Orpheus Rex
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The Pledge of Allegiance continues to be widely accepted in America. Some people dislike it, but most of them just want it tweaked to leave out a part they don’t like. Almost everyone agrees to keep the pledge in schools, camps, and other areas where children might be. Unfortunately, few people know anything about the history of the pledge or the implications of the pledge in relation to its history. It is also worth noting the affect that such a pledge can have on a nation that is brought up saying it.
The author is an important subject to study when trying to understand the purpose of the pledge. The Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892. Bellamy was Baptist preacher who spoke a social gospel, but was forced out of his position for his teachings. He would later stop attending church. His most famous sermon was entitled, “Jesus was a Socialist.” Francis Bellamy was also known as one of the greatest advocates of public education, which fit perfectly with his ideas of economic egalitarianism. Bellamy also joined the Nationalist movement which sought to create government owned monopolies of public service including education, healthcare, and transportation. Nationalism has been defined as “the aim to promote the wellbeing of the whole nation or some groups of its citizens by inflicting harms on foreigners,” especially by “discrimination in the economic sphere” of life. He would become a major player in the Nationalist movement. Francis and his cousin, Edward, would become honored by the movement by having hundreds of Nationalist “Bellamy Clubs” appear throughout the country. Francis Bellamy and his colleagues saw that the best way to enact change in the nation was through the de-privatized school system. Bellamy also happened to be one of the first people to mix the ideologies of Nationalism and Socialism.
He published his original version of the pledge in the Youth’s Companion magazine. The magazine Bellamy worked for the magazine in its premium department. The magazine was an ardent supporter of the schoolhouse flags movement and began to popularize the use of America’s flag in the class room while selling flags to schools as a premium to magazine subscription. By the time the pledge was published Bellamy had already sold 26,000 flags. His pledge became an immediate hit. The pledge was aimed directly at the children of the nation in order to promote his ideologies. Bellamy thought of his pledge as a vaccine against “insufficiently patriotic Americans” and immigrants. He wrote that “every dull-witted or fanatical immigrant admitted to our citizenship is a bane to the commonwealth.” The original pledge was phrased, "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." The pledge originally was said with the kids standing outside in military formation. The kids would start with a military salute that would be followed through with the arm being extended towards the flag with the palm facing downwards. The salute was named the Bellamy Salute. This same salute would continue to be the official salute for the pledge until the 1940’s when it would be discontinued because the Nationalist Socialist (Nazi) party in Germany used an almost identical salute. The salute would be replaced with the right being placed over the heart. The Nazi’s salute and the Italian Fascist salute’s were supposedly based off an ancient Roman salute, however, there is no Roman text about such a salute and the only Roman artworks that feature salutes all have salutes that bear little, if any, resemblance to the Nazi or Fascist salute. The oldest known reference to that kind of salute is Bellamy’s Salute.
There may be great similarities between the Nazi Salute and the Bellamy Salute, but there must be a reason as to why such totalitarian governments would adopt a similar salute. The reason can best be found in the Third Wave Experiment. In 1967, Ron Jones a history teacher was attempting to explain how even democratic societies can become a dictatorship. The sophomore class believed that society had become too educated to fall for the appeal of tyranny. Jones was also unable to get the students to understand how the German people could plead ignorance to the holocaust. He decided that since he could not explain the concept to the students that he would show it them. He began a movement based on a few simple concepts. The movement was called the Third Wave and it was explicitly stated to the students that the movement was meant to eliminate democracy. The name came from the “fact” that every third wave in nature is stronger, larger, and generally better than all other waves in a sequence. The” fact” was a lie that Jones made up in order to have the movement be based in a false assumption. Using the “fact” as an example, Jones told the students that the individuality in democracy was a drawback. He initiated a short pledge for the movement; “Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride." On the first day he drilled them on proper seating until the class could enter the classroom and quietly take their seats within 30 seconds. At the end of the first day the students were given a few rules. They had to be sitting at attention before the bell. They had to stand to answer or ask questions. They were allowed only three words to ask or answer while having to start each question or answer with “Mr. Jones.” On the second day the class became a fully disciplined community and gave them a salute similar to the Nazi’s salute. On the third day the movement moved beyond the class of 30 to 200 students throughout the school and each student was given a job. Some students built a flag, other students created member’s cards. Some students were even told to prevent non-member students from entering their classes. The students even reported other members who failed to comply with the movement’s rules. The students would police each other without prompting. On the fourth day Ron Jones stopped the experiment because he was losing control over it. The significance of this experiment was that it focused almost entirely on a pledge and a salute. In three days a high school teacher had created a mini Nazi Germany in a Californian high school. Psychologically a group of people chanting and acting together in a certain way reinforces the behavior. As Dr. Philip Zimbardo put it, “It is the perversion of the incredible power of the human mind that can do almost anything, all the magical things the mind does in terms of creativity, can be perverted to justify any evil or any transgression.” The Pledge of Allegiance creates the same group mentality as it was designed to by Bellamy. The difference is that the Pledge of Allegiance has been around for more than a hundred years instead of three days. The affect the Pledge of Allegiance has had must be exponentially greater than that of the pledge of the Third Wave.
