If schools taught the truth about the Pledge then no one would perform it (which is why the truth is not taught). It was written by a national socialist in the USA and it was the origin of the stiff-armed salute adopted later by the National Socialiist German Workers Party. See the work of the symbologist Dr. Rex Curry (author of "Pledge of Allegiance Secrets").

If you want to see an interesting pre-McCarthy era recitation of the pledge, just Google:
Porky Pig pledge

Johnny: You don't have to RECITE the pledge to be able to READ it and know what it says. There are a lot of things I know exactly what they say, and thus where and why I agree or disagree with them.

While I'm here, would it attract "undue attention" if before testifying in court I were to affirm as opposed to swearing on the bible and saying "so help me God?"

Here's the Wikipedia article on the Pledge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance
Now let's be nice and not all edit it at once!

Ben "reading, but not People Magazine" from Norcross

"Sadly our Government educated, history ignorant populace has no clue that their are 50 sovereign states..."

Oh and before I get any pithy rebuttals for the typo, I know it is there, not their.

Cyrano

...is that most of us grew up saying the pledge because we wanted to, not because we had to.

Butt, @ 09/15/09 01:20:45 PM ...you pretty much covered it, right down to the ground. Thanks, Pard.

You're sounding positively poetic buddy!

Thought you would be interested in this story....

When I was in high school, there were several of us that would routinely gather around the flag pole, when the flag was raised in the morning, to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. There were never more than a handful of us at any one time, and it was always the same group.

One morning, the photographers for the school newspaper decided to take some pictures of the group for the paper. Lo and Behold, you would not believe the number of Big Men and Women on Campus that showed up for the pledge that morning. Needless to say, they were the ones that ended up in the photos. And, to be sure, the next morning these BMOCs and BWOCs were nowhere to be seen.

It didn't really matter to the regular group that was there, because we didn't do it for the "publicity." However, it was obvious why the other folks were there...and they obviously got what they came for.

pleeeeze................. go clean out those 37 cat litter boxes.......the smell is comin' thru on my 'puter....

I say we just pledge to Obama...wait..I'm sorry...that's a few years down the road.

Hey Joyce,that pledge was good,with or without the Bellamy thing!

I enjoy folks who support the Confederacy. It's a version of the "I'm with Stupid" t-shirt.

The Confederacy lost because it was run by a bunch of hot-heads that thought excitement and emotion could overcome poor planning and laziness. Rational heads would have waited at least ten more years and spent that time quitely building railroads and infrastructure, stocking arms and training a militia. However, since stupid is as stupid does, they instead chose to rush into battle to avenge their honor without bothering to realize it was their own actions that was damaging their honor. The South had legitimate issues that were being ignored or abused in Congress, but like the Palestinians the Confederacy seemed determined to take whatever action was most damaging to their cause.

Every time a Confederal flag is waved, a loser shows his face.

The upside: "The majority of Americans do, in fact, overwhelmingly support the Pledge of Allegiance in its current form. A FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll from November of 2005 showed that 90 percent of Americans approve of the oath. Only 7 percent of people polled said they would change the language of the Pledge, while three percent of Americans were undecided"

The downside is the Supreme Court Ruling of 1948.

I am a traditionalist. I dont care who wrote it, its original writ or any congressional additions or deletions. The words that I grew up with mean someting. I especially like the pledge because, as noted below, it reminds us that we live in a Republic...for now. It also reminds me of the oath I swore back in 1982; that I still hold dear today. Despite our misgivings and transgressions in the past, We... Are... All... Americans; something I think we tend to forget from time to time.

Damn Greg, your correct! This Bellamy dude had it going on.

I Pledge allegiance not to a flag but to an idea. An idea of Liberty and Freedom
I Pledge to be responsible for myself and my family and not to be a financial burden on the society
I Pledge I will stand up to corruption in Government and make my voice heard over the mass
I Pledge I will fight against Tyranny with my life if necessary .
I Pledge I will fight for individual freedom and liberty against those will steal it under guise of collectivism

we'd never find out that we live in a REPUBLIC and not a DEMOCRACY - that useless little factoid isn't in the regular curriculum.

*F* the infernal pledge of allegiance to the murderously triumphant union flag! original version by Francis Bellamy, socialist brother of socialist author Edward Bellamy of socialist science fiction novel Looking Backward notoriety. Of course the pledge of allegiance to the murderously triumphant union flag was meant to cow & berate the impressionable kids of ex-confederates during a period of perfectly understandable western & southern post-re-construction resentment whose stark existence alarmed eastern & northern unitarists, exponents of extra-constitutional--or notionally technical constitutional given coerced ratification of the fourteenth & fifteenth amendments--centralism who thought it most loutish, churlish & odious of ex-confederates a full generation after the war of northern aggression ended they would fail to be grateful to their conquerors & vanquishers for continuing to show them the error of their benighted ways by keeping the devastated ex-confederacy poor via diverting investment capital away & maintaining protectionism in world trade, among imposition of other painful, humiliating & similarly instructive policies, instead of forgetting over 425,000 war dead & innumerable innocent civilians expropriated, dis-possessed & outraged, & joining the forced arrangement's gainers in celebrating & lauding the crass bombastic results of the contrived new corporate commercial nationalism indorsed by government at all levels, with jeers & scorn for objectors who wondered aloud what the founding fathers & other early republican patriarchs would have thought! In the teeth of all that WHAT is the good of the pledge of allegiance to the murderously triumphant union flag? Thank Providence for confederate battle flag devices on the flags of several ex-confederate states.

I know Neal's feelings on this issue, but I never understood what the problem was with standing up to Pledge Allegiance to the Flag. I always thought growing up that it was a small price to pay for all of the freedoms that I enjoyed as a young American Citizen. Its like saying- "Hey, I care about this country I live in and the flag I live under". If you don't care about it, maybe it is time to reevaluate why you live here to begin with. Failure to pay any price for something means you feel you are entitled to it. Just my 2 cents. I guess this is why I left the Libertarian Party and became an Independent.

Aren't these same anti-pledge of allegiance people the same in that video "Pledge"? So pledging to the flag bad, pledging to the president good?

I would prefer we take the god stuff out of the pledge, but can understand how some people don't like the whole pledging part.

I guess that is going to be yet another dead part of our heritage.

Did you see on Fox news that CNN reporter talking to the citizen when the reporter referred to the U.S. and a democracy?
The citizen corrected him that the U.S. was founded as a republic, not a democracy.
The CNN guy really could not comprehend that concept or refute it (that look of huh? on his face), so the reported just changed the subject - and it didn't look easy for him to do so.
Obviously, one of them was a pledge of allegiance reciter and one was not.