"I pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands."
These words were written by Christian Socialist Francis Bellamy, in 1892. He had been forced to leave his position as a Baptist minister because he of his dislike of the racial bigotry he found and because his sermons sounded like socialism to his parishioners. According to Wikipedia, his original words were: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and (to*) the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
My point in all this is that we still recite this pledge and require our children to recite it while, according to recent polls, about 85% of our population disagree with it. How? Read on.
We live, not in a democracy, but in a Republic. This is what we pledge allegiance to. In a republic, laws are made not directly by the people, but by elected representatives of the people. In the United States, these representatives are the Congress of the United States. The 435 members of the House of Representatives and the hundred Senators make our laws and these are the people to whom we pledge allegiance - for they are the law-making part of the government for which the flag stands.
So what do we think of this Congress? Only about 15% of the respondents think Congress is doing a good job. To be exact, 71.6% expressed disapproval in the Gallup Poll taken in January of 2013. So, in other painful words, we're asking our kids to pledge allegiance to something a great majority of us think is lousy. How do you spell "hypocrisy?"
And where do these bozos come from and who put them there? If we're worried that the government is going to swoop down and take away our guns, who picked them in the first place? To find out, I started looking at C-SPAN in order to try spotting some congressmen taking bribes or at least doing something subversive. I didn't. I tried, but I couldn't find them. I couldn't find many people at all. The next time you look at C-SPAN, count how many representatives are there. Well, if they're not making laws to look after our welfare, where are they? According to statements by retiring congressmen, they're too busy dialing for dollars and meeting with lobbyists to have time to listen to arguments, debate, or even read the bills.
One reaction to this, particularly in Tea Party conclaves and on Fox News, is to blast the very government they love to pledge allegiance to. Instead of trying to expose the people who are buying our government and renting our legislators, they prefer to support more guns to defend ourselves from the people we elect. They call it patriotism.
I call it idiocy.