like the President?” “Burt, we have to move on to the lesson. See me after class.” “Am I in trouble?” “Just please sit down.”
Followed up roughly an hour later by:
“Hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedartthouamongstwomenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesus. [Sharp, quick breath.] Holymarymotherofgahdprayforussinnersnowandatthehourofourdeathamen.” [Next bead. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Say an “Our Father.” Go back to the start. Five cycles of that in order to get through most of the necklace. Plus some other stuff.]
Maybe your childhood experiences with these sorts of repetitive recitals rest more lightly upon your soul than they do with mine. For me, the lessons taught were: grownups for some strange reason want to hear you say a bunch of words that you neither understand nor mean, and if you ask questions about it, they will punish you by making you repeat more silly strings of words over and over and over again until your brain loses the capacity to think critically about the words you’re saying. Best, therefore, to simply learn the words and not think about what they mean or ask questions about whether or not they’re true, so as to minimize the amount of punishment you will need to endure. These are not good lessons to be teaching children, especially the particularly bright ones who ask questions.
Compelled allegiance is not allegiance at all. It is mere conformity and likely insincere conformity at that.
Mistaking a symbol of a thing for the thing itself is magical thinking, and magic ain’t real. The flag is not the same thing as the United States. It is a symbol of the United States. Demanding that people, particularly children, pledge loyalty to a flag is a simplistic, reductionist, and clumsy way to inspire patriotism. Better, far better, to offer free people reasons why a nation has earned your allegiance than to simply demand it. The nation exists to serve its people, not the other way around.
Now, as an adult, I can see much to be proud of in our national heritage and history. Perhaps the most powerful source of pride, for me, is that we have elevated our laws to be our ultimate sovereign, and inscribed our highest national ideals into our highest laws. (Those laws include the freedom to refrain from reciting pledges of loyalty which would be insincere if compelled.) And for the most part, most of our public officials and most of our people take those national ideals seriously.
I also can see, as an adult, that there have been many times when we have failed to live up to those ideals. But still I take heart and hope that even though we haven’t delivered liberty and justice for all, we are working towards improving our track record as our Founders swore to do. That’s reason enough for me to be proud of my country. Perhaps holding these two ideas at the same time is complex to the point of contradiction. I don’t think so, personally.
You don’t have to feel the way I do about this. It’s a free country, after all. Honoring your freedom and mine to disagree offers us a hint: the right result for either the Pledge or prayer in an institutional setting that must comply with the First Amendment is obviously the result that we’ve had for a long time: a public school shouldn’t oblige a student to recite, nor should it punish a student who chooses to recite on their own. That’s what it means for an institution to be neutral about something: when the institution neither encourages nor discourages it.
The real question is: is neutrality consistent with a teacher calling out a special time within the school day for students to “voluntarily” engage in a recital? After all, a teacher or other adult authority figure taking time out of the regular routine and other activities going on to “allow” students to “voluntarily” do something that the teacher also does isn’t a precisely free choice for the student even if failing to participate does not result in any sort of formal discipline. To me, that looks like encouragement, and is therefore not institutional neutrality.
Again, you are free to agree or disagree with that assessment. Particularly if you disagree, though, I encourage you to think intentionally and critically about the words of the Pledge sometime between now and the next time you’re asked to join in a public recital. What do the words of that oath, which you’ve sworn thousands of times over the course of your life, actually mean? What is it that you are now sworn to do? When you hear someone raise talk of a “national divorce” or of taking up violence to achieve a political objective, meditate for a while upon the word “indivisible,” which you’ve no doubt recited as part of this oath thousands of times in your life, and the degree to which you’ve actually sincerely undertaken that oath.
Meanwhile, let schoolkids recite, or not, as they choose. If you feel a patriotic duty to encourage children to pledge their loyalty to the nation, then do it by being an example of the kind of American who is dedicated to bringing liberty and justice to all.
The framing of this as an “opportunity” is laughable. Have you spent anytime around school-aged kids? They spend an inordinate amount of time IN SCHOOL discussing Paw Patrol/Pokemon/TikTok/etc… they have PLENTY of opportunity to recite the Pledge if they want. They choose not to. This isn’t about opportunity. It is about putting pressure on kids to do so and hopefully sliding the camel’s nose of forced recitation into the SCOTUS tent.Report
Kazzy, there’s no such thing as DEI indoctrination in schools. That’s just a political talking-point made up by demagogues. If any discussion of such topics occurs then it’s entirely in-line with established curriculum (which, I should remind, is created by professionals in a way that laymen and parents aren’t really qualified to discuss) and there’s no official movement to force students to do or say anything, and certainly no need for such an excited response–which I find very suspicious, in fact, because why are you so upset about this?Report
Please respond to what I wrote and not whatever fever dream you’re having.Report
Why start now?Report
You wrote “It is about putting pressure on kids to [engage in the ritual] and hopefully sliding the camel’s nose of forced recitation into the SCOTUS tent.”