Instead of directing the focus on one man, the Pledge of Allegiance directs the focus to the state in general. Initially the pledge reinforces the idea of the state as being the authority with the newest version even claiming divine right in the monarchial sense. The pledge pushes for obedience to the state from the earliest years of childhood. It is indoctrinating children into the values of the state. The pledge specifically refers to “liberty and justice for all,” but there is nothing to prevent those words from meaning anything. All of the worst regimes in history promised liberty and justice. The pledge allows for the current leader of the country to define what that means. In essence, the pledge is a dangerous weapon. Luckily for America the leader has never called for some of the radical, violent, and oppressive policies that were in the Third Wave Experiment. Unfortunately America’s record isn’t that clean. Since the Pledge appeared America happened locked up all the Japanese Americans during WWII, resegregate the public schools, and go into a few dozen illegal wars. Look at the anti-terror hype of 9/11. American rights were suddenly thrown out the window in pursuit of justice. The patriot act allowed for surveillance of all citizens and the recent NDAA now allows for the assassination of American Citizens. The state claimed to be going to war for “justice.” The state now claims that it is striving for the “freedom (or liberty) from terrorism” while violating basic human rights including liberty of the classical sense. The state merely has to warp the definitions of a few words in order to change the entire nation. All of this can be linked directly to the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance is dangerous because it is nothing more than a method of indoctrination to accepting a status quo. If the Pledge of Allegiance isn’t there to teach the students something, then why is it a required part of the school day in all public schools? Its sentimental value is basically worthless in school because the elementary school kids are just being introduced to it. It must have a purpose for it to be included in the curriculum. The logical assumption is that it is there for the children to learn. The purpose of the children learning this pledge can only be one thing and that one thing is its stated purpose. The purpose of the Pledge of Allegiance is to act as an inoculation against the virus of unloyalty or “insufficient patriotism” to the state. Patriotism can be defined as the desire for good for one’s country. The point of insufficient patriotism is indefinable as an absolute and must be entirely subjective to the authority and patriotism cannot be measured. The pledge can produce only a blind patriotism. Patriotism focused on what the authority considers to be patriotism. The pledge shifts the patriotism from the country to the government; from the people to the state. This is the curse of the pledge.
The Pledge of Allegiance is a dangerous tool that can be used to shape generations. The pledge is inherently designed to have kids become used to country planning, something that is only found in heavily socialistic or nationalistic societies. The pledge is introduced before the children are old enough to really begin thinking for their selves and so the ideologies in the pledge are reinforced in the children’s minds. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Mao’s China and other such regimes all have used similar pledges resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths worldwide. The implications of the pledge are enormous yet vastly ignored.
"You thought that you were the elect. That you were better than those outside this room. You bargained your freedom for the comfort of discipline and superiority. You chose to accept that group's will and the big lie over your own conviction. Oh, you think to yourself that you were just going along for the fun. That you could extricate yourself at any moment. But where were you heading? How far would you have gone? … Through the experience of the past week we have all tasted what it was like to live and act in Nazi Germany. We learned what it felt like to create a disciplined social environment. To build a special society. Pledge allegiance to that society. Replace reason with rules. Yes, we would all have made good Germans. We would have put on the uniform. Turned our head as friends and neighbors were cursed and then persecuted. Pulled the locks shut. Worked in the "defense" plants. Burned ideas. Yes, we know in a small way what it feels like to find a hero. To grab quick solution. Feel strong and in control of destiny. We know the fear of being left out. The pleasure of doing something right and being rewarded. To be number one. To be right. Taken to an extreme we have seen and perhaps felt what these actions will lead to.” – Ron Jones
"The Pledge of Allegiance - A Short History". Oldtimeislands.org. Retrieved 2013-02-03.
Kubal, Timothy (10/2008). Cultural Movements and Collective Memory : Christopher Columbus and the Rewriting of the National Origin Myth. Basingstoke, Hampshire, GBR: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN9780230615762.
