John Dunlop & Richard Barker ask:
>
> It's the 21st Century now people.
>
> Do you really need a "Pledge of Allegiance".
>
Like many OT rants on HP3000-L, this one forced me to do some research so I
do learn things.  Here's a brief history of the pledge from our good friends
at the American Civil Liberties Union:

http://www.aclu.org/news/move/pledgeorigin.html
The Strange Origin of the Pledge of Allegiance

By John W. Baer

Every class day over 60 million public and parochial school teachers and
students in the U.S. recite the Pledge of Allegiance along with thousands of
Americans at official meetings of the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Elks, Masons,
American Legion, and others. During the televised bicentennial celebration
of the U.S. Constitution for the school children on September 17, 1987, the
children as a group did not recite any part of the Constitution. However,
President Reagan did lead the nation's school children in reciting the
Pledge. Yet probably not one of them knows the history or original meaning
of the Pledge.

In the presidential campaign of 1988, George Bush successfully used the
Pledge in his campaign against Mike Dukakis. Ironically, Bush did not seem
to know the words of the Pledge until his campaign manager told him to
memorize it. The teachers and students in the New England private schools he
attended, Greenwich Country Day School and Phillips Andover Academy, did not
recite the pledge. By contrast, Dukakis and his mother, a public school
teacher, recited the Pledge in the public schools. Yet Bush criticized
Dukakis for vetoing a bill in Massachusetts requiring public school teachers
but not private school teachers to recite the Pledge. Dukakis vetoed the
bill on grounds that it violated the constitutional right of free speech.

How did this Pledge of Allegiance to a flag replace the U.S. Constitution
and Bill of Rights in the affections of many Americans? Among the nations in
the world, only the USA and the Philippines, imitating the USA, have a
pledge to their flag. Who institutionalized the Pledge as the cornerstone of
American patriotic programs and
indoctrination in the public and parochial schools?

In 1892, a socialist named Francis Bellamy created the Pledge of Allegiance
for Youths' Companion, a national family magazine for youth published in
Boston. The magazine had the largest national circulation of its day with a
circulation around 500,000. Two liberal businessmen, Daniel Ford and James
Upham, his nephew, owned Youths' Companion.

One hundred years ago the American flag was rarely seen in the classroom or
in front of the school Upham changed that. In 1888, the magazine began a
campaign to sell American flags to the public schools. By 1892, his magazine
had sold American flags to about 26 thousands schools1.

In 1891, Upham had the idea of using the celebration of the 400th
anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America to promote the use
of the flag in the public schools. The same year, the magazine hired Daniel
Ford's radical young friend, Baptist minister, Nationalist, and Christian
Socialist leader, Francis Bellamy, to help Upham in his public relations
work. Bellamy was the first cousin of the famous American socialist, Edward
Bellamy. Edward Bellamy's futuristic novel, "Looking Backward", published in
1888, described a utopian Boston in the year 2000. The book spawned an
elitist socialist movement in Boston known as "Nationalism," whose members
wanted the federal government to national most of the American economy.
Francis Bellamy was a member of this movement and a vice president of its
auxiliary group, the Society of Christian Socialists 2. He was a Baptist
minister and he lectured and preached on the virtues of socialism and the
evils of capitalism. He gave a speech on "Jesus the Socialist" and a series
of sermons on "The Socialism of the Primitive Church." In 1891, he was
forced to resign from his Boston church, the Bethany Baptist church, because
of his socialist activities. He then joined the staff of the Youths'
Companion3.

By February 1892, Francis Bellamy and Upham had lined up the National
Education Association to support the Youths' Companion as a sponsor of the
national public schools' observance of Columbus Day along with the use of
the American flag. By June 29, Bellamy and Upham had arranged for Congress
and President Benjamin Harrison to announce a national proclamation making
the public school flag ceremony the center of the national Columbus Day
celebrations for 18924.

Bellamy, under the supervision of Upham, wrote the program for this
celebration, including its flag salute, the Pledge of Allegiance. His
version was,

"I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands --
one nation indivisible -- with liberty and justice for all."

This program and its pledge appeared in the September 8 issue of Youths'
Companion5. He considered putting the words "fraternity" and "equality" in
the Pledge but decided they were too radical and controversial for public
schools6.

The original Pledge was recited while giving a stiff, uplifted right hand
salute, criticized and discontinued during WWII. The words "my flag" were
changed to "the flag of the United States of America" because it was feared
that the children of immigrants might confuse "my flag" for the flag of
their homeland. The phrase, "Under God," was added by Congress and President
Eisenhower in 1954 at the urging of the Knights of Columbus7.

The American Legion's constitution includes the following goal: "To foster
and perpetuate a one hundred percent Americanism." One of its major standing
committees was the "Americanism Commission" and its subsidiary, the "Counter
Subversive Activities Committee." To the fear of immigrants, it added the
fear of communism8.

Over the years the Legion has worked closely with the NEA and with the U.S.
Office of Education. The Legion insisted on "one hundred percent"
Americanism in public school courses in American history, civics, geography
and English. The Pledge was a part of this Americanism campaign9 and, in
1950, the Legion adopted the Pledge as an official part of its own ritual10.

In 1922, the Ku Klux Klan, which also had adopted the "one hundred percent
Americanism" theme along with the flag ceremonies and the Pledge, became a
political power in the state of Oregon and arranged for legislation to be
passes requiring all Catholic children to attend public schools. The U.S.
Supreme Court later overturned this legislation11.

Perhaps a team of social scientists and historians could explain why over
the last century the Pledge of Allegiance has become a major centerpiece in
American patriotism programs. A pledge or loyalty oath for children was not
built around the Declaration of Independence -- "We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal..." Or the Gettysburg
address -- "a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal..."

Apparently, over the last century, Americans have been uncomfortable with
the word "equality" as a patriotic theme. In 1992 the nation will begin its
second century with the Pledge of Allegiance. Perhaps the time has come to
see that this allegiance should be to the U.S. constitution and not to a
piece of cloth.

John W. Baer is a professor of economics at Anne Arundel Community College
in Arnold, Maryland. This article was originally published in the Summer
1989 issue of Propoganda Review.

---------------
See link at the top of this article to get footnote sources.

As a side note, I also learned that God was inserted two more times in this
anti-communist era:  The motto "In God We Trust", which has survived three
court challenges to date.  When swearing in a witness the phrase "so help me
God" was added to the end.

Mark Wonsil

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