2007-04-02
This evening my kindergartener and I were reading Junie B. Jones and Her Big Fat Mouth (Barbara Park; Random House; 1993), in which Junie B., also a kindergartener, says this:
And then we had to say I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands.Except I don't know what that dumb story is even talking about.
I asked my daughter if she said the Pledge of Allegiance each morning, and, when she said yes, I asked her whether she said it because she had to or because she wanted to, and she wasn't sure, but said she wanted to anyway. I told her that was OK, but she could want to only if she (unlike Junie B.) knew what it meant. Then we went through it phrase by phrase, and she agreed with all of it.
My older daughter, in 6th grade, said she didn't say it at school—no one did. (The two are in the same public school system.*) She agreed with all but two parts. If she Pledged, she would in effect put in two asterisks: One after "to the flag" and another after "under God." The footnotes would indicate that those parts didn't apply. I agreed with her. Our first footnote would say that pledging allegiance to a flag is too moronic to be agreed to, and that we are not a nation under God, as the Constitution says the exact opposite.
This led me to wonder how George Bush says it. I think he is fine with pledging allegiance to a flag, and he certainly goes for the under God part. He'd put his asterisk after the "liberty and justice for all" part.
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* The question of whether schoolchildren say the Pledge goes all the way back to the beginning.
Congress recognized the Pledge in 1942, and the next year the Supreme Court ruled that schoolchildren didn't have to say it. (In wartime, no less.) Three years ago the Court dismissed on a technicality a lawsuit that would have stricken "under God," added in 1954, as unconstitutional, leaving open the possiblity that they might rule on the actual issue at some point. They've already ruled, in 1989, that burning the flag is protected speech. I assume you can say an asterisked version of the Pledge before you set the fire. Heck, it's a free country—you can even Pledge allegiance to something you're about to burn if you want to.