As politicians and pundits continue to rage about the fact that anyone would dare question the Pledge of Allegiance, more, um, reasonable people are asking questions about the pledge. NPR's "All Things Considered" (the afternoon/evening news program) ran a good story on the history of the pledge yesterday. And today Craig's Booknotes points to another history of the pledge. According to Cheryl Taylor:
 The original pledge was: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands: one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." 
The pledge was changed in 1924 (replacing "my flag" with "the flag of the United States of America") and again in 1954, when the "under God" was added. Both the early 1920s and the early 1950s were times when certain American traditions (including the American tradition of thinking ourselves more secure in the world than any other people) were under threat from a changing world. We seem to be in a similar period today, so perhaps we should just dispense with this whole nonsense of this old pledge and go all the way. "I pledge blind and happy obedience to anything multi-national corporate interests want to do to me, to anyone else on the planet, or to the planet itself." Ok, it needs work, but you get the idea.
p.s.: I just noticed, Craig's Booknotes also points to a few more salient facts about the pledge. I betcha didn't know it was written by a socialist, didya? And waddayaknow! The pledge's author, Francis Bellamy, was the first cousin of Edward Bellamy who wrote Looking Backward, an important but rather overlooked American utopian novel.
10:16:08 AM 
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