Exposing a hypocrisy

Student trustees at Orange Coast College have banned the pledge of allegiance at their board meetings, in a three to two vote. The school is located in conservative Orange County, Calif. The United States is the only Western country where the majority of schoolchildren still take a pledge of allegiance daily. (wikipedia.org)

Historically, most legal opposition to the pledge has been prompted by the pledge’s religious connotations. Even before the phrase “under God” was added in 1954—to add to the propaganda of the Cold War anti-communist witch hunts—Jehovah’s Witnesses challenged the pledge, saying their religion precluded them from swearing loyalty to any power lesser than God. Later legal cases focused almost exclusively on the “under God” phrase, saying it excluded some religions as well as atheists, and was unconstitutional based on the separation of church and state.

Student trustee Jason Ball, who proposed the ban, explained: “That (‘under God’) part is sort of offensive to me. I am an atheist and a socialist, and if you know your history, you know that ‘under God’ was inserted during the McCarthy era and was directly designed to destroy my ideology.” (Reuters, Nov. 10)

But the entire pledge is a fraud. From the moment children in the United States enter grammar school, they are indoctrinated daily with a commitment to a country that has brought continued misery and suffering to most of them—descendants of immigrants, enslaved African Americans, Indigenous people and the poor. Often children are forced to recite a pledge that they don’t understand and isn’t explained to them anyway.

That a country that continually attempts to pit worker against worker on the basis of nationality, sexuality, and gender would call itself “indivisible” is utter hypocrisy. Indeed, the greatest fear of the U.S. ruling class is that the multinational working class will unite—and its fears are not unfounded.

The U.S. concept of “liberty and justice for all” is a joke that is exposed more and more each day by police brutality and the prison-industrial complex, institutional and environmental racism, anti-immigrant attacks, offensives against rights for women and lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, and by growing poverty while bosses’ pockets get fuller.

Then, of course, there’s the exportation of U.S.-style “liberty and justice,” through the wars and occupations against Iraq and Afghanistan; U.S.-imposed “free trade” policies that starve the people of Latin America, Asia, Africa and others; and military and political aid to repressive governments around the world, from Israel to Colombia.

Therefore, it’s no wonder that Reuters reports that “the ban largely came about because the trustees didn’t want to publicly vow loyalty to the American government.” Ball said, “Loyalty ought to be something the government earns through performance, not through reciting a pledge.” (Reuters, Nov. 10)

We couldn’t agree more. It’s why, even without a pledge, the people of Cuba are so dedicated to their government—one that has provided free health care, full education and literacy for all, and that exports not guns but doctors to other countries.