“On standing for the Pledge of Allegiance”,

2026 March 21, 09:51

Since I was young my mother told me not to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I think the last time I did was in first grade. Hand on heart, reciting words, looking at flag. Patriotism in a nutshell.

I still remember the lyrics years later, so I’ll put them here:

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.

I’ve never been able to do this in good conscience because there are numerous issues with the Pledge and its assertions, logical and moral:

1. Why would I or anybody else pledge allegiance to a flag. It’s an inanimate object. If pledging to the American flag is all good and well, why not pledge to the flag of North Korea?

2. I don’t want to pledge to the American republic, because I would only pledge to something I either love fiercely or I believe is flawless; neither of those apply to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment project under construction that I live in.

3. I don’t believe God exists; why would I pledge and say that the country I live in is “under” God. Also, if God’s really big, then we’d be crushed if we were under him.

4. There’s certainly not “liberty and justice for all”. What about Dred Scott? What about all of Jim Crow? What about George Floyd? What about Breonna Taylor? What about Emmett Till? What about Tamir Rice? What about Rodney King? What about Wayne Henderson? What about the Vietnamese whose skin we melted off with napalm? What about the political organisations we destroyed with COINTELPRO? What about Malcolm X? What about Fred Hampton? What about Huey P. Newton? What about W. E. B. Du Bois? What about Dr. King, whose title of Doctor is too often omitted? What about Clarence Thomas, who wants to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges? What about the Kansas government, which just revoked the driver’s licenses of 1,700 trans people because their gender doesn’t match their sex? What about the fact that America has never attempted to protect or sanction liberty and justice for all, and just a rotating group of people with a rotating group of scapegoats like American Indians, Chinese immigrants, Vietnamese immigrants, Japanese immigrants, Black Americans, trans people, bisexual people, gay people, and lesbian people?

I stand for the anthem, but don’t put my hand to my heart or sing it either. ♦