Nobody can have missed the Facebook firestorm over the response of some parent to a form his kid brought home from school. Here's how it goes.
Not everyone is delighted with the Pledge of Allegiance.
It is well known that the version initially published by one Francis Bellamy went like this (the word 'to' was added later):
1892 to 1923
"I pledge allegiance to my Flagand [to] the Republic for which it stands,one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
It is just possible to object to being forced to recite even this pledge, if allegiance is understood to mean supporting in battle, etc., but by and large I know of few individuals who would complain if their youngsters were to have to say this every schoolday. This original oath of allegiance was intended to be said by all people everywhere (obviously each to his own flag), in the spirit of universality and enlightenment that flourished in those times.
However, a minor change was made in 1923, basically making sure that the version popular in the USA specifically mentioned the United States Flag:
1923 to early 1954
"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
At this time, a family belonging to a certain religious minority objected to their children having to salute any object--in this case, a flag--that stood for any principle. Their religion, they said, forbade paying homage to an object, even if the object represent something that they deemed worthy. The kids, whose family name was Gobitis, refused to salute, or recite the Pledge, and were sent home.
You can read the details in Wikipedia, or you could spring for a more detailed account in a book. But, deplorably, the Wikipedia article [Wikipedia, West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette] simply drips of legal technical terms, making it very difficult indeed to unravel the lines of reasoning. I truly wish someone with a little training would paraphrase this article for the general reader.
To continue: by missing school, the Gobitis kids were guilty of not going to school, which would have sent their parents to jail. But they got around this by going to school every day, getting formally kicked out, and trudging back home. Mind you, this was just for refusing to salute the flag.
The Supreme Court, considering this case,
required all schools in the state to conduct courses of instruction in history, civics, and in the Constitutions of the United States and of the State "for the purpose of teaching, fostering and perpetuating the ideals, principles and spirit of Americanism, and increasing the knowledge of the organization and machinery of the government." The West Virginia State Board of Education was directed to "prescribe the courses of study covering these subjects" for public schools. [Wikipedia, ibid.]
The majority opinion of Justice Felix Frankfurter is given in detail in Wikipedia. He basically said that refusal to salute the flag was insubordination, and had to be treated as such. If they didn't like the Salute to the flag, they could try and change the law. In other words, it had to be done through either the State House or Congress, by legislation, that is, by majority vote. Take note of that, because this is important. To most of us, Democracy means settling something by vote. We never think of voting on whether somebody ought to be, say, put to death. We can't decide everything by vote.
At this time, on Flag Day 1954, for whatever reasons, President Eisenhower decided to include the words "under God" into the Pledge, with the encouragement of one Rev. Docherty:
1954 (current version)
"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one Nation under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Docherty's inspiration was a phrase that occurred in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, namely "under God."
In 1943, some children of the name of Barnette had come into conflict with saluting the flag once again. They, too, had religious objections to the practice, but this time they had an advocate in the Court, namely Justice Robert Jackson, the most junior member of the Court (as far as I can tell). With what seems to me incisive logic, he pointed out why every point Justice Felix Frankfurter made in the earlier decision against the Gobitis girls was unconstitutional, and morally objectionable.
Point 1, Refuting: The Flag as a national symbol.
From what I understand, Justice Jackson said that he (with the majority) objected not to classifying the flag as a national symbol, but to treating such symbols with such great reverence. "One man's comfort and inspiration," he said, is another man's rubbish.
Point 2, Refuting: Building National Unity.
Frankfurter had said that making flag ceremonies uniformly compulsory across the country was a way of unifying the nation. Jackson denied this. Forcing this sort of recitation would ultimately end up in attempts to eradicate those sectors of the population that refuse to conform (implicitly alluding to the death camps of Nazi Germany, and various purges in Russia).
Point 3, Refuting: Unifying by Coersion.
Frankfurter had taken a hard line with those students who chose not to salute the flag, saying that they should be expelled, unless they could change the law through the vote. Justice Jackson objected to this, saying that some liberties went beyond the vote:
"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights [is] to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections."--Justice Robert Jackson; italics are mine.
Point 4, Refuting: Matters of school discipline are better left to local authorities
Jackson objected even to this. The point is subtle, and I'm not able to paraphrase it or improve its clarity very much. Jackson seems to say that minor issues, such as the punishment for refusing to salute a flag, could be left to the school to decide, but that no official, high or low, should be allowed to prescribe political orthodoxy.
