Pledge Allegiance To The Flag Quotes

It comes as a great shock…to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance…has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.

What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the great Republic of America, to our Elector Primo, to our glorious states, to unity against the Colonies, to our impending victory!

As I grew to understand the gifts of the earth, I couldn't understand how "love of country" could omit recognition of the actual country itself. The only promise it requires is to a flag. What of the promises to each other and to the land?

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.

The dedication had been anticipated nationwide. Francis J. Bellamy, an editor of Youth’s Companion, thought it would be a fine thing if on that day all the schoolchildren of America, in unison, offered something to their nation. He composed a pledge that the Bureau of Education mailed to virtually every school. As originally worded, it began, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands …

When I left high school with my diploma, it felt like I was holding a key that would unlock the door to a better world. Every teacher I passed on my way down to the parking lot—the ones who suspended me for questioning them both earnestly and in jest, suspended me for using a contumacious hip-shake as my hallway gait, suspended me for me being me—the ones who would roll their eyes if my behavior was, on the whole, unpatriotic, unjustified, and immature—well, on the way down that long black declivity, their faces seemed so contorted as if lurking shadows had vice grips locked on their kidneys, wrenching it every time a teacher didn't want to remain upright and respectful. Yes, they didn’t want to me to succeed either! I pledge allegiance to the flag that united every authority in that indefensible school looked at me, even treated me, as if I was a terrorist, or at the very least, unpatriotic. But God—didn’t the red blood, white skin, and blue balls that flagged my physical existence suffice for me to have a little liberty and justice?

Take the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. I remember as a child how I used to choke up every morning "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." Now it didn't say, "I pledge allegiance to racism, to capitalism, and to neo­colonialism, and J. Edgar Hoover, and Richard Nixon, .and Ronald Reagan, and Mace, and billy clubs and dead niggers on the street shot by pigs." I mean it didn't say that shit, you see.

While our own citizens burn our flag or sneer at our pledge of allegiance, millions of people around the world would do anything to be here.

Only one thing to it: a strong stomach. The guts to gladhand a man you're going to stab in the back; pledge allegiance to principles you stomp on every day; righteously denounce some despot in the press and sell him arms under the table. The talent to whip up the voters' worst passions while you seem to call on their highest instincts, and the sense to stay wrapped in the flag. That's politics: I'll take the simple life.

So, while we cheer for Katniss in The Hunger Games as she defies her oppressive government, we would never tolerate anyone who refused to place their hand over their heart and pledge allegiance to our flag at a football game.

Francis J. Bellamy, an editor of Youth’s Companion, thought it would be a fine thing if on that day all the schoolchildren of America, in unison, offered something to their nation. He composed a pledge that the Bureau of Education mailed to virtually every school. As originally worded, it began, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands …” A

Believing that only under God Almighty, to Whom we render all homage, do we Americans hold our vast Power, we shall guarantee to all persons absolute freedom of religious worship, provided, however, that no atheist, agnostic, believer in Black Magic, nor any Jew who shall refuse to swear allegiance to the New Testament, nor any person of any faith who refuses to take the Pledge to the Flag, shall be permitted to hold any public office or to practice as a teacher, professor, lawyer, judge, or as a physician, except in the category of Obstetrics.

Milo carefully said nothing when Major de Coverley stepped into the mess hall with his fierce and austere dignity the day he returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line to sign loyalty oaths. At the far end of the food counter, a group of men who had arrived earlier were pledging allegiance to the flag, with trays of food balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the table. Already at the tables, a group that had arrived still earlier was singing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' in order that they might use the salt and pepper and ketchup there.

