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To what are we pledging allegiance?
The arrest last month of a sixth grader who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance is but the latest event in a long history of theatrical patriotism in the United States, a record that so often undermines the greatness that the symbolism is supposed to stand for.
The details are complicated — the student declined to stand, claiming that for black people, the flag represents centuries of racism, and the substitute teacher in charge of his class called a resource officer to remove him. The teacher had immigrated to this country from Cuba and suggested that the student could move elsewhere if he did not like conditions here. The conflict escalated from there, ending in the student being arrested for disruptive behavior. According to the student’s attorney, the case against him has now been dropped.
As with the controversy over NFL athletes kneeling during the playing of the national anthem, this incident confronts us with the question of why a nation would need official oaths and creeds.
The belief that we do is by no means original with the United States. One example, from the transition period between the ancient and medieval world, is Constantine’s adoption of Christianity as a means of unifying an empire that increasingly lacked an answer as to what, beyond a mere desire for power, held it together as a political entity.
