“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.”What is the Truth About The Pledge of Allegiance?Sources: http://www.fdrurl.com/Pledge-of-AllegianceFreedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, Stefan Waller from Freedomain Radio.
I hope you're doing well.
So, a really, really fascinating little microcosm of history regarding the Pledge of Allegiance.
You know, the Americans stand, they put their hands on their hearts, although they didn't used to, for reasons we'll get to in a moment, and recite this Pledge of Allegiance.
And it's a really, really fascinating little slice of history with profound implications for not just American history and its future, but that of the West as a whole.
Sound like a broad claim?
Let's dig in and find out.
So, did you know that there was in fact no such thing as the Pledge of Allegiance until 1892?
America, of course, predated that by some years.
In 1892, Daniel Sharp Ford was the owner of the popular Youth's Companion magazine and launched a campaign to put an American flag in every classroom in the nation.
As another part of his campaign to promote patriotism in the aftermath of the terrible, terrible Civil War, Now, Francis Bellamy was an author, a minister,
and an advocate of Christian socialism, who, quote,"...championed the rights of working people and the equal distribution of economic resources, which he believed was inherent in the teachings of Jesus." Now,
Bellamy was available and, I guess, eager to take the commission because he was, quote, forced from his Boston pulpit for preaching against the evils of capitalism, end quote, in 1891.
Yes, that's right.
This guy was too lefty for Boston.
And Boston, of course, was the center of socially progressive movements in antebellum New England and has, I guess, leaned just a little left from time to time.
According to historian Timothy Kubal, quote, Francis Bellamy was a leader in three related movements.
The public education movement, which sought to celebrate and expand public schools.
The nationalist movement, which sought to nationalize public services and protect them from privatization.
And the Christian socialist movement, which sought to promote an economy based on justice and equality, end quote.
Now, stripped of its lefty, left-ish rhetoric, the public education movement, government schools took over in the sort of mid to late 19th century throughout the West as a whole, and...
Boy, it's been pretty catastrophic ever since.
They've been turned into god-awful indoctrination farms of boredom and lust and violence and metal detectors.
And literacy rates have crashed from when private institutions and the churches used to run the schools.
Literacy rates were 95-97 plus percent in Massachusetts and other places.
And now...
well they're just quite a bit lower so this was expanding government control over children and education the nationalist movement which you know may not sound so bad if you're a nationalist but no no no it's not nationalist like i like my country it's nationalism like we want the government to take over everything and get this squiddy So,
nationalized public services and the Christian socialist movement, which I guess does not rely on the conscience and one's relationship to God to be generous to the poor, but rather uses the coercive state to redistribute resources from those who might not pursue the self-righteous path of virtue. but rather uses the coercive state to redistribute resources from So, you know, was this guy a communist?
Was he a Christian?
I don't know.
I'm just going to say this.
I think both of his gods had big beards.
So Francis Bellamy said,"...a democracy like ours cannot afford to throw itself open to the world, where every man is a lawmaker, every dull-witted or fanatical immigrant admitted to our citizenship is a bane to the commonwealth." I love this 19th century stuff.
He also said, Where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another, every alien immigrant of inferior race may bring corruption to the stock.
There are races more or less akin to our own whom we may admit freely and get nothing but advantage by the infusion of their wholesome blood.
It's like he's running a club for vampires.
But he also said, and went on to say, But there are other races which we cannot assimilate without lowering our racial standard, which should be as sacred to us as the sanctity of our homes.
The Pledge of Allegiance.
I'm not going to make this gesture, because that's going to be memed before I've even finished the presentation.
The Pledge of Allegiance was also referred to as the Bellamy salute, right after this guy, and involved the extending of the right arm forward, angling upwards with the fingers pointing straight ahead, right?
Extend the right arm.
You can try this yourself.
Extend the right arm forward, angling upwards with the fingers pointing straight ahead.
Now, picture...
What that looked like for a minute.
Yes, yes, that's exactly how it appeared.
So the original was, I don't know how long it took him to come up with this, but he said, I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Okay, see any problems with that?
Well, that's not how it is now for this particular reason.
There were concerns that foreign-born immigrants could be referring to their own native-born flag.
So, my flag.
Oh, what if they're from Greece, aren't they?
Thinking about the Greek flag.
So, the word my was dropped and the flag of the United States was added to the pledge in 1923.
The following year, of America, was also added to the pledge just to make sure people weren't confused, right?
The United States of America.
So then it was, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Now, in the 1930s, the gesture which I refused to make but referred to earlier, well, a few people started noticing some startling similarities between the Bellamy salute and how Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were saluted in Italy and Germany.
Respectively.
