NOVAE MILITIAE

1. It was written by a socialist, Francis Bellamy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance . (Check out the photo of Bellamy’s original salute to the flag.)

2. It never entered into the heads of America’s Founding Fathers that Americans should recite some pledge to the nation’s flag.

3. The pledge was designed for children in the public school system (an institution I have come to detest for all of the reasons so eloquently stated by the noted educator and author John Taylor Gatto) for the purpose of instilling in those kids a sense of “patriotism” that stemmed not from the ideals of the Founding Fathers, but from late 19^th/early 20th-century American statism and the pressure to conform to America's “civil religion”.

4. Concerning “the republic” for which the flag is said to “stand” in the pledge, it is not really a republic of the kind envisioned by the Founding Fathers, and not even these days a nation (certainly not a nation “under God”), but an empire. The Founders expressly hoped America would not become an empire. The old republic is dead and gone, and I have no use for the current one, because, as stated, it is not really a republic and it is no longer under God. It is, rather, both a “world power” and a porn nation, much like Rome was before its end. As a descendant of men who fought the British in the War for American Independence, I find abhorrent this pledge to a statist pseudo-republic.

5. The socialist Bellamy stated that his pledge was born in large part out of the renunciation of Southern secessionism and in affirmation of the Union. As a descendant of men who fought the Unionists in the War for Southern Independence, I find abhorrent this pledge to Yankeedom’s union.

6. This so-called “republic” known as the United States of America is no longer “under God,” but under surveillance. Liberals and so-called conservatives alike have, within the last century or so, turned America into a virtual police state. Yes, it is a “nice” police state and thankfully certain constitutional protections are still available, but it is a police state nonetheless. And instead of rational immigration policies that would make surveillance less “necessary,” our inestimable “leaders” only promulgate policies that will make it more necessary. What “allegiance” should any of us have to this state of affairs?

7. If I am going to pledge allegiance to something, I don’t need to do it though a flag. If my country merits my allegiance, I will pledge it directly to the country.

8. Lastly, in spite of the foregoing point, what is my true allegiance? I believe my fellow “neocon”**  MacDonald King Aston puts it well, and I have bolded what I believe to be his most salient point:

I say let no oath of allegiance to any state deceive us any longer. Let us also remember that we are not, no matter the Yankee propaganda to the contrary, "one nation, indivisible." We are, in fact, a Republic, and that Republic has always, even since the 1600s, been divided. The Northern people and the Southern people have always been two separate cultures, two separate peoples. The fact that the Yankee Empire brutally forced the Southern people into its " Union " is irrelevant. Let them keep their "Union" while we keep our faith, for Southrons are aleady a people under God, and our God needs no pledge but our faith. http://www.dixieinternet.com/page278.shtml

If there is really to be a pledge of allegiance that fits the present American situation, it should read like this:

I pledge allegiance to the flag

Of the United States of Leviathan

And to the usurpers for whom it stands

One empire, under surveillance

With gadgets and diversions for all.

Let’s be honest. That’s the pledge we should be saying, or not saying one at all. Now, I will stand during the recitation of the pledge in recognition of America as originally conceived and, most importantly, in honor of all the men who have fallen defending the United States. That is the one thing I will do. But I will no longer recite that socialist’s ill-conceived, modern, and, I would argue, un-American pledge.

(** "Neocon", in this instance, is short for "neo-Confederate. ;) )