I responded to that.Report
So why’d you discuss DEI? And attribute emotions to me I never expressed? Fail.Report
Do you think that there’s a concern with people putting pressure on kids to engage in ritual declarations of allegiance to an abstract ideal and, in so doing, hopefully slide the camel’s nose of forced recitation into the SCOTUS tent?
Or is that stuff okay if it’s the good guys doing it for the right reasons?Report
Compelling children – anyone – to mindlessly recite a pledge of allegiance to the state is creepy indoctrination and inherently un-American.
And yet the ‘reasons’ why the Fargo School Board guy objects to the pledge are ridiculous.
Both things can be true.Report
We do not, in fact, have liberty and justice for all.Report
It’s aspirational ideal. More mission statement than a historical document. Of all the the statements in the pledge, it’s the least offensive. Who is against liberty and justice for all?Report
Well we can start with the GOP.Report
The Grammy Awards……
This is a very specific reference that I will confess using just to see who gets it…Report
“One” was one of the best music videos of the 1980s.
Fun fact that I just learned via Wikipedia that may be only interesting to me:
Dalton Trumbo wrote the novel “Johnny Got His Gun” in 1939 and 30 years later adapted and directed the film himself.
I never saw the biopic starring Bryan Cranston, so perhaps this is common knowledge.Report
Trumbo was a pretty good flick, if you get the chance. I saw it right around the time Mank came out and they made a nice double feature.
Agreed about “One”. I’ve never been a huge Metallica fan, but I like what they did with that one.Report
I started watching Mank and partly because what the did with the sound, I turned it off. I should probably give it another chance.
I remember enjoying RKO 281 when HBO made it 20 years ago.Report
I didn’t notice anything odd with the sound. To me, it was one of the most beautifully filmed movies I’ve seen in a long time. And, Oldman turns in another great performance.Report
I had no idea that Fincher did this with the sound design of the film until this minute. But when I was watching the movie when it was released my ears couldn’t take it.
Interesting article nonetheless from Wired magazine:
https://www.wired.com/story/mank-netflix-sound-design/Report
Funny. They could have just shot the damn thing on film.Report
Gotta get the Pledge out to make time for a daily recitation of the Litany of Lives That #Matter.Report
Don’t all lives matter? Wait, oh no, I swear I didn’t mean it! Waaaaugh! *sucked into the cancellation vortex*Report
Depends on how you define un-American. Requiring public displays of patriotism and getting all riled up at even the slightest criticism of the United States has been seen as un-American since before the ink was dry on the Constitution or even the Declaration of Independence by a large number of Americans. Demanding that kids recite the pledge seems to fit right into this.Report
I always understood the genesis of the Pledge of Allegiance to a be a postbellum exercise directed at a disloyal south and then a turn of the century exercise intended for immigrants. The point being the same.Report
The proto-pledge was written in 1893, so the Civil War never really played a part in it.Report
The phrase Under God was added to the Pledge in 1954 to fight the Red Scare.
https://www.history.com/news/pledge-allegiance-under-god-schoolsReport
So you’re saying we’ve had “under God” in the Pledge for most of the time we’ve had the Pledge?Report
Just as we had Roe v. Wade for the majority of the post-WWII era.Report
1892-1954 – 66 years
1954-2022 – 68 years
Roughly equal parts at this point. Not sure why that matters though.Report
Please, you’re crediting Pinky with having a point. That is usually a mistake.Report
Possibly, but he keeps insisting I engage with him and not down to him, so I try anyway.Report
Yeah, ok, talk down to me about democratic “principal”.Report
you believe this is talking down to you?
Interesting. Tell me, what principle do you think this inculcates?Report
No, no, no, you’re mistaken. I’m suggesting that someone who makes these kind of spelling mistakes can’t talk down to someone else.
Like, where you say “Because they do want to loose their perceived power…” it’s possible that you mean they actually do want to set their power loose, but I think it’s more likely that you mean they don’t want to lose their perceived power. You can’t talk down to someone with sentences like that.
And we all make typos, I understand that, and we all have our writing styles. But did you really mean that “It is more important to appear patriotic then be patriotic”, as in first appear then actually be? You probably meant “than” instead of “then”.
And that’s just this page. Eight comments, three mistakes that high-schoolers might make. I wouldn’t normally call you out for this, but when you start talking about which of us talks up or down to the other, you’re making it personal.Report
I had known that, but here is the OG pledge written in 1885 by Civil War vet Capt George T. Balch. It includes God, but sounds less like the creepy indoctrination speech we have today:
“We give our heads and hearts to God and our country; one country; one language; one flag!”
According to the random website i stumbled across – so it must be true: “[This pledge] was embraced by many schools, DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution), and GAR (Grand Army of the Republic). This version was used until 1923 when the National Flag Conference opted to use today’s version.”