On December 22, 1942, Congress passed the amended Flag Code, which decreed that the Pledge of Allegiance should, quote, be rendered by standing with the right hand over the heart, instead of extended forward and upwards.
The changes to the Pledge were not complete, though, as the phrase under God was added in 1954.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who spent most of his presidency not opposing the military-industrial complex in any particular way, and then tried to have it both ways by warning everyone of the military-industrial complex just as he was leaving, he said, adding the phrase under God,
"...in this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future." In this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace and war.
So it, you know, went through some iterations.
So why is this all so important?
Let me go full screen and let you know.
So the final pledge, sort of putting it all together.
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.
Now, it of course had been more than a century since America had been founded.
It's a little odd to me that the pledge would be to the flag, which is a symbol of government, rather than through the values of limited government, i.e.
tiny government, that the republic was first founded on.
But that's the way things roll.
You try and chain down the federal government, bind down the federal government with the chains of the Constitution, as Harry Brown used to say, and it took less than 80 years to break free, like Gulliver with the Lilliputians, to break free of those chains and go roaming around doing the usual nasty stuff that big governments do.
But the fact that this was in the late 19th century is pretty, pretty important.
America is not going through, as is the West as a whole, not going through, let's say, profound periods of economic growth, decline, decay, stagnant wages, escalating debt, slowing job growth.
I mean, it's just terrible, just terrible stuff.
Now, from 1869 to 1879, The US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for real GDP and 4.5% for real GDP per capita.
That's only 10 years.
That is a virtual doubling of the economy in 10 years.
Ah, can you imagine?
Can you imagine?
And that's real growth.
That's not because there was no Federal Reserve back then, so they couldn't just, poof, print money the way that clowns come out of Volkswagens in a circus.
They actually had to make money.
It had to be represented by gold or some fixed commodity.
They couldn't just print it out of nothing.
This is real economic growth.
Economic growth doubling, doubling, people.
In 10 years, economic output.
Crazy.
So between the Civil War and 1913, just prior, of course, to the outbreak of the First World War, the U.S. economy experienced absolutely explosive growth.
By 1913, like this relatively new country, produced one-third of the world's industrial output, more than the total of Great Britain, France, and Germany combined.
Much older countries with, of course, their empires and all that.
Now, during this time of...
I mean, there was a short-lived panic of 1873, but hard money policies, industrialization, was the greatest period.
It's called the Gilded Age.
It was the greatest period of economic growth in American history.
And there are some who would like to return to that, because they are human beings who are tired of being ground under by these slow, cryptic and...
Crippling, if not downright fascistic growth of endless government regulations.
You know, there's a magician out in Missouri.
The Obama administration forced him to submit a 32-page disaster plan for the rabbit that he used while performing magic in front of children.
Save the bunny!
There are estimates that the...
Growth in the American economy, if regulations had simply stayed as they had been after the Second World War, that the American economy would be many, many, many times larger and stronger now, that the average per capita incomes would be 200,000, 250,000, if everything else had stayed the same, but regulations hadn't grown as much as they had.
Because during the...
Most explosive, most powerful growth time in American history for the economy.
There was no income tax.
There was no Federal Reserve.
There was small government.
There were shared values.
This is important information to have when we're talking about restoring the West's economic growth, which is absolutely necessary for the survival of the West.
Just even as of 2013, you know, always hear about government debt.
Well, private debt.
There was a private debt-to-GDP ratio in America of 273%.
Right?
273%.
Foreign debt to GDP ratio of 101%, 384%.
And that's just straight debt, not even counting unfunded liabilities, which go into the...
It's just crazy.
150, 180, 80 trillion.
It's complete madness.
There's a reason why in America national debt is more than 5,000 times what it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.
It's a debt-running system.
They bribe you with imaginary money and leave your grandchildren to pay the bill by becoming largely economically enslaved to foreign banksters.
So growth, economic growth.
Well, there's one thing we haven't mentioned.
No income tax, a small government, no Federal Reserve, very little regulation, shared values.
And European immigrants.
Let's go back to 1861 to 1890.
What were the main sources of immigration to America?
Well, you got your Austria-Hungary, you got your Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, a little bit from Russia, some from China, and a whole lot from Canada.
And Newfoundland, because of course Newfoundland didn't join Canada, I think, until after the Second World War.
So that's European stuff.
Now, if you run through the sources of immigration into Europe and America these days...
I think you're going to find it's changed quite a little bit and the degree to which that is going to work out.
Let's just say I think it's a little bit of an open question and we need to start talking about this stuff.
Is it important?
It certainly is.
Is it relevant?
It absolutely is.
Do some people call it hate facts?
Well, Only if you hate facts.
This is Stefan Molyneux for Freedom Main Radio.
Thank you for watching this little presentation.
I look forward to your comments below.
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