The significance of “under God” and the pledge

NBC just made the pledge newsworthy again, so I’ve dusted off this old draft:

What “under God” seems to mean

After reading The Story of The Pledge of Allegiance to The Flag, I get the impression that “under God” was added to alleviate concerns about expressing unqualified allegiance to the nation: Those who believe in a higher power might feel that expressing (or, rather, embracing) blanket nationalism is in effect serving two masters.

Put another way, the phrase “under God” seems to have been inserted to allow theists to clarify the nation’s place in their personal allegiance hierarchy, not to declare that “God” exists.

It’s a free country

In school and in public meetings, participants are (allegedly) allowed to refrain from saying the pledge. You know, that whole First Amendment thing. I had a friend in elementary school who was an Australian citizen and thus did not say the pledge to the U.S. flag; any other student could have abstained, citing any similar reason or no reason at all.

(We are not only free to not say the pledge; we are also free to say it — even if no one else is saying it. There is no abolishing the pledge of allegiance, even if it loses its official status. We can pledge allegiance to anything we want.)

We can also say the pledge any way we want. I had another friend in elementary school who thought it was funny to say, just loud enough for me to hear, “of the United States of Cuba.” This freedom can be used for nobler purposes, too. In the time it takes the masses to say “one nation, indivisible,” nonconformists should be able to squeeze in “one nationunderGodindivisible.” And what if they can’t? Who cares whether the group is in unison? Got liberty? Use it!

The truth is the truth

If the nation is “under God,” it is so whether those words are in the official pledge or not. To exclude a phrase mentioning the supremacy of a god is not to deny that, in one’s opinion, that god exists and is supreme.

Do we even need a pledge?

What purpose does the Pledge of Allegiance (in any form) serve? What are we saying when we recite it? In what respects are we promising to be loyal to the United States? The whole idea of an expression of nationalism that we recite together has always rubbed me wrong, anyway. And in this day and age, the pledge is just another symbol that expensive legal skirmishes are fought over. Will the nation suffer if we simply take this pledge out of the official canon?

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