David Mazel
English Department
If you were at last fall’s commencement, do you recall the moment when Christians were asked to betray their beliefs?
The moment when students were asked to show their loyalty to a foreign country?
The moment when we were all asked to affirm white supremacy?
I’m talking, of course, about the moment when we were all pressured to participate in that exercise in ideological groupthink known as the Pledge of Allegiance.
What’s wrong with the pledge? Let’s break it down.
I pledge allegiance to the flag…
Millions of American Christians consider the flag to be an idol. Pledging allegiance to the flag is considered by these Christians to be a form of idolatry, and they refuse to do it. (In West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette, the Supreme Court upheld their right to do so.)
…of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands…
The United States is not a republic. It’s a neoliberal, neo-imperialist nation-state. To characterize the sprawling global network of American military and economic domination as a “republic” is like calling Snooki an intellectual.
And by what logic does it make sense to pledge one’s allegiance first to a symbol (the flag) and only second, as if it were an afterthought, to the thing for which that symbol stands? By what logic does the image precede the reality? By what logic does the image itself deserve one’s allegiance? By the logic of idolatry. No wonder so many Christians refuse to recite the pledge. The wonder is that the majority of them do.
…one nation under God…
Say what? God doesn’t exist.
…with liberty and justice for all.
As a statement of fact, this is false. We don’t have liberty and justice for all. As a statement of an ideal, it sounds nice, except that all too often “liberty” has been a code word for the freedom of white people to murder Native Americans and oppress black people. Manifest destiny, slavery, Jim Crow — all these were perpetrated and defended under the bloody banner of “liberty.”
By asking us to recite the pledge at commencement, the college is endorsing some ideologically obnoxious nationalistic falsehoods and pressuring many of us to violate our religious consciences. The pledge is particularly out of place at an institution dedicated to a set of ideals that transcend mere nationalism — ideals such as the discovery of truth, the creation of beauty and meaning, and the pursuit of justice.
If you’re having trouble seeing the politics embedded in the pledge, it might help to imagine an alternate pledge that goes like this:
I pledge allegiance to the Planet Earth, and all the species it supports, one world, the Great Goddess Mother of all life, her resources shared equally by all.
Anyone can decode the left-wing green politics embedded in such a pledge. But it’s no more ideological than the standard pledge. My example is the pledge of a Wiccan environmentalist, just as the existing Pledge of Allegiance is the pledge of a nationalistic Christian.
Personally, I rather like the environmentalist pledge. But because I recognize its political nature, and because I recognize that my own political beliefs are not shared by everyone else, I would never expect everyone else to affirm it. I certainly wouldn’t call it the pledge and pressure everyone else to recite it at public events.
Is it too much to ask that Adams State College be equally thoughtful?
In his commentary “Let’s Not Pledge Allegiance” Professor Mazel advocates dropping the tradition of recitation of the pledge at ASC commencement ceremonies. His arguments regarding the 31 offensive words of the pledge do not go far enough. Following Mazel’s logical progression there is nothing about graduation that is without offense. Maybe we should junk the whole affair. The entire ceremony is an orgy of class distinctions and privilege; awash in the kind of symbolism and pressure to conform that the professor loathes.
The tune of Pomp and Circumstance is written as a war march. Must we order up in rank and file to music of combat and conquest? The mystic hood and cape derive from the Druid priestly class to show special knowledge and power – certainly offensive to traditional western theologies. The very idea that we would all gather to congratulate a cohort of young people who are the product of a large government subsidized indoctrination for which they are likely to be enslaved by debt for the balance of their lives seems uniquely American and a blended exploitation of socialism and capitalism repugnant to either extreme.
Add to this sheep show the singing of the school song in a maudlin display of loyalty, the unhealthy post-graduation snacks adding to the obesity epidemic, the location surrounded by displays of a decadent sports-entertainment culture, and the insult of final school expenses for worthless rings, pins, invitations, and garb. Finally, to cap this torturous display of making college grads think they are superior to the uncelebrated rest of the population, impose forced attention to a speaker whose philosophy of life is either a godless self determination, a cultic reliance on some system or network, or a spiritual diatribe of some eternal truth, and you have the perfect storm of mindless tradition and conformity.
My hyperbole and sarcasm aside, the point is that there is very little that we do or say, especially in the social context of an important occasion, that is not full of the kinds of symbolism embodied in the pledge of allegiance. A dispassionate – or in Mazel’s case a cynical – interpretation of each word and phrase does not approach the kind of human hope and deep connections associated with ceremony. We should certainly be mindful of what we are saying and doing, but to toss out everything that holds the seeds of offense would be to remove not just the pledge but every poem, play, and piece of art. Like works of art, ceremonies paint ideas beyond the mere words and characters of a sentence or pledge. They speak to deep matters of hope and idealism without which we would be much poorer. Censor your own participation but let me join with other celebrants in the Pledge of Allegiance.