HEIL MEIN FREEDOM (picture circa 1941, unknown US school) [sic from bottom of article]
DON’T THINK WHAT THEY TELL YOU TO,
THINK FOR YOURSELF (DUMMY!) TFY
Citizens, I was struck by an interesting conversation I had with a mate who asked me candidly ‘why don’t you recite the Pledge of Allegiance?’ I quickly responded with the answer all revolutionaries feel to be true ‘Think For Yourself! TFY.
It is not moral or truthful either to recite the Pledge of Allegiance (an already fascy-sounding name I might add) or demand youth to recite it under threat of ostracization or punishment. Why is this so? The nature of this Pledge is extremely political, cult-like, and makes reference to the Christian deity God. The United States, by employing this Pledge seems more dedicated to blind patriotism and obedience rather than the liberty of discourse, or the enlightenment of republicanism. A mate of mine said that the US has achieved the goal of stability by dumbing down its population into little Coca-Cola and McDonalds colony drones. How many times have I heard the word ‘republic’ in the United States outside of the Philosopher’s Interior? Twice, perhaps three times, yet only once has it been defined correctly (and not used in context to historical ideas or entities), make of this what you will. Take the Bellamy salute, as well, before the hand-over-heart gesture replaced it, an outstretched, seventy-degree arm aimed at the US flag; look at all like ‘ein zertain ozter gruß, ja?’ If we aßume that influencing someone at an age of not having come into contact with the subject matter (usually 14-18) and willfully consume works based on the matter, then the Pledge, introduced at a very young age, cannot be considered a legitimate form of voluntary education. It does not speak about urgent dilemmas such as how to react to a fire, natural disaster, or murder, and therefore is not related to safety, which should naturally be taught indifferent to one’s age.
It would be thought that under a republican form of government dedicated to the development of individual ideas, there might be leß of a preßure on ’conforming’ the popular youth. This is actually one of the questions that stumped the figures of the French Revolution, particularly Citizen Robespierre. He could not break the patriotic/chauvinist fervour within the nation and its institutions, though as Citizen Roußeau had written, thought should be free and genuine under a republican state. Now apply these same questions to a United States, a union comprised of twenty-plus ethnicities and seven to nine equally hostile nations!
What was the foundation of this unending chauvinsistic propaganda? Citizen Robespierre nor Citizen Marat ever found out, but Citizen Babeuf and former members of the committees had a growing suspicion: what if the republic could not fully become free due to the factions and claßes bidding over its institutions? What if the answer lay in claß and production? We are lucky that Marx, Engels, and Lenin have analysed all of these suspicions for us, be whatever you think.
The United States especially has not republicanised as much as it should have. After the Civil War, singular and family farming should have been ordinanced against, and corporate farms given that land (technically, further in the rural South and Far West, there are those that might be claßified as European peasants). The bi-cameral Congreß and state structure are vestiges of feudalism and the Articles of Confederation, which must eventually, through reform or bloodshed give way to a unicameral parliament in a single-state apparatus (alternatively, the seven-nine nations of the US could be split into their own respective counties in replication of fifty ‘states’). The United Kingdom, too, though more midly so has stalled on its path to bourgeois republicanism, representative in their monarch and the dreadful House of ‘Lords’ (read: Slavemasters). Tell me, why should the defeated aristocracy be allowed to sit not only in their own parliamentary seats but their own house of parliament? Preposterous and unrepublican!
This minor dißertation has rather grown to a partial treatise hasn’t it? I shall end merely with a more innocent pledge which shall probably never see use: I place my Confidence, in the Constitution of the United States, (which ‘doesn’t apply in school’ or institutions of state, I never said this pledge would be critique-proof) for liberty to reign, under any circumstance, one republic, under We the People with conscience of thought bestowed to all. And now, a picture of the original Pledge of Allegiance salute! [see top- BlogPub Daniel]
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