Do you remember reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every day in school — standing up from your desk at the appointed time, pushing your chair in, turning to face the flag, placing your right hand over your heart, and reciting the words in perfect unison with your fellow pupils under the teacher’s gimlet-eyed scrutiny? Looking back on this regimented ritual, it seems totally bizarre that I swore loyalty to the flag of the United States of America every day of my lowly public school existence. Why do we do this? Is there any evidence or research that daily recitation of the Pledge will forge deep patriotism and national solidarity within children? In fact, I grew up to be about as patriotic as my Volkswagen Jetta. Maybe this is because I learned it in 1st grade, before I understood key words in the Pledge — words like “pledge,” “allegiance,” “republic,” and “indivisible.” By the time those words entered my vocabulary, the Pledge had long become become a rote rendering of meaningless mumbles rife with totalitarian implications.
According to an article in today’s Boston Globe, schools in my town of Arlington do not lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance, and a local high school student is creating a mini-public furor by spearheading a campaign to require the district to offer a voluntary recitation (here). The pro-Pledge student sees it as “something he owes to the men and women who have died fighting for this country…’It’s a living and breathing statement that basically strengthens a bond a person has with their country.'” The school board is deadlocked 3-3 on the student’s proposal (ingenious, having an even number of members on the committee. Really ace. )
I could ridicule this passionate young Republican with all the usual two-way tirades about freedom of speech and religion, but you know what? I was once a teenager with an ungodly amount of courage about my convictions. When I was seventeen, I peppered my teachers with provocative questions about “real” American values like slavery, witch hunting, and Jim Crow. I asked why it was not okay to burn a flag but it was okay to use flag napkins to wipe your mouth. I defended the French revolutionaries for chopping off the heads of their economic oppressors. And I started to mouth the Pledge of Allegiance. Take that, imperial America! Had I more initiative, I would have started a crusade to take the Pledge out of school, but by high school, students and teachers alike seemed to pooh-pah the whole protocol. It was the early ’90s — after the Cold War, before 9/11 — and patriotism seemed quaint.
About a month ago, Mr. P and I played in our community orchestra’s season-closing Pops concert, which featured the typical stable of crowd-pleasing Broadway and soundtrack tunes: Cats, Singin’ in the Rain, Phantom of the Opera, a Cole Porter tribute — the musical equivalent of pie, as it gives you something to chew on, something to fill you up, but nothing really nourishing. Except for, of course, Stars and Stripes Forever, the quintessential Sousa march. It rouses patriotic emotions, spirits, energy. It makes you want to join hands with strangers and jump up and down to the rollicking beat of the band. It makes you want to spew inflammatory anti-government rhetoric while flogging an illegal immigrant with an American flag and reminiscing about the Reagan era. Wait, what? I mean, it makes you yearn to watch a parade.
Mr. P hated all of the Pops repertoire , especially Stars and Stripes Forever, which he didn’t appreciate from a musical perspective and to which he lacked an emotional connection. Plus, enthusiastic displays of nationalism are viewed with suspicion by Europeans, who associate it with extremism. When I visited Germany 8 years ago, my college-aged hosts told me about how they hung a German flag on their balcony at the start of the World Cup. Within 1 day, the local police were at their door, suggesting that they take the flag down because the neighbors were complaining. “What self-loathing and guilt we Germans have,” one girl said.
But here in America, we thrive on patriotism. Even affirmed dissenters like myself can’t help but to be moved by Stars and Stripes Forever. I wonder if some patriotism seeped into my core from the Pledge of Allegiance, laying latent until I reach that age when people turn more conservative — not out of wisdom, but out of weariness (as Nietzsche said). The US doesn’t have a common genetic heritage, or even a cultural heritage. We need the Stars and Stripes Forever to unite us. These patriotic trinkets, so trite and low-brow, so essential to our American identity that clapping is almost accidental.
