Sacred Cow: Pledge of Allegiance is Socialist, Not American

In Utah, September is officially designated as Founders and Constitution Month. For Defending Utah’s contribution to help honor the constitution and the founders’ vision for America and freedom for the entire world, we’re going to set the record straight on something that has entered American society with the ironic intention of actually destroying loyalty to the constitution and our freedoms, by replacing it with loyalty to something else.

Ultimately, we want the end result: Freedom restored to America and the world in both practice and in culture. After handling this sacred-cow, we’ll discuss how we get the end results we want at the bottom of the article.

Disclaimer: If you love the pledge, and the pledge makes you love your country, then that’s great and we’re still friends.  This article is for those who seek deeper details to understand how we’ve gone off course as a country, realizing the small course deviations of the past are part of the big consequences that we’re facing right now.

Sacred Cow: The Pledge of Allegiance – Written by Francis Bellamy

(additional reading: The Official Pledge of Allegiance Salute Used to be a ‘Hitler Salute’)

A picture is worth a thousand words. These photos say so much.

We all grew up saying the pledge of allegiance in boy scouts, public school, and various meetings of good patriotic organizations. We love our freedom, so what child would ever question this practice? Why should we question it today, as adults. The devil is often many steps ahead of us, but one tool we have against him is to look at history for context to shed light on the lies of our present day.

This article will review:

– The founder’s oath under God
– Who is Francis Bellamy, and why did he write the Pledge of Allegiance?
– Under God? Conservative pushback that modified the pledge?
– Original intent of the pledge
– Counterfeits? Patriotism vs. Nationalism vs. Globalism
– What should we actually be loyal to, in order to maintain the constitution and freedom?

The Founders’ Oath Under God

The Pledge of Allegiance was not written by the founding fathers of America, there is no connection to any of our founding documents. The founders’ closest idea to a pledge was to make our elected officials swear or affirm their loyalty to the US Constitution (and the various state constitutions) which was written in 1787 as the job description for elected officials to ensure they equally defended the rights of all Americans as granted by God according to the instructions written in the constitution. The founders did not shy away from God in acknowledging Him as the source of our rights. The founders put God directly into that oath and the constitution itself, by requiring that oath in Article VI of the constitution.  At the time, the definition of the word Oath was specifically about appealing to God.

This is not an outdated concept.  Even today’s US Navy recognizes the oath as a “sacred covenant“.

Francis Bellamy, Oath Without God

In contrast, the Pledge of Allegiance was originally written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy. Bellamy was an American National Socialist (as opposed to the German National Socialists, Nazis) who worked as a magazine writer.

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.’ – Wikipedia

It’s common for Socialists/Communists to claim their anti-God message is actually more Christlike. By taking your property they can distribute it to everyone else, all while claiming their actions embody the ultimate Christian kindness to give away somebody else’s stolen property.  Tyrants of history have always been happy to take everything people own, to establish their ultimate control of both the giver and the receiver with them as King in the middle. They’d love for you to own nothing and be happy. (A government powerful enough to give you everything you want, is powerful enough to take everything you have)

So if Bellamy was a socialist Christian?  Didn’t he love God and put “Under God” in the pledge?

Bellamy “believed in the absolute separation of church and state and purposefully did not include the phrase “under God” in his pledge. – Wikipedia

The founders never intended to separate Church and state fully in this manner, they put God in the Constitution (as I just explained) and the Declaration of Independence. They only believed that the government had no right to sanction one religion over another; no state sponsored religion.  All religions had equal claim to worship freely, and to be protected in their rights by government officials.

Where did “Under God” come from in the pledge?

During the middle of last century, good Americans successfully created a widespread movement in opposition to communism destroying the country.  These well-intended Americans that were taking issue with socialist/communist ideas creeping into American politics were pacified enough with the pledge when President Eisenhower added “Under God” in 1954. One failure of the anti-communist movement was to be OK with this instead of being aware enough to refuse to participate completely. However, to be fair, with radical communism on the rise in the streets of America this probably seemed pretty low on the priority-list of issues to push back against during the 1950s and 1960s.

Original intent of the pledge – Redefining and Nationalizing

Redefining words is a very common tactic of the communist philosophy.  By redefining a word, we lose our understanding of history related to the word, over a generation.  Just like when we reported about woke professors at BYU that said the only way to destroy the “proclamation on the family” is to redefine the words it uses.

“the only option we have as long as the proc. is on the books, is to define it toward oblivion, dictionaries notwithstanding“

This is why the 1828 Websters Dictionary is a powerful tool in defending truth against Babylon.

The original intent of the pledge of allegiance shows us that Bellamy’s intention was to change the definition of our republic, from the founders’ version to a nationalized version.

From the same Wikipedia article:

Bellamy described his thoughts as [he] crafted the language of the pledge: “The true reason for allegiance to the Flag is the ‘republic for which it stands”

We can agree with this statement so far.  Any attempt to honor a symbol must always be followed with the teachings of what the symbol represents, otherwise you end up just pointlessly worshiping an object.  In this context, the flag is to represent the republican form of government that our constitution carefully created, with a delicate balance of powers so that it could maintain itself long-term.

Bellamy continues…

“And what does that last thing, the Republic mean? It is the concise political word for the Nation – the One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove.”