Perhaps the influence of this version is why the modern version had God inserted.Report
To my ear, that has the ring of “ein volk…”.Report
I’ve never tried to write one, but I imagine it’s difficult to create a pledge of allegiance that doesn’t sound fascist.Report
It’s the opposite of volk. It’s saying that we are one country without any ethnic implication.Report
Right wing politicians – and those who vote for them – continue to support a showy, performative patriotism devoid of criticism and unwilling to face reality. Because they do want to loose their perceived power, they do not want to grapple with anything that might be seen as lamenting or questioning. Hence the rulings “allowing” a public highschool coach, employed by a secular county government, to gather his players in prayer at the end of a football game whether they want to pray or not.
It is more important to appear patriotic then be patriotic, because being patriotic requires doing things that create change and make people uncomfortable.Report
They love America but hate most of the people who live there.Report
Many people who emphasize the centrality of “Under God” seem to have little regard for the last six words of the Pledge.Report
While I think in practice the pledge is mostly harmless, I’ve also always agreed with the classical liberal case against compelling it in a public school (or really any) setting. The courts have tended to get it right on that point. Would that those most against the pledge in school would apply the same logic to their various other little projects.Report
I am old enough to have been in the public schools when there was prayer and when it stopped. We prayed when we were told to because we were told to and we stopped when no one said we had to do it anymore. Nobody ever asked why we weren’t praying anymore. We didn’t want to be in school, let alone pray in it. And none of us were sophisticated enough to catch that a bunch of Italian, Irish, and Polish kids from Catholic families were getting fed from the King James Bible.
I have often said that there will be prayer in school as long as there is algebra. But the enthusiasm for government prayer bubbles up from rather dank springs.Report
One of the things that I think gets missed in debates about whether American democracy is in danger or not is that democracy is really an historical exception rather than a norm. It has an ancient and long history but for most of human history, most people, were ruled by varying forms and degrees of top-down and authoritarian government. Most democracies around today have varying levels at which they are non-democratic. https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores
A lot of stuff we consider viable for freedom is potentially only maintained through a kind of consensus of educated professionals. As far as I can tell, Europeans are not more opposed to the death penalty than the U.S. generally. They just have a class of educated professionals that keeps it banned and impermissible. The court decisions you highlight indicate that the old Supreme Court decisions do not matter and a lot of people need to learn the law the hard way. Or they think paying $90,000.00 every now and then is a small price to pay for something that is really important.
Visual and mandatory displays/participation in patriotism seem to be very important to a lot of people and that not having such things is a recipe for disaster. No amount of logic or discussion on higher ideals can change their minds. The problem is that the Republican Party had decided through a combination of true belief and calculation that this is a good wedge issue for them. I don’t think it is true this time but it is just another arrow in the quiver for the war against “woke.” Aided and abetted by some very good nutpicking from twitter by finding some rando and pretending the rando has a direct line to Biden, Harris, Schumer, and Pelosi.Report
Democracy is fragile, so we should be *less* attentive in instilling love of country and democratic principle?Report
“Instilling love of country and democratic principle” is a fine thing. Compulsory and mindless repetition of empty rituals* is nothing of the sort, and is usually pushed by people who very much dislike democratic principles, not to mention liberty.
*For example:
“And to the Republic for Richard Stans….”
“Lead us not into Penn Station…”
“Let good Mrs. Murphy follow us all the days of our lives…”
That good Mrs. Murphy was probably one of those egregious busybodies insisting on having captive audiences of kids stand up and mouth words, dammit.Report
Saying the pledge by rote does absolutely nothing to instill either love of country or democratic principal.Report
You vill recite zhe pledge to liberty, or face zhe CONSEQUENCES!!Report
Maybe leading by example is a better way.Report
It’s not an either/or proposition. Anyone with kids can tell you that the most effective way of instilling something in them is to combine words with actions. And this is obvious stuff. What kind of parent would say that the best way to raise your children is to never tell them you love them, but show it; or teach them to be grateful rather than say “thank you”?Report
How does mandatory reciting of some words instill such such things? Magic?Report
It’s like the Shema Yisrael.
Just secularized.Report
Society promotes its ideals by what it teaches its children. This can’t be a point of debate, can it? The fact that we’re discussing whether we should encourage the Pledge or mandate it, or what it should contain, demonstrates that we all recognize that. You can’t tell me you’d be comfortable if your children were required to daily recite some words that you disagreed with.Report
You can’t tell me you’d be comfortable forcing grown men to stand and salute the flag during the national anthem on the sidelines of a football game when the flag and the song being played represent oppression to them, can you?Report
It’s all ok, Saul says that’s just magical thinking.Report
I think one issue with mandatory displays/participation in patriotism is that for the first time in human history we have a big class of people who are skeptical or even outright hostile to patriotism as a concept. This group is nowhere near a majority of the population but because they are very online, they tend to be noticeable.Report
If you want to pay me 90 grand to not listen to God Bless the U.S.A., I’ll take you up on that offer every day and twice on Sunday.Report
No that was $90K to listen to it and endure a bunch of bullshit afterwards. Was it worth it?Report