I have never understood why American conservatives get so amped up over the pledge. I mean, it's hardly a secret that the Pledge of Allegiance was written to promote socialism in America.
What's Conservative about the Pledge of Allegiance?
Very little, as it turns out. From its inception, in 1892, the Pledge has been a slavish ritual of devotion to the state, wholly inappropriate for a free people. It was written by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist pushed out of his post as a Baptist minister for delivering pulpit‐pounding sermons on such topics as "Jesus the Socialist." Bellamy was devoted to the ideas of his more‐famous cousin Edward Bellamy, author of the 1888 utopian novel Looking Backward. Looking Backward describes the future United States as a regimented worker's paradise where everyone has equal incomes, and men are drafted into the country's "industrial army" at the age of 21, serving in the jobs assigned them by the state. Bellamy's novel was extremely popular, selling more copies than other any 19th century American novel except Uncle Tom's Cabin. Bellamy's book inspired a movement of "Nationalist Clubs," whose members campaigned for a government takeover of the economy. A few years before he wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, Francis Bellamy became a founding member of Boston’s first Nationalist Club.
After leaving the pulpit, Francis Bellamy decided to advance his authoritarian ideas through the public schools. Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance for Youth's Companion, a popular children's magazine. With the aid of the National Education Association, Bellamy and the editors of Youth's Companion got the Pledge adopted as part of the National Public School Celebration on Columbus Day 1892.
Individual sovereignty, one of the key founding principles of this nation, is a tradition worth conserving. It's even enshrined in the Constitution:
[A]ll Men are created equal, [and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Government is subordinate to the people. This means that if there must be a pledge, the state should pledge its allegiance to the people.
The pledge flips this important American tradition on its head, giving sovereignty to the state, not the individual. This makes the pledge, in my not so humble opinion, a very anti-American ritual.
P.S. - If you're a Christian, can you really pledge your allegiance to two masters?
