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July 4, 2002
Chris Floyd
Jungle
Fever:
Bush's Bolivian Mercenaries
July 3, 2002
Francis Boyle
The Death
of the Oslo Accords
Mokhiber / Weissman
Cracking
Down on Corp. Crime
Robert Jensen
Lynne
Cheney's Primer
Behzad Yaghmaian
An Alternative
to the G-8s Africa Initiative
Toward a Global AIDS Fund and a Living Wage
John Borowski
Public
Schools Under Seige
Norman Madarasz
Brazil,
the Workers' Party and the Financial Times
July 2, 2002
Leah Wells
The Wedding
Was a Bomb
CounterPunch Wire
Trial of
the SOA 37
Edward Hammond
Bombing
the Mind:
The Pentagon's Drug Warfare
Sam Bahour
Ramallah
Occupied:
Uninvited Guests Become Neighbors
July 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil's
Triumph
June 28/30, 2002
Kathleen Christison
The True Story of Resolution
242 or How the US Sold Out
the Palestinians
Cockburn / St. Clair
Death,
Juries and Scalia
Tarif Abboushi
Bush's
Double Standard
on Israel
N.D. Jayaprakash
Seething
with Rage:
The Palestinian Saga
Michael Yates
Taking
the Pledge:
Teachers and the Flag
Stephen Zunes
Bush's
Speech a Setback
for Peace
Walt Brasch
The Pledge
v. The Constitution
Cockburn / St. Clair
Strikers
as Terrorists?
Tom Ridge Calls Longshoremen
June 27, 2002
Ralph Nader
Reclaiming
Our Commons
Neve Gordon
Jerusalem
Under Attack
Robert Jensen
Alternative
Futures
David Vest
Darryl Kile's
Great Day
Gary Leupp
The Loya
Jirga Joke
Rahul Mahajan
Arafat
Says US Needs New Leadership; Calls for Fair Elections
June 26, 2002
Robert Fisk
Sharon as
Bush Speechwriter
Mokhiber / Weissman
Brokerman
June 25, 2002
Dave Marsh
The RIAA,
Library of Congress and the Web Pirates
Uri Avnery
Reform
Now!
Bahour / Dahan
Bush:
Off with Arafat's Head
Walt Brasch
Bush:
the Compassionate Exerciser
June 24, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Talkin'
About the F-Word
David Bates
Portland
Gets Dicked:
Cheney Does Oregon
Jo Freeman
Will
the War on Terror Follow the Path of the Cold War?
Tom Gorman
The Only
Thing "Generous" is the Propaganda
Bezhad Yaghmaian
Caught
Between Borders
in a Borderless World
Ben Sonnenberg
Ted
Hughes' Spell
June 22/23, 2002
Douglas Valentine
Sex,
Drugs & the CIA
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The Memphis Blues Again:
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The New Intifada:
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Independence
Day
July 4, 2002
The Uncommon
Pledge of Allegiance
by Tom Gorman
A few years ago, I performed a civic act that
few Americans have the nerve to suffer--I attended a city council
meeting. As I waited for the proceedings to begin, I was glad
I had brought something to read. The council members filed in
and opened the proceedings with a recitation of the Pledge of
Allegiance. Since high school, I have had little interest in
this ritual (I don't stand for the National Anthem at ball games,
either), so I remained seated, hoping there would be a few other
like-minded Americans at the council meeting. Instead, like something
out of The Manchurian Candidate, the few hundred people (the
high turnout--as well as my presence--was due to a contentious
zoning issue before the council) stood and turned in lockstep
to face the American flag in the corner of the room. I sat there
very uncomfortably, feeling strongly compelled to join in. Though
it did feel odd to have a roomful of people "praying"
in my general direction (the flag was behind me), I managed to
stay seated.
The current controversy over the phrase
"under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance belies a bigger
issue that is being lost in much of the accompanying rhetoric:
the rote recitation of the Pledge is un-Christian, un-American,
and self-contradictory.
Most who recite the Pledge--and certainly
those who added the phrase "under God" in 1954--are
referring to the Judeo-Christian deity. The First Commandment
of the Judeo-Christian scripture tells us that the deity is "a
jealous God" and that we are to have "no other Gods
before" him. (This is the Protestant and Hebrew interpretation
of the Commandment; raised Catholic, our God commanded, "Thou
shalt not have strange gods before me," leading one to wonder
if familiar gods would be acceptable.) While we could discuss
the incongruity of a monotheistic deity who is jealous of other
deities, the point seems to be that worship of anything other
than the Supreme Being could get you into a lot of trouble. When
American Christians say, "I Pledge Allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which
it stands," there seems to be a definite element of worship
for false idols, namely, the American flag and the American Republic.
While it can be argued that both of these items are really wonderful
things, they certainly are not God, and perhaps the injunction
against idol worship should give Christians and Jews greater
pause. After all, this was the objection of Jehovah's Witnesses
who, even before "under God" was inserted in the Pledge,
challenged compulsory recitation because they felt it came perilously
close to idolatry. Even if a Christian or Jew could argue that
the pledge is not idolatrous, doesn't the placement of the prohibition
(indeed it is the First Commandment) and the deity's self-qualification
as a "jealous God," make erring on the side of caution
the better part of wisdom?
The Pledge is also un-American. For those
who have never seen the film The Manchurian Candidate (referenced
above), it is the story of American POWs in Korea who are brainwashed
by dastardly Communists to commit political assassination by
surreptitious command once back in the US. One of the most haunting
scenes of the movie is when, for demonstrative purposes, the
trained assassin strangles one of his fellow POWs. As the Communist
military leaders look on, the other POWs sit calmly, smoking
cigarettes, seemingly indifferent to the brutal murder of their
friend. This film highlights a characteristic of many totalitarian
societies: the blind obedience to the state that can be engendered
in groups. One of the greatest aspects of the US is that it is,
ostensibly, not a totalitarian society. We don't give Nazi salutes
to our leaders. We don't wave little red books containing the
wisdom of our founders. The conformity that does exist is supposedly
for the betterment of society (paying taxes, compulsory education,
traffic laws), rather than the ego of an oligarchy. During my
Catholic elementary school education, the nuns would often lament
that the poor children in the Soviet Union would be made to "pray
to" the Communist leaders. These nuns would then lead us
in the Pledge of Allegiance, which we would recite in the same
dull monotone with which we often said standard prayers. Even
at this young age, I felt there was something untoward about
mindlessly repeating words that few of my classmates even understood.
Which brings us to the self-contradictory
nature of the Pledge. ". . . One nation, under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all." How much "liberty"
did I have at the city council meeting mentioned above? As a
thirty-year-old man, I felt significant, though unspoken, pressure
to conform to the group and recite the Pledge; I can only imagine
the stress put on an elementary school student to be "patriotic."
A fair conclusion from this experience would seem to be that
while we have liberty in this country, we probably shouldn't
use it.
This Independence Day, it would be sincerely
refreshing if American practice matched American rhetoric. As
we celebrate a day on which a group of people chose to break
from the crowd, can't we also honor those patriots who live up
to the spirit of the Pledge of Allegiance by being uncomfortable
at its conformist recitation?
Tom Gorman
is a writer living in Pasadena, California. He welcomes comments
at tgorman222@hotmail.com.
Today's
Features
Chris Floyd
Jungle
Fever:
Bush's Bolivian Mercenaries
Francis Boyle
The Death
of the Oslo Accords
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