Today is the birth date of Francis Bellamy, author of the Pledge of Allegiance. He wrote it in 1892, the 400th anniversary of Columbus discovering the continent then unknown to Europeans, to encourage the presentation of the flag in schools.
I was at a gathering once in which adults were asked to rise and recite the pledge. “What exactly do we promise to do when we say the pledge?” I asked a woman who was there. “Oh, it’s not a promise,” she told me. “It’s just something you say because you’re patriotic.” That, I suppose, would make it the Incantation of Allegiance.
But it’s not. It begins “I pledge” which means “I promise” or “I swear.” So I looked up the words to see what sense I could make of what exactly one commits to doing when one says the pledge.
We promise allegiance. Allegiance refers to the duties promised to a feudal liege lord. How allegiance applies to a flag, or to a country that emphatically does not have liege lords, is metaphoric. But what a vassal promises to his lord, we might promise to do for the country as a whole. There wasn’t a standard, of course, but traditionally a vassal usually promised two things: to give military service as requested, and to provide advice and counsel when asked.
Our flag was flying in Viet Nam when I was old enough to grasp at last what the word “pledge” meant. Was I promising to go to war or to believe that the war was right? I wasn’t sure and I didn’t really know what to think about the war in Viet Nam. It was a moot point for me — girls didn’t get drafted — but what if suddenly the president said they could be? Would I have promised to go? I supposed I could promise to go to war if my nation were attacked, but this was different. Even if I were a boy I wasn’t sure I’d swear to go to Viet Nam.
Then there’s advice and counsel: would the country ever even ask me for that? Actually, it does. It’s my duty as a citizen to vote and to offer myself for jury duty when asked. I still haven’t decided if I should consider it a duty or a privilege to go to the capitol, wave my protest sign, and shout when I believe the country has taken a wrong turn. My congressmen keep open phone lines for my feedback, though, and that’s a bit more like advice specifically being requested. Allegiance includes a duty to call my congressman when I believe the country is going off track.
There are a lot of other ways we show love of country but it’s my understanding that when we pledge allegiance, we promise to do for the republic just those things: upon request, military service, voting, jury duty, and response as needed to congress members.
How many Americans who repeat those words religiously, as if they were the Incantation of Allegiance, don’t vote, shirk jury duty, complain but don’t call congressmen, and would not be willing to march to war?
The remainder of the Pledge of Allegiance isn’t a promise but more of a hurrah about the imagined nature of the republic for which the flag stands: it’s one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Actually it is divisible, which Bellamy certainly knew when he wrote the pledge after the Civil War. It hasn’t always been one nation. The “under God” part wasn’t Bellamy’s. It was added later. Whether it was intended to mean “under God’s rulership” or just “beneath God and in his sight” isn’t clear and is a matter of contention. There’s no promise to believe in God implied in those words, though. “Liberty and justice for all” is pretty straightforward. We don’t actually promise them either, which is probably for the best. Many speakers of the pledge don’t seem to take an “all means all” view of who deserves liberty and justice.
But the pledge is a promise not to be taken lightly. It should never be demanded of anyone. It’s a tall order for an adult to swear that they’ll never miss a vote or an opportunity for jury duty though many Americans do their best. Though the pledge is intended for children, it should never be demanded of them or even encouraged. No one should encourage or demand that a kindergartener swear that if drafted he or she will take up arms and risk life and limb. It’s especially wrong to demand that children make any promise with such big words that even adults hardly understand what speaking the words commits one to do.
“I pledge allegiance to the frog of the United States of America and to the wee public for witches hands one Asian, under God, in the vestibule with little tea and just rice for all.”
― Bette Bao Lord
