A few quick facts:
- The pledge of allegiance was written by a national socialist, Francis Bellamy
- Bellamy’s intention was to indoctrinate our children to admire and swear loyalty to the state (central government)
- For a bit more background on the origins, as well as commentary on the confusing support by conservatives, see this article
- For the first 50 years, the custom was for school children to hold their right arm out, hand stiffly extended upward…hmmm, I think we’ve seen this elsewhere? After WWII, this salute was replaced with the hand over heart method.
I’ve told my young children the only things they should ever consider pledging allegiance to is God and Family. As they get older, I explain more about the origins and reasoning behind our defiance against the pledge of allegiance so they can make up their own minds.
What another author hopes to achieve when his kids do not participate
Yeah, I remember this being poentid out a while back when there was a big hullabulloo about kids in school declining to recite the pledge because of the God reference. (Actually, I think that seems to be a recurring thing that comes up every now and then).While I do think that’s a legitimate reason to not recite the pledge, I’m not a huge fan of it anyway for other reasons, so I don’t mind much either way.