What packages we were allowed to receive from our families often contained handkerchiefs, scarves, and other clothing items. For some time, Mike had been taking little scraps of red and white cloth, and with a needle he had fashioned from a piece of bamboo he laboriously sewed an American flag onto the inside of his blue prisoner's shirt. Every afternoon, before we ate our soup, we would hang Mike's flag on the wall of our cell and together recite the Pledge of Allegiance. No other event of the day had as much meaning to us. "The guards discovered Mike's flag one afternoon during a routine inspection and confiscated it. They returned that evening and took Mike outside. For our benefit as much as Mike's they beat him severely, just outside our cell, puncturing his eardrum and breaking several of his ribs. When they had finished, they dragged him bleeding and nearly senseless back into our cell, and we helped him crawl to his place on the sleeping platform. After things quieted down, we all lay down to go to sleep. Before drifting off, I happened to look toward a corner of the room, where one of the four naked lightbulbs that were always illuminated in our cell cast a dim light on Mike Christian. He had crawled there quietly when he thought the rest of us were sleeping. With his eyes nearly swollen shut from the beating, he had quietly picked up his needle and begun sewing a new flag.

...there comes a time in every African American's life when they discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance and such loyalty and not pledged allegiance and loyalty to you.

...there comes a time in every African American's life when they discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance and such loyalty has not pledged allegiance and loyalty to you.

Maybe it begins the day you pledge allegiance, face the flag and suddenly clutch your left clavicle because you find a tender puff of breast where yesterday your heart was Or maybe it happens later when you're walking home from school and they rush you on the street-- those boys who reach out fast, disgrace your blouse with rubs of dirt, their laughter stinging hot against your face. And you bite your rage, swallow your tears because the fact is, your territory's up for grabs and somehow it's your own damned fault. And one day you stand at your mirror armed with jars and razor blades against the scents and grasses of your shameless bleeding body, and you see what you've become--a freak manufactured to disguise the real one, the one who sometimes still recalls your innocence, the time before you became a dirty joke. And maybe it begins to end the day you try against the odds to love yourself again. Even though you know the worst thing you can call someone is cunt, you try to love the flesh and fur you are, that convoluted, prehistoric flower, petals dripping weeds and echoing vaguely fragrant odors of the sea.

...there comes a time in every African American's life when they discover that the flag tot which you have pledged allegiance and such loyalty and not pledged allegiance and loyalty to you.

The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag was the origin of the Nazi salute and Nazi behavior; and the swastika, although an ancient symbol, was also used to represent crossed 'S' letters for 'socialism' under the National Socialist German Workers Party.

The United States of America has now reached a whole new level of patriarchal absurdity. You mean they massacred the Indians, enslaved the Africans, cut down all the trees, poisoned all the rivers, and extinguished or imprisoned all the animals for THIS, this hellhole of bombast and hamburgers and opioid addictions and cardboard-box houses and pretend ideas? You mean they used up all the oxygen on 4th of July firecrackers and forcing kids to pledge allegiance to the flag every goddam day, drank Coke till they choked, spat tobaccy till they puked, fought cancer (but only for people with lots of money), nestled in Nestlés, slurped slurpees, burped burpees, handed on herpes, Tasered the wayward, jailed the frail and tortured about a million billion chickens (then fried and ate them), just so people can drive around and shoot each other and create GoFundMe sites to pay the hospital bills?

The Pledge of Allegiance (1892) was the origin of the raised arm salute adopted later by the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis). The Pledge was written by Francis Bellamy, cousin to Edward Bellamy (the author), and both were self-proclaimed national socialists in the United States. The original Pledge began with a military salute that was then extended out toward the flag. In practice, the second gesture was performed palm down. The gesture was not an ancient Roman salute. All of these are discoveries of the symbologist Dr. Rex Curry (author of "Pledge of Allegiance Secrets").

1. Mein Kampf does not contain the word "Nazi." 2. Mein Kampf does not contain the term “Third Reich.” 3. Mein Kampf does not contain the word "Fascist" ever as a self reference by Hitler. 4. Mein Kampf does not contain a single use of the word "swastika." 5. Nazis did not call their symbol a "swastika." 6. Swastikas represented crossed "S" letters for "SOCIALISTS" under Adolf Hitler. 7. Nazi salutes and Nazi behavior originated from the USA's Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. 8. The Nazi salute came from the military salute (as used in the original Pledge of Allegiance in the USA). I learned the above revelations and more from the the historian Dr. Rex Curry's scholarly discoveries.

On Flag Day in 1954 Eisenhower signed legislation that added the phrase "one nation under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance as recited by millions of children in American schools.

