Thursday, July 20, 2006
Please Pledge Allegiance and Subscribe Soon
To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, God sure must have loved the ignoramuses, because he made so many of them.
They came out of the woodwork this week to make their semi-annual push to get the Pledge of Allegiance back into America's classrooms. It was thrown out of said classrooms in 2002 by a federal appeals court because its inclusion of the phrase "under God" violates the separation of church and state doctrine. It apparently hasn't dawned on anybody in Washington or anywhere else that, if patriotism is what you really want to restore, it could be done very easily, by removing the words "under God" from the pledge.
But, of course, that isn't what this debate is about. Today's class of new theocrats aren't about to be deterred from their course of infusing their religion (but not anyone else's) into the public sphere. They argue, as House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., did this week, that the pledge (presumably with the "under God" reference) was a vital part of our country's (in other words, his version of this country's) heritage and traditions and nothing short of "what we are about as a country."
He got that last part right, but, ignoramus that he is, not in the way he meant. The heritage and tradition of the Pledge of Allegiance -- and Blunt would know this if he had bothered to check out its history -- has a lot less to do with patriotism and American heritage than, say, the national anthem. And absolutely nothing to do with the entity he/they think of as their Creator.
Unlike "The Star-Spangled Banner," which was inspired by actual redly glaring rockets and bursting bombs, the Pledge of Allegiance was a product of good ol' American commercial enterprise.
For Blunt and those who didn't bother to check, the Pledge of Allegiance was not handed down from on high by the diety of their choice. It was, in fact, created to sell magazines to America's unsuspecting youth. The magazine was The Youth's Companion, and the year was 1892. The occasion was the observance of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' supposed "discovery" of America (an area already inhabited by too many people to be considered a new discovery, except to God-fearing ignoramuses from Europe).
The magazine's associate editor and its circulation manager cooked up the scheme, whose purpose was two-fold -- to celebrate the anniversary in style and, of course, to sell more copies of The Youth's Companion.
The editor, Francis Bellamy, wrote the pledge, which did not include the phrase "under God" in its original version, and the circulation manager, James Upham, promoted the hell out of it, to the point of getting school children around the nation to recite it on October 12, 1892. It worked like a charm and sold lots of magazines.
It would take another fifty-three years before the pledge was officially adopted through an act of Congress, and nine more years before another act of Congress added its two most trouble-making words, "under God." No stone tablets were handed down to anybody standing atop an ancient mountain, and no observances of patriotic inspiration were made from Fort McHenry.
The Pledge of Allegiance was inspired not by the Almighty on high, but by the truly American pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. So please spare us all the bleating about how the pledge represents America's best heritages and traditions and "what we are about as a country." We don't want to be reminded of that anymore and feel even more shame over it.
In fact, let's rewrite the pledge, a perfectly acceptable action when it comes to advertising copy, to read more accurately: "I pledge allegiance to the private enterprises of the United States of America, and the Profit Motive for which they stand, one avarice, under Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch, tax-deductible, with liberty and justice for all who can pay the interest rates."
Long may it wave -- and sell goods and services. And ponder where we'd be if the editors of a kids' magazine back in 1892 had decided it would have been a better Columbus Day promotion to have everyone take their American flags down to the courthouse squares of the land and set them on fire in celebration of our heritage and tradition. Some enterprising souls would have found a way to make some hay that day, selling boxes of matches. That's the American way I'm talking about.
They came out of the woodwork this week to make their semi-annual push to get the Pledge of Allegiance back into America's classrooms. It was thrown out of said classrooms in 2002 by a federal appeals court because its inclusion of the phrase "under God" violates the separation of church and state doctrine. It apparently hasn't dawned on anybody in Washington or anywhere else that, if patriotism is what you really want to restore, it could be done very easily, by removing the words "under God" from the pledge.
But, of course, that isn't what this debate is about. Today's class of new theocrats aren't about to be deterred from their course of infusing their religion (but not anyone else's) into the public sphere. They argue, as House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., did this week, that the pledge (presumably with the "under God" reference) was a vital part of our country's (in other words, his version of this country's) heritage and traditions and nothing short of "what we are about as a country."
He got that last part right, but, ignoramus that he is, not in the way he meant. The heritage and tradition of the Pledge of Allegiance -- and Blunt would know this if he had bothered to check out its history -- has a lot less to do with patriotism and American heritage than, say, the national anthem. And absolutely nothing to do with the entity he/they think of as their Creator.
Unlike "The Star-Spangled Banner," which was inspired by actual redly glaring rockets and bursting bombs, the Pledge of Allegiance was a product of good ol' American commercial enterprise.
For Blunt and those who didn't bother to check, the Pledge of Allegiance was not handed down from on high by the diety of their choice. It was, in fact, created to sell magazines to America's unsuspecting youth. The magazine was The Youth's Companion, and the year was 1892. The occasion was the observance of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' supposed "discovery" of America (an area already inhabited by too many people to be considered a new discovery, except to God-fearing ignoramuses from Europe).
The magazine's associate editor and its circulation manager cooked up the scheme, whose purpose was two-fold -- to celebrate the anniversary in style and, of course, to sell more copies of The Youth's Companion.
The editor, Francis Bellamy, wrote the pledge, which did not include the phrase "under God" in its original version, and the circulation manager, James Upham, promoted the hell out of it, to the point of getting school children around the nation to recite it on October 12, 1892. It worked like a charm and sold lots of magazines.
It would take another fifty-three years before the pledge was officially adopted through an act of Congress, and nine more years before another act of Congress added its two most trouble-making words, "under God." No stone tablets were handed down to anybody standing atop an ancient mountain, and no observances of patriotic inspiration were made from Fort McHenry.
The Pledge of Allegiance was inspired not by the Almighty on high, but by the truly American pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. So please spare us all the bleating about how the pledge represents America's best heritages and traditions and "what we are about as a country." We don't want to be reminded of that anymore and feel even more shame over it.
In fact, let's rewrite the pledge, a perfectly acceptable action when it comes to advertising copy, to read more accurately: "I pledge allegiance to the private enterprises of the United States of America, and the Profit Motive for which they stand, one avarice, under Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch, tax-deductible, with liberty and justice for all who can pay the interest rates."
Long may it wave -- and sell goods and services. And ponder where we'd be if the editors of a kids' magazine back in 1892 had decided it would have been a better Columbus Day promotion to have everyone take their American flags down to the courthouse squares of the land and set them on fire in celebration of our heritage and tradition. Some enterprising souls would have found a way to make some hay that day, selling boxes of matches. That's the American way I'm talking about.
