I've Pledged Already, Thank You

                                                 

                                              R. Taylor, The New Yorker, June 4, 1960

*

Does one imagine that the next day the couple—with or without giggling—plighted their troths again? 

Silly to ask, you say?

*

I bring this up as a back-door way to get around to discussing today’s “Knickers-in-a-Twist” winner, Kristy Swanson. Ms. Swanson, an alleged actress, tweeted (don’t they ever stop?) about a teacher who apparently doesn’t stand during the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.* Quelle horreur! Even worse, that teacher told the students that they didn’t have to stand either if they didn’t want to. 

Well, untwist your underpants, Ms. actress, for the teacher, opting out, is doing that most American of things: exercising his/her freedom of speech. And students don't have to recite it, because forcing them to violates the First Amendment, which protects free speech. 

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.         Justice Robert Jackson, writing in the majority decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.**

Despite the Supreme Court ruling, there is nothing some people love more than dragooning others into a conforming loyalism—and somehow that show of loyalty always happens to coincide with what the dragooners believe. (I wrote about this three years ago.***) 

It is quite curious to me that the nation managed to exist for over a hundred years before the Pledge of Allegiance was thrust upon its citizens in 1892. And even more curious to me is the fact that the Republic survived more than another half-century before God was shoe-horned into the mix in 1954.

*

To return to our starting point—the newly-weds—with a philosophical question: at what point does reciting one’s marriage vows become redundant? Or, to focus on our main topic: how many times does one have to pledge a pledge?

For me, having once pledged my allegiance, I stand by that pledge, until such time as I renounce that pledge or pledge loyalty to another flag.

***

* ttps://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/kristy-swanson-pledge-of-allegiance-154840747.html

** https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/19/us/pledge-of-allegiance-explainer-trnd/index.html

*** https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2016/08/up-flagpole.html