This is a great irony of American Christianity: exalting the nation that affords us “freedom of religion,” we set aside the way of Christ in order to preserve the religion we supposedly are free to practice. We kill our alleged enemies in order to “worship” the God who teaches us to love enemies. The most important question about our pledge of allegiance is not whether we pledge allegiance to a flag under “one God,” but to what god we are pledging our allegiance. Perhaps it is, after all, not the God revealed in Jesus Christ we are worshiping, but the god of the nation-state, the god of power and might and wealth.

The promotional material for Fourth Island is far more lavish and not at all defensive. From the Permanent Living Reenactment of the Flag Raising on Iwo Jima to the Rockets’ Red Glare Four-Hour Fireworks Display every night, from the United We Stand Steak House by way of the statue-lined Avenue of the Presidents to the Under God Indivisible Prayer Chapel, it is all on a grand scale, and every last piece of it is red, white, blue, striped, and starred. The Great Joy Corporation is evidently expecting or receiving patriotic visitors in great numbers. Interactive displays of the Museum of Our Heroes, the Gun Show, and the All-American Victory Gardens (salvia, lobelia, candytuft) feature large on the Web site, where one can also at all times recite the Pledge of Allegiance interactively with a chorus

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of Compulsory Free Speech...

Without traditions, fixed people sense the possibility that society could quickly become unmoored. The unfamiliar is an inherent danger until it proves otherwise. This makes it easy to understand why the slogan “Make America Great Again” had such resonance among those with a fixed worldview. It harks back to a time when prayer was commonplace in public schools, children respected their elders and unquestioningly pledged allegiance to the flag “under God,” and gender roles were strictly defined by traditional norms.

Nationalism is young and strong, and has already run into bad trouble. We take pains to educate our children at an early age in the rituals and mysteries of the nation, infusing national feeling into them in place of the universal feeling which is their birthright; but lately the most conspicuous activity of nations has been the blowing of each other up, and an observant child might reasonably ask whether he is pledging allegiance to a flag or to a shroud. A nation asks of its citizens everything--their fealty, their money, their faith, their time, their lives. It is fair to ask whether the nation, in return, does indeed any longer serve the best interests of the human beings who give so lavishly of their affections and their blood. We know, we Americans, what America means in the human heart; we remember its principles and we honor its record; but we tend to forget that it has its counterpart in sixty or seventy other places. This is mischievous business. It is bloody business. Reinforced with the atom, it may be fatal business.

I am too alive to be bound by ideology, I am too human to be bound by border. Too civilized to pledge flagly allegiance, I am the ultimate geopolitical defector.

I always disliked pledging allegiance to the flag. It was so tedious and sillyass. I always felt more like pledging allegiance to myself, but there we were and we stood up and ran through it. Then, afterwards, the little pause, and everybody sitting down feeling as if they had been slightly molested.

If I die, please don't feed me to them. Especially Oregano. That one is too eager when she eats," he pleas dramatically. I snort, finishing shaving the dead man's hair and moving on to extracting his teeth. "Deal, as long as you don't let me become pig food, either." He places a hand over his heart, like a soldier pledging his allegiance to the flag. "You have my word." So dramatic.

When we place hand on heart to say the pledge of allegiance, what sort of act is this? What sort of allegiance are we giving to what sort of political body? What sort of solidarity do we feel when, especially after some great national sacrifice (soldiers coming home from war, or an event like 9/11), we see the flag hung on every porch, every storefront window, and every suit lapel? Is the flag like a sacrament of our national communion with one another? Why do we make theological claims on our national currency? Why does trusting God become a recipe for trust in our currency markets? What claims about human beings and human community are being made in such small acts?

On Flag Day 1954, he signed a bill adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. He

I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag and to the Savior for whose kingdom it stands. One Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again with life and liberty to all who believe.

