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An
End to Allegiance
by
Roderick Long
The
Pledge of Allegiance is in the news again, but as usual, the only part
that is regarded as controversial is the reference to God. In fact the entire
Pledge is a repellent statist credo (as befits its author, “Christian
Socialist” Francis Bellamy, brother of the Edward Bellamy who wrote the
tiresome utopian-collectivist science-fiction novels Looking
Backward and Equality).
Hence it seems appropriate to reprint a letter I wrote to the Daily
Tar Heel (UNC Chapel Hill’s campus newspaper) back on 21 June
1995. (This also gives me a chance to correct the Tar Heel’s
typos!)
To
the Editor:
Will Leonard said he can’t understand why anyone would object to laws
mandating the Pledge of Allegiance in our schools. Let me suggest a few
reasons.
The Pledge of Allegiance is basically a loyalty oath. Compulsory loyalty
oaths to the State are an authoritarian imposition we rightly associate
with the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and McCarthy. They have no place in a
free country.
Requiring such loyalty oaths of children, who are in no position to
comprehend the obligations they are supposedly undertaking, is even more
objectionable. The whole notion of swearing “allegiance” to the
republic and its flag is profoundly un-American. This sort of reverence
for the State, together with the prostration of the people before the
symbols and tokens of its authority, belongs among the trappings of the
old-world ancien régime mentality that this nation’s founders
decisively rejected.
As the founders conceived it, the American republic was an
administrative arrangement set up for the convenience and security of
its citizens; those citizens were to be the masters of the republic, not
its subjects. As American citizens, we owe no “allegiance” to the
political apparatus; on the contrary, the political apparatus is our
servant, and owes allegiance and obedience to us. This is the ideal for
which our forebears died at Lexington and Concord.
The Pledge of Allegiance, a declaration of political idolatry first
introduced in 1892, at a time when this country had begun to turn
away from its founding principles in favor of a militantly nationalist
ideology, was a profound betrayal of the spirit of the American
Revolution. Imposing this loyalty oath through the medium of
government-run, tax-funded schools creates still further problems. A
truly democratic government must represent all its citizens, not
just a favored elite; hence our government has no business using tax
funds to shove controversial ideas down the throats of children whose
taxpaying parents object to these ideas. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “To
compel a man to furnish contributions for the propagation of opinions
which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” Yet the
Pledge of Allegiance is full of opinions that many parents and taxpayers
“disbelieve and abhor.”
The phrase “under God” (incidentally not added to the pledge until
1954, making hash of its grammar in the process) requires schoolchildren
to profess a belief in God, even if their parents are atheists.
The phrase “indivisible” requires those same schoolchildren to take
a stand on the complex legal, ethical, and historical question of
whether the American Union is in fact indissoluble, and whether the
delegation of authority by the several states to the federal government
is indeed irrevocable – propositions of which I, at least, am
unconvinced.
The phrase “with liberty and justice for all,” if it means anything,
must mean that schoolchildren are required to assent to the dubious
proposition that the American political system in fact provides liberty
and justice to all.
Mr. Leonard to the contrary notwithstanding, all this sounds more like
political and religious propaganda than like any sort of “moral
education.” We can pledge allegiance to the principles of freedom and
equality that inspired those who first bore our flag. Or we can pledge
allegiance to the flag. We can’t do both.
Sincerely yours,
Roderick T. Long
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