I said this every day in first grade when my teachers were loving and I was a happy little boy who loved to read and hang out with my mom. I think I should start saying it again. I’m going to get a flag for my room.

I think the flag is an icon. It means different things for different people at different times. I flew the flag to celebrate Nixon’s resignation and my country’s return to the rule of law while my neighbor flew his flag on the same day to honor Nixon’s service as President. Which flag-flying motive was superior? Who had more respect? Who had the greater allegiance?

Of course, my iconic celebration was compromised by Ford’s pardon as my neighbor’s was by subsequent releases of Nixon’s tapes. Our neighbor, two doors to the west, never flew the flag as his religion forbade the celebration of icons. He loved this country because of its freedom of religion and never took the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.

If flags aren’t the tangible symbol of a country why are they planted on every newly discovered or battle conquered patch of ground, including the moon? No one pledges allegiance to a piece of cloth, that’s just silly.

America makes it easy to pledge allegiance. It’s not founded on place or sovereign family, it’s about an idea that is so succinctly explained in our founding Declaration and Constitution that it’s citizens are graced by the glimpse of national perfection just by reading them. You can hate America’s government du jure and still feel pride in pledging allegiance to the ideal on which it is founded. Owing allegiance to the ideal is the least we should do as citizens, otherwise we’re all just a bunch of Wall Street bankers at heart and you can’t even hope to have an honorable society on that basis.

My 2cents anyway.

I assume you mean that the part about pledging allegiance to the FLAG, and not the rest, otherwise you’re instance on using the literal definition of a word in there makes little sense. If I’m reading you wrong, please let me know.

I think you’re getting the concepts of “citizen” and “subject” mixed up. They are closely related and in some societies can be used interchangeably, but not in this one.

Byron and Mike,

Well put.

I didn’t invent the definition of “allegiance”.

Please feel free to copy and paste the definition from the source you find to be reliable.

Have we really arrived at a time in which we all make up our own definitions for the words we use? That would be the case with “allegiance”. Wouldn’t it?

are you sh . . . me? That definition of “Allegiance” could be right out of Hitlers Hand Book.

We don’t owe an allegiance to our country. We don’t owe anything to our country. Our country is made up of individuals each pursuing our own ideas about how we live our lives. The operative word is “individual”. We protect ourselves, i.e. citizen soldiers. If we fight, we fight because we think liberty is a value. We owe allegiance to no man or country. In a free country that values the individual, the only allegiance owed is to one’s personal values. Hopefully liberty is a value that most Americans share.

I really hope you aren’t a conservative or if you are you aren’t a typical conservative. Your thoughts on this are giving the rest of us a bad name. Do you see what you are saying? Think about it, you would be nothing more than a feudal serf at the whim and mercy of the master.

My allegiance or actually fidelity is to the philosophy that makes America a good country – the sanctity of the individual.

A pledge of allegiance to the flag is not to be taken literally. It’s a pledge of allegiance to one’s country.

Black’s Second Edition:
“ALLEGIANCE- By allegiance is meant the obligation of fidelity and obedience which the individual owes to the government under which he lives, or to his sovereign in return for the protection he receives. It may be an absolute and permanent obligation, or it may be a qualified and temporary one. The citizen or subject owes an absolute and permanent allegiance to his government or sovereign, or at least until, by some open and distinct act, he renounces it and becomes a citizen or subject of another government or another sovereign. The alien, while domiciled in the country, owes a local and temporary allegiance, which continues during the period of his residence.”

If you renounce allegiance, you renounce nationality (citizenship).

As far as straight entertainment value they can’t be beat, but the Amazing Randi has a soft spot in my heart for that stunt he pulled in Australia all those years ago, and his work for rational thinking ever since.

nal cannot serve two masters. Something about that manna stuff. But I bet nal can sing fairly well.

As far as I’m concerned, there are no better comic illusionists practicing today than Penn & Teller.

And if no one has seen their film “Penn & Teller Get Killed”? I cannot suggest it highly enough. I laughed until I stopped.

Oh nal! Why hath thou forsaken me!

So I should be owe this allegiance as protection money? By merit of geographical accident?

rofl

That’s just funny.

And sport means exactly what you think it means. Sport.

So the American Flag has magical properties that have kept me safe? If not then why (by your definition) should I pledge my allegiance to it? We’re a country founded on the fact that the government is in place by the will of the people, not that the people are protected by the will of the people. I say, let’s make all of those who hold elected office pledge allegiance to America’s citizens, and stop forcing our kids to pay homage to a symbol (by the way, I’m also anti-Santa Clause).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETiXXf0ZqRQ

I may be the one who is confused.

Where did you find your definition of “allegiance”?

Everything I read tells me that allegiance is something owed, in exchange for protection.

Allegiance is something owed from birth. Therefore, natural allegiance is not something earned.

I am not familiar with your customs. Is “sport” used like “over” is in radio communications?

sport

your nick = IRONY

Allegiance is something you OWE to the country of which you are a subject or citizen.

“You clowns getting educated would really make us crazy”. =IRONY

Listen up, screwheads. A flag is a piece of cloth. You might as well be swearing allegiance to a dress or a dish towel. No one, I repeat – NO ONE, has ever died for a flag. They’ve died for the ideals a flag may represent like FREEDOM (which by the way includes the freedom to not be a Christian or even burn the flag), but no one has ever died for a flag. Second, allegiance is just like respect. It’s EARNED. Thankfully not all of us are so easily programmed as children. Finally, if you neocon dipsticks want to really drive liberals crazy? Read a book that wasn’t written by Limbaugh or Beck or Pastor Polyester Suit, preferably science and/or history. You clowns getting educated would really make us crazy. Why? Because when you were done pulling your head out of your personal dark stinky place, you’d be liberals too. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Have a nice day.

“Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show
With some smart ass New York Jew
And the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox
And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too
Well he may be a fool but he’s our fool
If they think they’re better than him they’re wrong
So I went to the park and I took some paper along
And that’s where I made this song

We talk real funny down here
We drink too much and we laugh too loud
We’re too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we’re keepin’ the niggers down

We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol’ boys from Tennessee
And colleges men from LSU
Went in dumb. Come out dumb too
Hustlin’ ’round Atlanta in their alligator shoes
Gettin’ drunk every weekend at the barbecues
And they’re keepin’ the niggers down

CHORUS
We’re rednecks, rednecks
And we don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground
We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks
And we’re keeping the niggers down

Now your northern nigger’s a Negro
You see he’s got his dignity
Down here we’re too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free

Yes he’s free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he’s free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he’s free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They’re gatherin’ ‘em up from miles around
Keepin’ the niggers down

CHORUS”

Just substitute Todd Akin’s name for Lester Maddox (Or Bachman’s et al) and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the current face of an old plague IMO. I watched a lot of the coverage of the crowd and I was struck again by what a stunningly white crowd it was, as are most of the teabag protest crowds.