Hey, brah,” Quinn said. “What is going on, do you know?” Sam asked. “It’s a club.” Quinn grinned. “Man, you must be working too hard. Everyone knows about it.” Sam stared at him. “It’s a what?” “McClub, brah. All you need is some batteries or some toilet paper.” This announcement left Sam baffled. He considered asking Quinn for clarification, but then Albert appeared, formally dressed, like he thought it was graduation or something. He actually had on a dark sports coat and slacks in a lighter shade. His shirt was pale blue, collared, and ironed. Spotting Sam, he extended his hand. Sam ignored the hand. “Albert, what is going on here?” “Dancing, mostly,” Albert said. “Excuse me?” “Kids are dancing.” Quinn caught up then and stepped in front of Sam to shake Albert’s still-extended hand. “Hey, dude. I have batteries.” “Good to see you, Quinn. The price is four D cells, or eight double As, or ten triple As, or a dozen Cs. If you have a mix, I can work it out.” Quinn dug in his pocket and produced four triple A batteries and three D cells. He handed them to Albert, who agreed to the price and dropped the batteries into a plastic bag at his feet. “Okay, the rules are no food, no alcohol, no attitude, no fights, and when I call ‘time,’ there’s no arguing about it. Do you agree to these rules?” “Dude, if I had any food, would I be here? I’d be home eating it.” Quinn put his hand over his heart like he was pledging allegiance to the flag and said, “I do.” He jerked a thumb back at Sam. “Don’t bother with him: Sam doesn’t dance.” “Have a good time, Quinn.

We saluted the flag and recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning (before the words “under God” were gratuitously added to it).

In 1892 Francis found a way to weave three important threads of his belief system - "nationalism" (meaning, remember, nationalization of industry), public state run education, and unionism (meaning an indivisible union with a strong central government) - into a single strand. In that year, he wrote the Pledge of Allegiance to support the School Flag Movement, which sought to have an American flag flying over every schoolhouse in the land. He later designed a straight-armed salute which may or may not have influenced the Nazis' virtually identical salute. America, after Nazis either borrowed or created independently the same salute, changed to the now familiar hand-over-heart version. Still, it's unnerving to see old propaganda photos of happy American kids seemingly Heil Hitlering an American flag in the schoolroom. There's even a Norman Rockwellesque painting from the era showing ecstatic bright-faced American kids goose-stepping in well-formed columns down the street as they heil.

One Nation Under God rebellious gritty outlaw country [Verse] In the heart of these small-town roads, where the story's old but true, We used to bow our heads in prayer, we’d pledge allegiance too. Now the lights are flickering, the signs all point to fall, Where’d that spirit go that used to stand so tall? [Verse 2] Factory stands are empty, schools don’t teach no more, Folks drive by the church, like it's something to ignore. We used to hold our ground, with hands together tight, But the unity we had has vanished in the night. [Chorus] This country’s going to hell, can’t you hear the warning bell? What once was one nation under God has disappeared. We the people will soon be no more if we don’t take a stand, It’s time to raise that flag and put God back in this land. [Verse 3] We got preachers out on Main Street, shouting at the skies, But nobody’s listening, too busy with the lies. The family dinners cold now, faith broke at the seams, It’s high time to awake and chase those old dreams. [Verse 4] The fields are overgrown, tractors left to rust, Where’s the honor and the pride, the values that we trust? Cemeteries filled with souls who knew the way it was, We need to reawaken and fix this just because. [Chorus] This country’s going to hell, can’t you hear the warning bell? What once was one nation under God has disappeared. We the people will soon be no more if we don’t take a stand, It’s time to raise that flag and put God back in this land.

One Nation Under God rebellious gritty outlaw country Profile avatar ProgressiveEncoder337 July 27, 2024 at 10:39 AM [Verse] In the heart of these small-town roads, where the story's old but true, We used to bow our heads in prayer, we’d pledge allegiance too. Now the lights are flickering, the signs all point to fall, Where’d that spirit go that used to stand so tall? [Verse 2] Factory stands are empty, schools don’t teach no more, Folks drive by the church, like it's something to ignore. We used to hold our ground, with hands together tight, But the unity we had has vanished in the night. [Chorus] This country’s going to hell, can’t you hear the warning bell? What once was one nation under God has disappeared. We the people will soon be no more if we don’t take a stand, It’s time to raise that flag and put God back in this land. [Verse 3] We got preachers out on Main Street, shouting at the skies, But nobody’s listening, too busy with the lies. The family dinners cold now, faith broke at the seams, It’s high time to awake and chase those old dreams. [Verse 4] The fields are overgrown, tractors left to rust, Where’s the honor and the pride, the values that we trust? Cemeteries filled with souls who knew the way it was, We need to reawaken and fix this just because. [Chorus] This country’s going to hell, can’t you hear the warning bell? What once was one nation under God has disappeared. We the people will soon be no more if we don’t take a stand, It’s time to raise that flag and put God back in this land.

