The Pledge of Allegiance and other socialist conspiracies
Jean-Philippe Boulet | Wikimedia Commons
As you might expect, the Roanoke Tea Party opens its meetings with a prayer and a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
What you might be less aware of is the background of the pledge, and its author. It was developed as a sales tactic for Youth Companion magazine, the employer of the pledge’s author.
The author was Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and (uh-oh) Christian Socialist.
From Wikipedia:
The Pledge was published in the September 8, 1892, issue of [Youth's Companion] magazine, and immediately put to use in the [magazine's sales] campaign. Bellamy went to speak to a national meeting of school superintendents to promote the celebration; the convention liked the idea and selected a committee of leading educators to implement the program, including the immediate past president of the National Education Association. Bellamy was selected as the chair. Having received the official blessing of educators, Bellamy’s committee now had the task of spreading the word across the nation and of designing an official program for schools to follow on the day of national celebration. He structured the program around a flag raising ceremony and his pledge.
His original Pledge read as follows: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to* the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” (* ‘to’ added in October 1892).
. . .In 1954, in response to the perceived threat of secular Communism, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words “under God,” creating the 31-word pledge that is recited today
. . .Bellamy was a Christian Socialist who “championed ‘the rights of working people and the equal distribution of economic resources, which he believed was inherent in the teachings of Jesus” but he was forced to leave his Boston church the previous year because of the socialist bent of his sermons.
By the way, as the above Wikipedia entry notes: Francis Bellamy was the cousin of Edward Bellamy, author of the socialist-utopian novels “Looking Backward” (1888) and “Equality” (1897).
So the pledge was devised by a Christian Socialist, who was the cousin of a socialist novelist, and “America the Beautiful” was written by a progressive lesbian feminist.
January 11, 2012 - 7:00 AM
Learn something new everyday!
Dan
Your wrong. The pledge was actually written by Bellamy’s third grade music class.I think it may have been in Charlottesville. It was a group of committed, albeit young, socialists who were fervently promoted “Christian Socialism.” They obsessed on the notion of “equal distribution of economic resources” because it was a fairly lazy group of students who dreamed of not working that hard and letting the government take care of them.
Dan, please defer to me on all interpretations of history from now on.
Here’s a slightly different take on the Pledge of Allegiance. Red Skelton & I share a hometown. By the way, in addition to being a great comedian, he was a great painter. Just to make clear I don’t subscribe to the group who’s statement appears at the beginning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLDRmEpUcck
Interesting stuff. Thanks Dan!
# 2 For some reason I still do not think you are getting it. But if you do not like the way history is then I would suggest maybe picking up some books down in Texas. As much as they get it so very wrong it might be your cup of tea.
Speaking of rewriting history, apparently even the Word of God is inaccurate, according to some rightwing cons.
http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project
Bill Hudson
Do you want proof that it was Bellamy’s third grade music class that wrote the pledge?
#7 So your take on this is it was written in C-Ville by some lazy 3rd graders?
Here is hoping you are not in the education system.
When I was in 7th grade, I told my Grandmother that I thought it was silly to recite the Pledge of Allegience every day and that if we were supposed to learn to be proud, loyal Americans, wouldn’t it be better if we maybe recited the Pledge once a week and spent the time the other days learning about how it came to be written, what the words actually mean, and what it truly means to pledge our allegience? She said, “You want a first-hand lesson on what the Pledge really means? DON’T stand up and recite it and watch what happens.”
Dan, I thought you’d get a kick out of that since you know my Grandmother.
She was right too Contra! Good one.
Bill Hudson
You must have missed Dan’s Pulitzer worthy article last week about the 3rd graders in Charlottesville who Dan sincerely believes wrote a song about hating the 1%. So, my logic is as follows:
1) Obviously, all 3rd graders in Cville are socialists
2) Bellamy was a “Christian Socialist”
3)Therefore the pledge must have been written by socialist third graders in C’ville. Got it?
#11 No not at all there Terps. If you remember I responded more then a few times as to The Tin Pan Ally kids. And from the looks of it you did not take up my suggestion on doing just a little bit of digging as to who they are and how yes, 3rd graders can write songs. But any hoo:
1 Wrong
2 So what
3 your logic is upside down. Stop watching fixed network it will rot your brain and make you see things that are really not there.
#7 Look, terps, you can’t even come up with proof of the outrageous lies you told about the Roanoke Occupiers.
It is even worse than you stated. The Pledge of Allegiance caused Nazi salutes and Nazi behavior in the USA. See the work of the historian Dr. Rex Curry. Americans do not realize that the USA’s Pledge of Allegiance (1892) was the origin of similar robotic chanting imposed by other authoritarian governments.
Jehovahs Witnesses were persecuted for defying American Nazism and its child, German Nazism at the same time. Francis Bellamy, author of the
pledge, was an American national socialist and the USA did the nazi salute daily for three decades before German national socialists
joined in. Jehovah’s witnesses were persecuted for refusing to give the straight-arm salute to the national flag. That was the national flag of the USA and of Germany.
The pledge caused bullying, violence, castrations, even lynchings. It continues to cause bullying. Francis Bellamy disliked immigrants and wanted to make everyone the same.
Most socialists today in the USA were educated in socialist schools (government schools) so they are ignorant of the fact that it was
happening in the USA (to the stars and stripes) and in Germany (to the swastika flag) at the same time.
The pledge of allegiance was the last parting shot of Northern radicals at Southerners that supposedly ended “reconstruction.” They wanted to make sure the Southerners knew the nation was indivisible so they would not attempt secession again. Interestingly the Constitution never said secession was illegal.
The public school system in this country is not, and has not been, about education but rather indoctrination–to raise up generations of kids who will be good little socialists and never dare to ask questions or rock the boat. Please check out several articles on the real agenda of public schools on http://revisedhistory.wordpress.com