The Socialistic Origins of the Pledge of Allegiance

Children pledging allegiance to the American flag with
the Bellamy salute.

While today the Pledge of Allegiance is taken for granted as something good—even by Christians—it was created as a means to conform citizens to the humanistic state. All this comes out in Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s piece, Pledging Allegiance to the Omnipotent Lincolnian State.

The Pledge is the brainchild of the socialist Francis Bellamy. His cousin, Edward Bellamy, wrote the popular socialist fantasy Looking Backward, and Francis hoped his Pledge would actually make Edward's fiction a reality.

The Bellamys worked with the National Education Association (NEA) to use the pledge for brainwashing children. DiLorenzo writes, 

The public schools must be used to teach blind obedience to the state, the Bellamys reasoned, and the National Education Association was pleased to help them accomplish this goal. They planned a ‘National Public School Celebration’ in 1892, which was the first national propaganda campaign on behalf of the Pledge of Allegiance. It was a massive campaign that involved government schools and politicians throughout the country. The government schools were promoted, along with the Pledge, while private schools, especially parochial ones, were criticized.

Students were taught to recite the Pledge with their arms outstretched, palms up, similar to how Roman citizens were required to hail Caesar, and not too different from the way in which Nazi soldiers saluted their Führer. This was the custom in American public schools from the turn of the twentieth century until around 1950, when it was apparently decided by public school officials that the Nazi-like salute was in bad taste.

Not surprisingly, the Pledge has roots in the humanistic French Revolution: 

Bellamy considered the "liberty and justice for all" phrase in the Pledge to be an Americanized version of the slogan of the French Revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The French revolutionaries believed that mass killing by the state was always justified if it was done for the "grand purpose" of achieving "equality." In an 1876 commencement speech Francis Bellamy praised the French Revolution as "the poetry of human brotherhood." 

Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Pledging Allegiance to the Omnipotent Lincolnian State (LewRockwell.com, October 17, 2003). Retrieved July 1, 2011.

Below are related resources by Rev. John Weaver and Kevin Swanson.

Part 1
Part 2


Should You Say the Pledge of Allegiance? from Kevin Swanson on Vimeo.