Canadians might as well teach their grandchildren how to sing the "Star-Spangled Banner" and pledge allegiance to the American flag if they continue treating Canada's public schools the way they have been recently.

Stateless Sonnet Some dreams are too big for a town, Some dreams are too big for a city. My dream was too big for one country, So I stood up and engulfed humanity. I am too alive to be bound by ideology, I am too human to be bound by border. Too civilized to pledge flagly allegiance, I am the ultimate geopolitical defector. In poetry I am sufi, In philosophy I am advaitin. In duty I am scientist, In existence I am human. I am a civilized human being, I don't exist to impress governments. I'm a being with heart, brain 'n backbone, I'm the stateless force of world upliftment.

For me, the cumulative impact of the Pledge of Allegiance, from my time as a schoolgirl to my adulthood, was the cultivation of cynicism and a sense of the nation’s hypocrisy—not the pride it was meant to instill. As I grew to understand the gifts of the earth, I couldn’t understand how “love of country” could omit recognition of the actual country itself. The only promise it requires is to a flag. What of the promises to each other and to the land?

I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands; one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

And conservatives who view socialism as unpatriotic might also ponder why Francis Bellamy, author of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag in 1892, was an avowed Christian socialist.

Never pledge uncompromising allegiance to a religion, flag, skin color, political party, or race. The only thing you should ever pledge allegiance to is upholding that which is morally and ethically right — that which is aligned with Humanity, Integrity and Truth.

Antidemocratic and xenophobic movements have flourished in America since the Native American party of 1845 and the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s. In the crisis-ridden 1930s, as in other democracies, derivative fascist movements were conspicuous in the United States: the Protestant evangelist Gerald B. Winrod’s openly pro-Hitler Defenders of the Christian Faith with their Black Legion; William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts (the initials “SS” were intentional); the veteran-based Khaki Shirts (whose leader, one Art J. Smith, vanished after a heckler was killed at one of his rallies); and a host of others. Movements with an exotic foreign look won few followers, however. George Lincoln Rockwell, flamboyant head of the American Nazi Party from 1959 until his assassination by a disgruntled follower in 1967, seemed even more “un-American” after the great anti-Nazi war. Much more dangerous are movements that employ authentically American themes in ways that resemble fascism functionally. The Klan revived in the 1920s, took on virulent anti-Semitism, and spread to cities and the Middle West. In the 1930s, Father Charles E. Coughlin gathered a radio audience estimated at forty million around an anticommunist, anti–Wall Street, pro–soft money, and—after 1938—anti-Semitic message broadcast from his church in the outskirts of Detroit. For a moment in early 1936 it looked as if his Union Party and its presidential candidate, North Dakota congressman William Lemke, might overwhelm Roosevelt. Today a “politics of resentment” rooted in authentic American piety and nativism sometimes leads to violence against some of the very same “internal enemies” once targeted by the Nazis, such as homosexuals and defenders of abortion rights. Of course the United States would have to suffer catastrophic setbacks and polarization for these fringe groups to find powerful allies and enter the mainstream. I half expected to see emerge after 1968 a movement of national reunification, regeneration, and purification directed against hirsute antiwar protesters, black radicals, and “degenerate” artists. I thought that some of the Vietnam veterans might form analogs to the Freikorps of 1919 Germany or the Italian Arditi, and attack the youths whose demonstrations on the steps of the Pentagon had “stabbed them in the back.” Fortunately I was wrong (so far). Since September 11, 2001, however, civil liberties have been curtailed to popular acclaim in a patriotic war upon terrorists. The language and symbols of an authentic American fascism would, of course, have little to do with the original European models. They would have to be as familiar and reassuring to loyal Americans as the language and symbols of the original fascisms were familiar and reassuring to many Italians and Germans, as Orwell suggested. Hitler and Mussolini, after all, had not tried to seem exotic to their fellow citizens. No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy. Around such reassuring language and symbols and in the event of some redoubtable setback to national prestige, Americans might support an enterprise of forcible national regeneration, unification, and purification. Its targets would be the First Amendment, separation of Church and State (creches on the lawns, prayers in schools), efforts to place controls on gun ownership, desecrations of the flag, unassimilated minorities, artistic license, dissident and unusual behavior of all sorts that could be labeled antinational or decadent.

