Turn and Look...at The Pledge of Allegiance

See with new eyes...

The author of the Pledge was Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and self identified Christian Socialist from Boston. Francis Bellamy served as vice president in charge of education for the "Society of Christian Socialists".

This national organization advocated "income taxation, central banking, nationalized education, nationalization of industry, and other features of socialism. Its advocates held that agriculture and handicraft, and small shop keeping, were the only admissible occupations. Trade and speculation were superfluous, injurious, and evil. Factories and large-scale industries were a wicked invention of the "Jewish spirit"; they produced only bad goods which were foisted on buyers by the large stores and by other monstrosities of modern trade to the detriment of purchasers."

Edward Bellamy, his cousin, was the author of a socialist utopian fantasy called LOOKING BACKWARD, published in 1888.

The novel’s main character, Julian West, falls asleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. He finds, much to his happy surprise, that all industry is state owned. All are employed by the state from the ages of 21 to 45 (retirement age). Everyone earns the same.

According to Francis, one goal of the Pledge of Allegiance was to help make his cousin’s novel a reality in America.

Francis went on to say that the "true reason for allegiance to the Flag" was to instill in American school children that the states were "never sovereign and that the union created the states, not the other way around." Also, America had too much liberty and not enough equality.

Never mind, that in all of the American founding documents, the citizens of the states are declared sovereign over the federal government. The sovereign states delegated a FEW enumerated powers to the central government, AS THEIR AGENT, while maintaining sovereignty for themselves.

This troubled Francis Bellamy. The first step on the road to his socialist utopia was a consolidated state. The Jeffersonian philosophy of federalism and states’ rights had to be eliminated.

The Pledge of Allegiance was written to be a vow of allegiance to the state. Francis said he got the idea from the "loyalty oaths" Southerners were forced to make during the "Civil War" and during Reconstruction. Adult male civilians in the South were forced to take a loyalty oath to the federal government or be shot.

The Pledge of Allegiance was first published in the September 1892 issue of The Youth’s Companion, "the Reader’s Digest of its day..

Francis and cousin Edward felt that the public schools must be used to teach obedience to the state, and the National Education Association was quite ready to assist them in this endeavor.

A "National Public School Celebration" was planned in 1892, on behalf of the Pledge of Allegiance. It was a huge campaign and involved government schools and politicians throughout the country. "The government schools were promoted, along with the Pledge, while private schools, especially parochial ones, were criticized."

Students recited the Pledge with their arms outstretched, palms up, "similar to how Roman citizens were required to hail Caesar, and not too different from the way in which Nazi soldiers saluted Hitler." This form of salute did not change until around 1950(after WWII for obvious reasons).

Also, questions about the "under God" wording might now be seen in a different light. Since the Pledge is an oath of allegiance to the central state, the "under God" language can be seen as serving to deify the state.

The PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE was NEVER intended to uphold the ideals of the American founders. It was meant to establish the ideals of two, late nineteenth-century, avowed socialists.