Decoding "Pledge": history of flag oath

[uppityperson]

This reviews an interesting book "To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance" by Richard J. Ellis
University Press of Kansas, 297 pp., $29.95. Here are a couple paragraphs from the article, more at site, including which state make it mandatory for public school children to say it (WA, "Feb 1919, same month as the Seattle general strike, which had spread fears of a communist takeover"). The more we can learn about the past, the better we are able to work with it, and I am going to see if I can get our library to order one of these.

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The Pledge of Allegiance was promoted for decades before any government adopted it. It was not even the only flag oath; others had their day and died. The pledge achieved immortality by achieving a critical momentum when Americans were worried about war, immigration and radicalism.

The story is told in "To the Flag" by Richard Ellis, professor of history at Willamette University. He approaches his topic with probably as much objectivity as anyone could.
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Other states mandated the pledge in the 1920s, and legal battles began over it. One of the harshest fates befell a 9-year-old Bellingham boy, Russell Tremain. Following his parents' religious faith, the boy refused to say the pledge, and in 1925 was expelled from public school. When the family did not back down, a judge ordered the boy put in a state home. The state kept him for more than two years, forbade his parents to visit him and began the process of putting him up for adoption. In November 1927 a different judge restored him to his parents, who sent him to a private school.
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The book also contains the story of the two times the pledge was changed. Both had to do with radicalism.
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Toward the end of the book comes the story of how the pledge became a weapon of the Republicans in the 1988 campaign of George H.W. Bush.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2002334741_pledge14.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. and today we need to take that cute pledge

and make it OUR weappon

[FreedomAngel82]

2. And now

"patriotism" is becoming a thing again. *sigh* I remember not long after the last "election" at my church a girl in the class I attend was going on about how "people are trying to take God out of the country" and mentioned the pledge and homosexuality and all that crap. Before 1954 there was no "under God" in the pledge. What about people who don't believe in God? Also God has told not to worship idols such as a flag.

[RedCloud]

3. This pledge?

I plead allignment
to the flakes
of the untitled snakes of a merry cow,
and to the republicans
for which they scam,
one nacho,
underpants,
with licorice,
and jugs of wine for owls.

[phaseolus]

5. hee

Bongo, from Matt Groening's "Life in Hell"

[beam me up scottie]

6. ROFLMAO !

:rofl:
Where did that you get that?

[pnorman]

4. Thanks for that link.

After that Newspaper Strike here in Seattle several years ago, I ceased buying either the Seattle Times or the PI, regardless of the low price. But I occasionally read them on-line. That was a good read. Some things I didn't know.

There's a totally WHACKED-OUT review of that book over at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0700613722/ref=dp_nav_0/102-1074955-1398546?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

ONE NATION INDIVISIBLE
pnorman

[phaseolus]

7. More info on this from "This American Life"

go here http://www.thislife.org/pages/archives/archive05.html , and listen to episode 290. The Kramnick segment deals with these very issues.