I won’t waste a lot of time with the history of the Pledge, other than to say it has always been a gimmick pushed by right-wingers intent on using false patriotism to accomplish their own self-serving goals. The Smithsonian Magazine has a good account of the history. Here are the key points:
- It was literally created as a marketing gimmick to sell flags.
- It is literally about flag-waving.
- The country survived 100 years without any pledge.
- The business of “under God” was the direct result of the paranoid McCarthyites and reactionary John Birchers. That wasn’t added until the 1950s.
Here’s the bottom line: Pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth, with or without the approval of a god, is meaningless because the flag can mean something different to every person who looks at it. In light of January 6, we don’t need some whitewashing commission or a bunch of politicians grandstanding before microphones. Let’s get real. We are on the very precipice of losing our Constitutional democracy, not because people aren’t waving the flag hard enough, but because a huge faction in our country no longer agrees to live by the Constitution.
That being said, I humbly propose that the most effective response to January 6 might be to challenge America to examine its elf and its values by presenting the pledge we always should have had. I humbly offer:
I pledge allegiance to the CONSTITUTION of the United States of America, and to the rule of law it defines and protects, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Anything less is trivial flag-waving and an insult to the principles that formed this nation. How many of the Republicans in Congress would be willing to say these 31 words out loud and on the record?