As communal and composite creatures, we human beings often symbolize our important relationships in physical ways. Nations create flags to represent their country, and pledging allegiance to those flags displays and reinforces the patriotism of its citizens. Couples exchange rings during a wedding ceremony, embodying their commitments to each other into wearable symbols that become a part of everything they do from then on. These symbols not only help us stay mindful of the fundamental relationships that shape our activity, they actually make those relationships stronger. That same dynamic, then, can be seen in the way sacraments function in the church's worship of God. First through the waters of baptism and thereafter through the bread and the wine of communion, we express and extend our devotion to God in physical ways. To be entirely devoted to God, we must make God a part of everything that we do. What better way to symbolize that than by eating and drinking the representations (i.e., “presenting to us again”) of Christ's broken body and shed blood. Sanctification is about living as a representation of Christ, and we become more mindful that Christ fills us and empowers us spiritually when we celebrate that filling and empowering physically. By recognizing our dependance on God in this way, we demonstrate to ourselves and others how important God is to us; we “worth-ship” God. Because this is an act of “communion,” the very same sacrament that celebrates our dependance on Christ also celebrates our interdependence on one another. It is hard to imagine a better medicine for sin-sick, self-addicted people to take than one that celebrates how much God loves them and calls them to love one another.

I got a letter asking me if I had any suggestions for a revision of the Pledge of Allegiance, and I answered by return mail: 'I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and the flag which is its symbol, with liberty and justice for all.

Saeed, he relished the whole game, the way the country flexed his wits and rewarded him; he charmed it, cajoled it, cheated it, felt great tenderness and loyalty toward it. When it came time, he who had jigged open every back door, he who had, with photocopier, Wite-Out, and paper cutter, spectacularly sabotaged the system (one skilled person at the photocopy machine, he assured Biju, could bring America to its knees), he would pledge emotional allegiance to the flag with tears in his eyes and conviction in his voice. The country recognized something in Saeed, he in it, and it was a mutual love affair. Ups and downs, sometimes more sour than sweet, maybe, but nonetheless,

While our own citizens burn our flag or sneer at our pledge of allegiance, millions of people around the world would do anything to be here. America is a place of opportunity for individuals willing to seize it, and that fact is still well known around the world, even if our own population is increasingly ignorant of it. Our country consistently ranks as the number one destination for all immigrants, when asked where they would go if given a choice. Germany, at second place, isn’t even close.

I will never forget the Barbados National Pledge- I pledge allegiance to my country Barbados and to my flag, To uphold and defend their honour, And by my living to do credit to my nation wherever I go. (Written by Lester Vaughan)

Other Romans pledged their allegiance not to the longstanding ideal of Romanitas but to the individual cities in which they resided. “I am a citizen of Bordeaux,” one fiercely insisted—conveniently ignoring the Roman roads he traveled, the Roman money he used to buy his writing equipment, and the Roman courts that protected his property. Bordeaux’s local government provided none of those protections or amenities. It was the treasury of Rome that made them possible. But for a resident of Roman Gaul, waving the flag of hometown pride had likely become an effective strategy for keeping unwanted strangers out.

Whether we wish it or not, we may soon have to make a clear choice between the special nation to which we pledge our allegiance and the broad humanity of which we are born a part. This choice is implicit in the world to come. We have a little time in which we can make the choice intelligently. Failing that, the choice will be made for us in the confusion of war, from which the world will emerge unified--the unity of total desolation.

I pledge allegiance to the flag, ’cause if I don’t it’s such a drag. Flags are red and white and blue. Why they are I have no clue.

For the free and for the brave. We pledge allegiance to our flag, And when we’re done we’ll go play tag.