This is where Bellamy starts to redefine republic into something new.  Our nation was set up as a “republic of republics”, not one single republic.  The importance of the distinction can not be understated. Without recognizing the local power of states as superior to the central federalized government our country becomes something very different. Bellamy’s “national socialist” vision was hindered by the true definition of our “republic of republics” in the minds of the public.

Further, the claim that the civil war was fought to preserve a single nation is a distortion of the truth that Abraham Lincoln cursed the nation with.  While most think the war was about slavery, there was a distinct battle for the soul of a federalized republican form of government.  Through the founders’ genius document, the states created the central government to be a subordinate child to the parent states.  Legally speaking, this is still true, but states have to assert their claim on their power (there is more to this, but that’s a separate discussion). 19th century tyrants who love power wanted to transform the central government into something that Americans would recognize as strictly superior to the states. The main battleground to do this is in our culture, because legally the states are still superior, even today.  Putting the issue of slavery aside, we all know this is where we have landed ourselves today in American culture.  (For further study on this, I highly recommend this 45 minute presentation “The Three Foundings of America” by the late Stephen Pratt.)

Bellamy continues…

“To make that One Nation idea clear, we must specify that it is indivisible”

This again, is a philosophical shift from the founders.  While America was always intended to be united in purpose, states were always free to secede from the union at their will. Even local governments and communities have always been free to govern themselves during times of bad behavior from higher level tyrants. The entire foundation of our nation was built on the idea that when the government gets out of control, the people have the right to “alter or abolish it”.  That is still the law today in state constitutions around the country.

The Federalist Papers are where the authors of the constitution explained what it means, exactly.

Regarding Nationalism, James Madison took special care to define the form of the central government. He walked us through the pros and cons of “federalism” vs. “nationalism”. This discussion can be found in Federalist No. 39 and cannot be summarized here, it must be read and pondered. He carefully defined and taught how important the distinction between nationalism and federalism was.  If those definitions are blurred, the government itself loses it’s careful balance of power that preserves freedom and loses legitimacy.

Patriotism vs. Nationalism vs. Globalism

Patriotism is the love for our fellow “countrymen” (the people) and the freedom and rights of everyone together. The ‘great body’ of the people within the boundaries can also be referred to as the “nation”.

Nationalism is a centralized system where one central power controls everything underneath it.  Today, patriotism is often mixed with nationalism to confuse our love for freedom and our fellow-man with a love for a centralized government. All under the color of loving our country.  Tyrants love this. The important distinction in these terms is critical to understand if we want to get our country back to where freedom and rights are protected the way they were always intended to be.

Globalism is simply taking nationalism to an international scale.

Politicians appeal to our nationalism with the help of the multi-billion dollar media (both mainstream and alternative).  Statesmen appeal to the original meaning of patriotism.  The greatest example of a statesmen in our day was former presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul. Stop voting for politicians, and start finding the statesmen. Start working on our country at the local level.

Appropriate loyalty

What should we actually be loyal to in order to maintain the constitution and freedom for all? How can we fulfill our spiritual mandate to defend freedom for all mankind?

The founders showed us the way in all their teachings, including with the oath of office. As Americans, we should insist upon our local elected officials understanding the constitution.  But let’s not be hypocrites. Whoever you are that is reading this, you don’t know it as well as you think you do. Sure, many of you know a lot about certain particular things you’ve studied, but even the best of us are seriously lacking what we need.

Our loyalty as Americans should be to the same constitution (and associated natural-rights) that we expect our officials to be loyal to. We cannot honestly tell if it’s being followed unless we have studied it ourselves.  If you don’t know what the constitutional solution would be to a particular problem we’re facing, with exact legal detail, then you’re incapable of supporting good local officials if they wanted to be true to it but simply lacked the knowledge.  Also, you’re incapable of holding local tyrants accountable because you won’t be able to articulate why somebody is wrong so that you can gain support outside of your own inner circle.  Worst of all, you’re prone to being a victim of media manipulation, pitting you against people that might actually be on your side.

And I’ll tell you from a lot of personal experience, that the enemies of liberty use this against us all the time.  They send us down rabbit-holes and tangents of emotion. They prey on our ignorance of the constitution, and the meanings of the words used.  After fifteen years of working in the liberty community in Utah, I see that our greatest enemy is still our own ignorance of how our government should function. Sure, our greatest enemy is also a “secret combination that seeks to overthrow freedom”, but they only have power over us through our ignorance.

Start your journey to learn about solutions here: www.DefendingUtah.org/committees

Saying the pledge in public

Avoiding saying the pledge in public might be awkward sometimes.  People who notice might think you’re a “woke-leftist”, aligned with antifa that hates America (again, part of the trick to make us nationalist).  Saying an alternate version might help avoid awkwardness and create an opportunity to teach others about the meaning of certain words.

Along these lines, I have to give kudos to an early writing of Libertas’ founder.  While I have strong disagreements with how their legislation over the years has actually moved the needle for freedom backwards instead of forwards, he did understand this cultural problem with the pledge of allegiance. So I’ll quote his suggested alternative for an alternate pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag Constitution of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Are you running some organization yourself that currently says the pledge?

Might I recommend, simply replace it with a good patriotic song?  Or maybe a brief moment to recognize the constitution or God in some other way that works for you?

Make a difference with Defending Utah

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Start your journey to learn about solutions here: www.DefendingUtah.org/committees