Can we recite the Pledge in good faith?

Paul Weyrich makes a point that goes to the heart of the traditionalist dilemma. Patriotic Americans want to preserve the Pledge of Allegiance as a meaningful public ritual in our national life. But does the Pledge describe our actual country? Can we honestly say that our nation is “under God,” when we indifferently license the broadcasting of every kind of filth into American homes on prime time television? Can we say “one nation, indivisible,” when we’re deliberately pursuing policies that are dividing the nation into warring tribes? Can we say “with liberty,” after decades of systematically removing the constitutional foundations of liberty? Can we say “the Republican for which it stands,” when … well, you get the idea.

If the Pledge only represents ideals, hopes, and nostalgia rather than loyalty to an actually existing Republic, it becomes problematic whether it can be recited any longer in good faith. The underlying question is, how do traditionalists, whose instinct is to defend and preserve the social order, relate to the social order after it has been turned into the radical opposite of what it once was? Do they make believe—as do the establishment conservatives—that nothing drastic has happened, and that the state of America is (with a couple of troubling exceptions, of course) just wonderful? Or do they become dissenters from the existing scheme of things, saying that we cannot go on reciting the Pledge because that only allows us to go on imagining that the indivisible nation under God still exists—when, in fact, if it is to exist, it must first be restored?
Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 09, 2002 01:54 PM | Send