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The Overwhelming Hypocrisy of The Pledge [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-15
We said the Pledge of Allegiance every day in grade school. I felt proud of our country. Saying the Pledge together made me feel like we were all a part of this country. That was a different time in America. Trumps politics have made a mockery of the flag and the Pledge.
On 1-10-25 the Pledge of Allegiance started playing on school intercoms in Plymouth,Michigan. Danielle Khalaf, a 14 year old 8th grader, refused to stand for the Pledge as a protest of US support of Israel killing Palestinians. The 1st Amendment guarantees Freedom of Speech and allows individuals to criticize the government.
When Danielle told her teacher why she didn’t stand he harangued her for disrespecting this country and told her she should go back where she came from. The school district did an investigation but will not say what actions they took if any.
Unfortunately the political landscape makes a mockery of the pledge. It reads “I pledge allegiance to the flag 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.” Today America is divisible (capable of being divided) because we are divided in half over what our country stands for.
Our government is dismantling our liberty on a daily basis. Liberty is defined as the quality of being free; the power to do as one pleases; freedom from arbitrary or despotic control. Do immigrants and LBGTQ people have liberty? Do Universities have the liberty to teach whatever they want? Do women have the liberty to be in charge of their reproductive health?
Pledging allegiance to the Republic at this time is hypocritical. A Republic is a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and is usually a president; a government in which supreme power is held by the citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives governing according to law.
It is sad to watch our country becoming a shell of what it used to be. Our leaders stand for freedom of hate speech. Republicans want to control our bodies, what we can read, who we can love. That is not freedom or liberty. I would not stand for the pledge now.
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