Mises, Ludwig Von. Omnipotent Government, the Rise of the Total State and Total War. New Haven: Yale UP, 1944. Print.
The third wave, 1967: an account - Ron Jones | libcom.org
The author is an important subject to study when trying to understand the purpose of the pledge. The Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892. Bellamy was Baptist preacher who spoke a social gospel, but was forced out of his position for his teachings. He would later stop attending church. His most famous sermon was entitled, “Jesus was a Socialist.” Francis Bellamy was also known as one of the greatest advocates of public education, which fit perfectly with his ideas of economic egalitarianism. Bellamy also joined the Nationalist movement which sought to create government owned monopolies of public service including education, healthcare, and transportation. Nationalism has been defined as “the aim to promote the wellbeing of the whole nation or some groups of its citizens by inflicting harms on foreigners,” especially by “discrimination in the economic sphere” of life. He would become a major player in the Nationalist movement. Francis and his cousin, Edward, would become honored by the movement by having hundreds of Nationalist “Bellamy Clubs” appear throughout the country. Francis Bellamy and his colleagues saw that the best way to enact change in the nation was through the de-privatized school system. Bellamy also happened to be one of the first people to mix the ideologies of Nationalism and Socialism.
He published his original version of the pledge in the Youth’s Companion magazine. The magazine Bellamy worked for the magazine in its premium department. The magazine was an ardent supporter of the schoolhouse flags movement and began to popularize the use of America’s flag in the class room while selling flags to schools as a premium to magazine subscription. By the time the pledge was published Bellamy had already sold 26,000 flags. His pledge became an immediate hit. The pledge was aimed directly at the children of the nation in order to promote his ideologies. Bellamy thought of his pledge as a vaccine against “insufficiently patriotic Americans” and immigrants. He wrote that “every dull-witted or fanatical immigrant admitted to our citizenship is a bane to the commonwealth.” The original pledge was phrased, "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." The pledge originally was said with the kids standing outside in military formation. The kids would start with a military salute that would be followed through with the arm being extended towards the flag with the palm facing downwards. The salute was named the Bellamy Salute. This same salute would continue to be the official salute for the pledge until the 1940’s when it would be discontinued because the Nationalist Socialist (Nazi) party in Germany used an almost identical salute. The salute would be replaced with the right being placed over the heart. The Nazi’s salute and the Italian Fascist salute’s were supposedly based off an ancient Roman salute, however, there is no Roman text about such a salute and the only Roman artworks that feature salutes all have salutes that bear little, if any, resemblance to the Nazi or Fascist salute. The oldest known reference to that kind of salute is Bellamy’s Salute.
There may be great similarities between the Nazi Salute and the Bellamy Salute, but there must be a reason as to why such totalitarian governments would adopt a similar salute. The reason can best be found in the Third Wave Experiment. In 1967, Ron Jones a history teacher was attempting to explain how even democratic societies can become a dictatorship. The sophomore class believed that society had become too educated to fall for the appeal of tyranny. Jones was also unable to get the students to understand how the German people could plead ignorance to the holocaust. He decided that since he could not explain the concept to the students that he would show it them. He began a movement based on a few simple concepts. The movement was called the Third Wave and it was explicitly stated to the students that the movement was meant to eliminate democracy. The name came from the “fact” that every third wave in nature is stronger, larger, and generally better than all other waves in a sequence. The” fact” was a lie that Jones made up in order to have the movement be based in a false assumption. Using the “fact” as an example, Jones told the students that the individuality in democracy was a drawback. He initiated a short pledge for the movement; “Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride." On the first day he drilled them on proper seating until the class could enter the classroom and quietly take their seats within 30 seconds. At the end of the first day the students were given a few rules. They had to be sitting at attention before the bell. They had to stand to answer or ask questions. They were allowed only three words to ask or answer while having to start each question or answer with “Mr. Jones.” On the second day the class became a fully disciplined community and gave them a salute similar to the Nazi’s salute. On the third day the movement moved beyond the class of 30 to 200 students throughout the school and each student was given a job. Some students built a flag, other students created member’s cards. Some students were even told to prevent non-member students from entering their classes. The students even reported other members who failed to comply with the movement’s rules. The students would police each other without prompting. On the fourth day Ron Jones stopped the experiment because he was losing control over it. The significance of this experiment was that it focused almost entirely on a pledge and a salute. In three days a high school teacher had created a mini Nazi Germany in a Californian high school. Psychologically a group of people chanting and acting together in a certain way reinforces the behavior. As Dr. Philip Zimbardo put it, “It is the perversion of the incredible power of the human mind that can do almost anything, all the magical things the mind does in terms of creativity, can be perverted to justify any evil or any transgression.” The Pledge of Allegiance creates the same group mentality as it was designed to by Bellamy. The difference is that the Pledge of Allegiance has been around for more than a hundred years instead of three days. The affect the Pledge of Allegiance has had must be exponentially greater than that of the pledge of the Third Wave.