It is tragic that the simple people, of the Salt of the Earth variety who are the backbone of the US, cannot be easily shown the subtleties of the US constitution, and the delicate balance of principles that keeps the country on an even keel. The idea of democracy is easy to understand; it is the idea of minority rights that is (to some) vague and confusing, even if they are already convinced of the validity of those rights.
The arguments put forward by Justice Jackson contained among them both the right to free speech, and the right to refuse coerced speech. The Golbitises and the Barnettes stood up for the rights of those of us, including atheists, who find the Pledge repugnant. It was a political move to insert Under God, and it will be a hard sell to get it out once more.
[Added later]
I left my original thought unstated.
There could be two main reasons why certain individuals find the presence of the phrase "Under God" inspiring, or rhetorically necessary.
The first is that they are hostile to religions that they view as opposed to Christianity, or they are hostile to atheism, or they jealously defend their view that there are hidden (or explicit) Christian elements in the US constitution. They perceive Christianity to be the only belief system capable of, or worthy of, being the foundation of US society. Such folk may either refuse to tolerate any other religious beliefs, or may merely reluctantly tolerate as an unavoidable evil the fact that others subscribe to different religions or philosophies. This is foolishness. We cannot engage these people in meaningful dialog, because we more moderate individuals have little or no basis for discourse with them. Nor can they tolerate their views to be challenged, because typically their world-views are not sufficiently flexible, and these individuals do not have the conceptual backgrounds to be able to compromise. Us forcing them to accept a broader view actually requires our damaging their concept-world, which most of us will find too harsh a thing to do, and very difficult to accomplish anyway.
The second is that certain individuals firmly believe that Christianity, even if they subscribe to it with less than total belief, is the only belief system able to supply the moral foundation that is threaded through the Constitution. For these people, Christianity is the only means towards this necessary end, and they cling desperately to practices and ceremonies that they believe are crucial to support the rule of law and reasonable public behavior. Such people certainly can be engaged in dialog, because beneath their surface religiosity is an approach to religious practice that is ultimately pragmatic, and in the view of at least some of us, cynical. The cynicism is not that of wanting something that is detrimental, but simply that of hypocrisy.
Religious belief should not be a matter of necessity, but a matter of conviction. Countless folk subscribe to various religions because they believe that it is in the best interests of the society in which they live---they consider subscription to a particular religion a duty, or a service; something they do to set an example. In the long run, however, it is better, in my humble opinion, to profess precisely what you believe in. It may be a struggle to discover what one believes in, but that struggle is valuable, and saves one an enormous amount of effort; keeping one's left hand believing one thing and one's right hand believing another is a tiring exercise. Once junior realizes that there is no Santa Claus, everyone can rest easy. (I must express my gratitude to Mano Singham for bringing me to this epiphany, something that took place too long ago for him to remember, I'm sure.)
To summarize: the odious Pledge of Allegiance that is inflicted upon our youth continues to ride triumphant because a host of Social Engineers and a host of Christian Absolutists with blinkers on chose to subscribe to it in 1954, a year that will go down in infamy, and no one dares to revert the Pledge to the simple one that was initially innocently proposed by Bellamy, for fear of being accused of being unAmerican; the legacy of Eugene McCarthy.
So, anyway, by dint of sheer persistence, (or by other means,) a law was passed in Florida that says that it is the right of every student, if his family so desires, to be excused from saluting the flag, and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Every kid brought home a form that the parent(s) could fill out, in order for the kid to be excused from saluting the flag, etc. The parent who gained so much fame on Facebook expressed indignation that this form was even sent home with his son. In other words, he was angry at the concession being offered to those who preferred not to salute the flag. Everyone should salute the flag, whether or not they want to do it, seems to be his point of view. He was not thinking, evidently, that his point of view implied coercion. He did not perceive deploring the use of that piece of paper to excuse some students from saluting the flag and reciting the pledge as abridging their civil liberties. What he did see was that allowing some kids to not salute was contradicting his own freedom to have all the kids saluting.
This tendency to view the freedom of others as circumscribing one's own freedom is a puerile thing that is easy to illustrate. A man walks down the street, swinging his cane exuberantly, and knocks off the hat of someone else. The two face off in the street, and the man whose hat was knocked off points out that this cane-swinging has got to stop.
The man with the cane retorts that it is a free country, and he could swing his cane just as much as he wanted to. But his victim replies: your freedom ends where my freedom begins!
This is the problem. The population at large is reluctant to think through the consequences of their casually taken positions. Some would say that this is the triumph of marketing over information. We're too accustomed to looking at the pictures instead of reading the text. (Note to self: find a picture to go with this post.)
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