"I pledge Allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible,
with Liberty and Justice for all."
"Ich gelobe Treue auf die Fahne der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, auf die Republik, die eine Nation unter Gott ist, vereinigt durch Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit fur alle."
So which is it, the flag or the Republic? Why pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth? If you’re going to swear a loyalty oath shouldn’t it be to the nation, or to its laws or its Constitution? Really, pick one: the gaudy piece of cloth, or the real system of government. Otherwise you’re just bloviating. Sort of like what those people do who drive around with flags flapping on their cars. Most of them couldn’t pass a high school civics test. Oh, wait, high schools don’t teach that useless stuff anymore, do they?
Why ‘and’ flag and Republic ‘for which it stands’? Cut to the chase. The Republic is law and nation and history and Constitution. Flag is cloth. Flag is copout. Love the flag and you don’t have to do anything – you’ll be admired for your ‘patriotism’. Ah, but love the Republic? Yeah, for that you have to fight. You have to get off your ass and wade into the fray; you have to know what you’re actually fighting for; you have to know some real history, not the phonied-up stuff from the Tea Potty and the screeching Republican fakers. You have to actually work at it.
It’s much easier just to mindlessly recite the loyalty oath and look down your nose at those who object to it (that would be me) and smugly diddle your mind with your profound patriotism. That’s what the ‘flag’ reference is all about in the Pledge. It’s a way out for the ignorant, for the lazy, for the fakers.
And of course my old argument still stands, that the Pledge compels silence, compels conformity, and compels Christian religious belief, all of which would have the Founders rolling over in their graves, if not digging their way out and heading to Washington to kick the fat asses of the faux Tea Potty Republican patriots running around befouling the whole thing.
Oh, the German thing up top? Yeah, switch out the States for the Reich and that would have fit well in Hitler’s Germany, don’t ya think? Dolfy was big on loyalty oaths.
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Grumpy Lion 
“The flag and the Republic for which it stands” cannot be separated, and I doubt it was ever intended to be separated. In simpler times, it made sense to have a symbol that simple people could focus on that represented the true nature of the country. The whole Stars and Stripes thing symbolized a united conglomeration of separate states under a constitution designed to have all of the states work together for the common benefit. But as we got bigger and more complex, simple people gravitated away from the conceptual underpinnings of the symbol, to adore the symbol. It’s turned into a cult of idolatry. It’s time to demote the idol.
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Yeah, maybe, but Spanqi, that conglomeration bit? The stars are all white and live in a separate field. And out in the stripey part the red and the white don’t mix at all. So if we’re going to get all analogical and allegorical, the white parts of the country don’t mix with the other color parts, so there’s not a lot of common benefit. And then there’s that old saw about ‘the symbol is not the territory’. Or was that some Rand McNally propaganda trying to sneak some intelligence into the territory of maps and flags? As for demoting the idol, how about a reality show, you know, something like a negative version of American Idol? Or Idolatry Undone? Or America, Si, Idol, No? Or Idol No More? Whaddya think, huh, we could clean up!
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Christianity has the same problem, but arguably the cross and the True Faith are a near match in useless passion. Give me the old REAL REPUBLIC any time.
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Pre-Caesarian, I presume…
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absolutely
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😀
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