I would like to congratulate columnist Steve Chapman for publicly recognizing the disturbing implications of compelling our nation’s students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance (“Silent treatment: Should the Pledge of Allegiance be compulsory,” Op-Ed, June 7).
As Chapman reports it, the persecution of California high school student MaryKait Durkee for her refusal to recite the pledge in class is an action contradictory to every principle that justifies the existence of the United States. Durkee displayed exceptionally American behavior by her insistence upon forming her own opinions with her best moral judgment and voicing them peaceably and clearly without fear of disapproval. Her case exemplifies the individual thought that is protected by and required by our form of government, and I congratulate Chapman for acknowledging this.
What people should also know was not covered in Chapman’s column. The Pledge of Allegiance is thought by many to be as central to American political foundations as the Declaration of Independence. It is not. The Pledge of Allegiance was first printed in 1892, more than a century after the founding of the U.S. It was not created by the founders of the country, or even by the government; authorship has been attributed to Francis Bellamy, a staff member of Youth’s Companion, the magazine that first published the pledge.
The most controversial part of the pledge, “one nation under God,” was not even a part of the original text. The words “under God” were added by an act of Congress in 1954. I find these the two most disturbing words of the pledge as they state that the U.S. exists under a religious authority. Compelling our citizens to declare their allegiance to any God is clearly and explicitly prohibited by the Bill of Rights and violates the spirit of individual religious freedom that has been essential to our nation since before its conception.
These thoughts in mind, it becomes apparent that the Pledge of Allegiance obeys neither the letter nor the spirit of American government. A defining characteristic of the U.S., and a reason ours is a country worth living in, is our respect for the sanctity of individual religious and political belief expression. Requiring our students to swear their souls to our country and to God is both unjust and unproductive; the true display of our allegiance is not our compelled recital of a contrived verse but our conviction to defend the American ideals of justice and liberty by our actions and our own free will.
