“I’m Just Saying… For two years in a row there has been a battle in school systems as to whether to allow students to hear a “back to school” pep-speech from President Barack Obama. The fear has been that folks don’t want the President to indoctrinate students to his supposed National Socialist propaganda. Never mind that there has been nothing specifically in either speech that they could point to as “socialist” – it’s just the principle of the matter.
Seems to me that they should also, as a matter of principle, oppose the Pledge of Allegiance. Yet they say it all the time at ball games, civic events, and tea-party gatherings.
Did you know that Baptist minister Francis Bellamy wrote the Pledge in 1892. Bellamy was a noted socialist and once was asked to leave a church because his congregation thought his sermons had a socialist bent. He was later hired by The Youth’s Companion, a popular family magazine at the time. His writings reflected a Christian Socialist vision of a government-managed economy with “political, social and economic equality for all.”
Oh, you might also want to know that the original salute to the flag was NOT hand over heart, but rather outstretched hand – identical to the Nazi’s Heil Hitler salute (remember that from Hogan’s Heroes?).
It was while at the journal that he also served on the Massachusetts State Education Board and was charged with organizing the state’s Columbus Day celebrations in 1892. For that event he wrote a pledge to the flag, which was first published in the Youth’s Companion. It read: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
The phrase “under God,” which was added by President Eisenhower in 1954.
Bellemy, you should know, eventually stopped attending church services in protest of its open racism.
You might want to think about all this the next time you rise for the Pledge to the flag – especially if you are unwilling to let you kids listen to the President non-partisan “pep-speech” during the first week of school.
“I’m Just Saying…”
Great post. Your readers might also like to know that that Bellamy’s pledge was in fact the origin of the Nazi salute (of the National Socialist German Workers Party). It was not an ancient Roman salute. And Bellamy was a socialist in the nationalism movement. See the work of the historian Dr. Rex Curry (author of “Pledge of Allegiance Secrets”).