The student news site of Oakton High School

Oakton Outlook

The student news site of Oakton High School

Oakton Outlook

The student news site of Oakton High School

Oakton Outlook

Why pledge allegiance?

We all know about the pledge of allegiance. By now, if you went to school fairly consistently in the past, you have said it over 1,600 times. It’s strange, because I feel like most people don’t think about it that much, despite the fact that we say it almost every day. A lot of people say it without thinking about what it actually means, or ever dwelling on the words. Recent events have changed that to some extent, but not nearly as much as I expected them to, and I think that shines even more light onto how many people don’t ever actually think about the words that they are uttering.

Personally, I have always thought that the pledge of allegiance was meant to be a vision of what we strive for, after all, the words sound pretty good on paper. I would absolutely love to live in a place where everyone was equal, where everyone had liberty, and where we were indivisible. But if my interpretation is correct, and you should feel free to disagree with me on it, I think we have fallen short of it by this point. I haven’t said the pledge of allegiance correctly in over two years, since my freshmen year when I decided that I was not a religious person and therefore was not ‘under God.’ I did not do it as a jab towards anyone, and I actually very rarely will admit it to other people, I just don’t see it as an issue what-so-ever. However, I have always been upset by that line. I have no animosity towards religious people, and I’m friends with a lot of them. What gets to me is that I am not religious, and I don’t like religion being pushed towards me under any circumstance. If the pledge is meant as a vision, then that vision should include everyone, instead of ostracizing some people, however few people that may be.

If the phrase ‘under God’ had simply always been in the pledge, it might be a little more painless for me, but it was actually added just seventy years ago. Even worse, in my own humble opinion, is the fact that President Eisenhower, a man who converted to Presbyterianism a mere year before the addition was approved. This upsets me because upon the approval Eisenhower stated: “”From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.” I don’t like the idea that I’m supposed to dedicate myself to the almighty that I myself don’t believe in. Millions of Americans do that in church, and that’s fine, it’s basically the best place to dedicate yourself to the almighty. In school, with kids who believe in God, Gods, or no God at all, it’s practically the worst place anywhere.

But the more I thought into it the more I realized that I personally don’t believe in the pledge anymore. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my country, and I think I love it more than a lot of people. I’m pursuing the Marine Corps as a career after college, and I am extremely thankful to live here. However, I’m not blind. Our country has a lot of flaws, and if the pledge of allegiance is meant as a vision for us to strive for, we absolutely are failing to do so. Before I simply disagreed with a small part of the pledge, but now I think that the rest of it is quickly being forgotten.

The pledge paints a picture of an idealistic nation where everyone is equal and fine, but we haven’t made any efforts to progress towards this goal in recent years. As I’m writing this, the police officer who killed Eric Gardner just got off free with no indictment. This decision comes at the heels of multiple incidents of factual or supposed police brutality, as well as an unfortunately necessary revival of the civil rights movement in dozens of major cities. All of the recent incidents have involved African-Americans, and the growing feeling that they are not treated equally by any part of our justice system is becoming more justified with each passing day.

In other parts of the country non-straight people have trouble attempting to pursue the most basic of rights, and are not allowed to marry because of religious prejudice or simply because it’s an alien practice to some people. And as always, women also constantly struggle in the fight against misogyny and unequal treatment in the workplace. The line ‘liberty and justice for all’ is then essentially false, and even worse is that it seems like we have stopped striving to fulfill it. We as a nation have made so much historical progress, from women’s suffrage to the civil rights movement, but it seems now that we’re starting to slow to a deadly halt. That aforementioned progress is so firmly rooted in the past for American children who don’t believe that Martin Luther King’s fight still exists. By believing that the fight is already won, we have given up on the pursuit of victory before we even got close, and that is an extremely sad thing to realize. The frustrating thing to me is that so many people don’t see these issues as current, and some of you probably even don’t believe that the civil rights movement

The man who wrote the original pledge in 1892, Francis Bellamy, was persuaded to not include the word ‘equality,’ since the National Education Association did not want women or African-Americans to believe it applied to them. Even more condemning, if not hopelessly ironic, is the fact that Bellamy worked as a flag salesman, and that the original purpose of the pledge was not to build citizens but to sell flags. If you think about it for two seconds, you might realize that the word ‘equality’ is still absent today, but for all they’re worth ‘justice’ and ‘liberty’ might as well not be in it either. In a nation where these rights are only reliably installed upon white men, having our brothers, sisters, children, and friends repeat that they exist for everyone is shameful.

They don’t, and you should not, for one second, believe that the pledge is being at all fulfilled. If there was liberty for all then my friend would be legally allowed to marry his partner. If there was justice for all then there would have been an indictment for Daniel Pantaleo. Every day recently marks another failure to fulfill our pledge, since between the time I wrote my first draft and the time I’m typing now the CIA released their report on their torture practices. If the pledge is intended to show what we wish to pursue, then we actually need to pursue it instead of blowing it off. Instead, we continuously allow the dreams we have held dear for over seventy years slip further and further away, until eventually we won’t be able to remember them at all.

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Why pledge allegiance?