I received this email today. It is a valuable reminder to our friends who wave the flag to defend the politics of greed and indifference to the sufferings of others.
Friends,
During these days of shopping madness and conspicuous consumerism, it makes sense to remind ourselves that Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist, wrote the “Pledge of Allegiance” in 1892 as an antidote to Gilded Age greed, misguided materialism, and hyper-individualism. But you’d never know that by reading CNN contributor Bob Greene’s column earlier this week called “The Peculiar History of the Pledge of Allegiance. “ He sort of air-brushed Bellamy’s politics out of that history. This is typical of how pundits and politicians often rewrite and distort history to reflect their own peculiar views. So I’ve written this column, “The Socialist Origins of the Pledge of Allegiance,” for Huffington Post today, to remind us of the continuing relevance of this iconic statement of progressive patriotism.
America now confronts a new version of the Gilded Age, brought upon by Wall Street greed and corporate malfeasance. These trends have triggered a growing grassroots movement involving a diverse coalition of community groups, immigrant rights organizations, unions, consumer advocates, and human rights activists — demanding stronger regulations to protect consumers, workers, and the environment from abusive corporations and to promote living wages, fairer trade, and higher taxes on the very rich to pay for better schools, safer roads, and student loans. So when we recite the Pledge of Allegiance, we should remind ourselves that it was written by a socialist who believed that “liberty and justice for all” meant more equality and a stronger democracy.
Feel free to repost and circulate. Thanks.
Peter
——————————————————————
Peter Dreier
Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics
Chair, Urban & Environmental Policy Department
Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, CA 90041
Phone: (323) 259-2913
FAX: (323) 259-2734
Website: http://employees.oxy.edu/dreier
New book: The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (Nation Books) — published July 2012
“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality” – Dante
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Americans, by use of repression, thence to ‘social amnesic (with acknowledgment to Russell Jacoby),iable progressive and radical elements of our shared history.
We need to remember and learn from past struggles and use that knowledge in the struggle to fight for social justice and to preserve public school.
A big time ‘prop’ to Diane for initiating and moderating this forum, fand or posting Dr. Clapp’s Professor Clapp for his timely and worthy reminder; a reminder that seems to have been conveniently lost, forgotten and/or avoided in our current educational struggle.
Thanks for everything you do, Diane. Merry Christmas and get some rest!
Professor Dreier is a bit unfair to Bob Greene, who explicitly references Bellamy as an advocate of Christian Socialism. As these things go, the Pledge is pretty good and, as if often the case, it transcends whatever particular political agenda Bellamy may have had. This parallels what has happened to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is My Land.” There is an explicitly socialist verse in the song that hardly anyone sings anymore. The song long ago took on a new (and broader) meaning from the one Guthrie had in mind. I think this is known in literary criticism as reader response theory.
If I may enhance your statement:
“He sand blasted Bellamy’s politics out of that history.
In Missouri it is mandated to have the students say the PoA once a week. So much for freedom from government coercion, eh, HU.
During those once a week pledges, I sit quietly with my hands folded looking down. Thinking of all this country could be with more free thinkers who reject abject nationalism and dominance ideologies.
If the students ask I tell them it’s against my beliefs and if they would like to discuss it they can see me before or after classes.
If they took out that noxious “under God” phrase put in during the 50’s before I got out of school, I’d say the custom should be once a day.
It IS once a day in Utah. I’m sort of uncomfortable with doing it–it smacks of totalitarian society to me–but if I didn’t do it, I’d probably lose my job.
The original pledge was :”I pledge allegiance to my Flag and (to*) the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” [ * ‘to’ added in October, 1892. ] I just love the idea of all these right wing flag-waving super patriots reciting a pledge written by a Christian socialist.
The interesting thing is that the Pledge is written an explicit oral commitment to the core values on which democratic representative governance is based. Yet, to what degree are these values at the center of public education? Shouldn’t they be?
In virtually all elementary schools students recite the Pledge. They have the right not to recite the Pledge, as the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia v. Barnette (1943), but surely they still do. Shouldn’t they understand what they’re saying? And shouldn’t school personnel – and our political leaders – model it?
The Court noted this important point concerning public schools in the Barnette case:
“That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.”
Otherwise, youthful free minds are apt to interpret and internalize the Pledge and its embedded values like Calvin does in this classic Calvin & Hobbes cartoon:
http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2009/10/22/#.UrrH72RDvws
One can still hope….
Students (I am sure my school district is not much different from most but am wondering) recite the “Pledge” every morning (facing the flag) and without question. There is no discussion of what the “Pledge” means at all and it is presented as if mandatory – there is no discussion about whether or not it is an option.
Well at least Bellamy was a Christian. What is a “Christian Socialist” anyway? The phrase seems to be a complete oxymoron to me. Someone who calls himself that would seem to me to be evincing a misunderstanding of Christianity but many somehow think that the Gospel of Jesus is best expressed through the power of Rome (to speak metaphorically), an impossibility.
The pledge is ok, leaving out the “under god” phrase put in during the Eisenhower era, because the pledge recognizes that the USA is a Republic (and not a “Democracy” in the sense unionists and collectivists like to use the concept=I have the votes, thus I rule, a very Obamaesque concept). After 100 years of brainwashing even most teachers who lead the pledge every day don’t get the distinction between a Republic and a Democracy.
The failed European socialist revolutions of 1848 and 1870 sent unreconstructed refugee socialists to this country, where not having learned anything from failure and the reassertion all over Europe of bourgeois culture, they came here to try to work their poison on new shores. After a while they succeeded in infecting the political culture of this country and only now are we beginning to see the damage done by elevating equity over freedom.
It may take a crash like Sweden’s to knock some sense into welfare state liberals before things change enough to put the country back on a proper path. I like to think that this blog and Diane’s pronouncements are the last desperate expression of the 150 year old failed marxist faith. And it IS a faith, against all fact, very much like a religion. But it is full blown here on this blog, and I enjoy inspecting the festoons of rotten socialist sausage thinking decorating the education scene like strings of entrails on Christmas trees.