photo credit: eschipul
I had some interesting thoughts this morning after reading an article I would normally not bother to read. It was talking about a specific historical flag, but my thoughts were turned to the flag generally and then to the Pledge of Allegiance. Here’s the statement that got my brain moving:
The flag is an American flag — 13 stripes, a blue square canton with 13 white stars surrounding an American bald eagle. So far, this flag isn’t strange for its day. In the 19th century, almost anything goes in handmade national flags. (emphasis added)
Suddenly I am released from the idea of a standardized flag and considering the flag more abstractly as a representation of something to believe in. The nation represented by all those handmade national flags was the same, and the symbolism of that nation was consistent across flags (stars, stripes, red, white, and blue), but people felt free to add things to the flag that helped represent their feelings regarding the nation (an American bald eagle in the field of blue being an apparently common addition back then).
If the flag need not be universally orthodox then a pledge of allegiance to the flag makes less sense. I’ve discussed my thoughts on that previously and been surprised at how many people would wish to change one thing or another in the pledge. We all know about people who wish to have the words “under God” stricken from the pledge but there are others who would remove the assertion that the nation is indivisible. While I very much appreciate the fact that our current pledge is not directed at a party, or political leader my new perspective on flags makes me echo the sentiment of Connor:
Iโve never understood why we pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth.
If we are not going to direct our allegiance at a piece of cloth, a political party, or an administration, I wonder where we would direct our allegiance, and what a pledge would look like. While I am not suggesting we make any efforts to reform our pledge, my thoughts this morning led me to this (and I would love to hear what others think about it):
I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America and to the republic it defined, a nation dedicated under God to the promise of liberty and justice for all.
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