Instead of directing the focus on one man, the Pledge of Allegiance directs the focus to the state in general. Initially the pledge reinforces the idea of the state as being the authority with the newest version even claiming divine right in the monarchial sense. The pledge pushes for obedience to the state from the earliest years of childhood. It is indoctrinating children into the values of the state. The pledge specifically refers to “liberty and justice for all,” but there is nothing to prevent those words from meaning anything. All of the worst regimes in history promised liberty and justice. The pledge allows for the current leader of the country to define what that means. In essence, the pledge is a dangerous weapon. Luckily for America the leader has never called for some of the radical, violent, and oppressive policies that were in the Third Wave Experiment. Unfortunately America’s record isn’t that clean. Since the Pledge appeared America happened locked up all the Japanese Americans during WWII, resegregate the public schools, and go into a few dozen illegal wars. Look at the anti-terror hype of 9/11. American rights were suddenly thrown out the window in pursuit of justice. The patriot act allowed for surveillance of all citizens and the recent NDAA now allows for the assassination of American Citizens. The state claimed to be going to war for “justice.” The state now claims that it is striving for the “freedom (or liberty) from terrorism” while violating basic human rights including liberty of the classical sense. The state merely has to warp the definitions of a few words in order to change the entire nation. All of this can be linked directly to the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance is dangerous because it is nothing more than a method of indoctrination to accepting a status quo. If the Pledge of Allegiance isn’t there to teach the students something, then why is it a required part of the school day in all public schools? Its sentimental value is basically worthless in school because the elementary school kids are just being introduced to it. It must have a purpose for it to be included in the curriculum. The logical assumption is that it is there for the children to learn. The purpose of the children learning this pledge can only be one thing and that one thing is its stated purpose. The purpose of the Pledge of Allegiance is to act as an inoculation against the virus of unloyalty or “insufficient patriotism” to the state. Patriotism can be defined as the desire for good for one’s country. The point of insufficient patriotism is indefinable as an absolute and must be entirely subjective to the authority and patriotism cannot be measured. The pledge can produce only a blind patriotism. Patriotism focused on what the authority considers to be patriotism. The pledge shifts the patriotism from the country to the government; from the people to the state. This is the curse of the pledge.
The Pledge of Allegiance is a dangerous tool that can be used to shape generations. The pledge is inherently designed to have kids become used to country planning, something that is only found in heavily socialistic or nationalistic societies. The pledge is introduced before the children are old enough to really begin thinking for their selves and so the ideologies in the pledge are reinforced in the children’s minds. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Mao’s China and other such regimes all have used similar pledges resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths worldwide. The implications of the pledge are enormous yet vastly ignored.
"You thought that you were the elect. That you were better than those outside this room. You bargained your freedom for the comfort of discipline and superiority. You chose to accept that group's will and the big lie over your own conviction. Oh, you think to yourself that you were just going along for the fun. That you could extricate yourself at any moment. But where were you heading? How far would you have gone? … Through the experience of the past week we have all tasted what it was like to live and act in Nazi Germany. We learned what it felt like to create a disciplined social environment. To build a special society. Pledge allegiance to that society. Replace reason with rules. Yes, we would all have made good Germans. We would have put on the uniform. Turned our head as friends and neighbors were cursed and then persecuted. Pulled the locks shut. Worked in the "defense" plants. Burned ideas. Yes, we know in a small way what it feels like to find a hero. To grab quick solution. Feel strong and in control of destiny. We know the fear of being left out. The pleasure of doing something right and being rewarded. To be number one. To be right. Taken to an extreme we have seen and perhaps felt what these actions will lead to.” – Ron Jones
"The Pledge of Allegiance - A Short History". Oldtimeislands.org. Retrieved 2013-02-03.
Kubal, Timothy (10/2008). Cultural Movements and Collective Memory : Christopher Columbus and the Rewriting of the National Origin Myth. Basingstoke, Hampshire, GBR: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN9780230615762.
Mises, Ludwig Von. Omnipotent Government, the Rise of the Total State and Total War. New Haven: Yale UP, 1944. Print.
The third wave, 1967: an account - Ron Jones | libcom.org
