I'm not sure I can say I have much beef against the
concept of a pledge of
national allegience beyond my whole nasty
quaker don't want to
swear an
oath thing (i.e. by living in this
country you implicitly state that it is your
nation of choice and you will do what is in your power to
support it) being a member of a society does bear with it certain responsibilities -- the whole bit about making
children swear is not a point I'll go into but i suppose I must get to my actual point somewhere along the line:
How is it that we swear our loyalty to an empty form -- the mere symbol of our country embodied in the flag rather than to the country itself? To swear myself to a mere piece of cloth, to a few stars and stripes forever seem ludicrous to me -- the implication is that, should we ever change the national flag, everyone would no longer be beholden to the old one. And, considering the flag has been changed every time we've gotten ourselves a little more land, that would leave a lot of non-americans -- wouldn't it?
How is it that we put so much stock in a mere symbol? A handle to the country?