A socialist wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, which used to be accompanied by Nazi salutes

The KKK was well-respected? What state was this???

Indiana, for one.

Also anywhere in the South

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America was using that salute before Nazis existed.
Misleading headline.

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Yes, aren’t we smug as we draw arbitrary lines. Ever heard of projection, it’s like when someone smug and cynical complains about all the smug cynics.

Your side of history, really? really?

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Denial. It was the state of denial. The KKK was feared. The KKK was not respected.

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Alternate version, written by some commie treehuggin’ dirt-worshipper whom I would love to thank:

I pledge allegiance
to the Earth
and all the LIFE which it supports.

One Planet,
in our care,
irreplaceable,
with sustenance
and respect
for all.

In lieu of some weird salute, please just go outside and pick up trash, compostables and/or recycling off the street, parkland, public places etc. or wherever you are.

Thanking you in advance,
sincerely,

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The flag ritual was created by a man who was a nationalist and a socialist but who did not happen to be specifically affiliated with those other nationalist socialists.

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I tried to wrap my head around the idea of myself as the accused ideologue in a room full of ideologues talking about an initial subject post made by, demonstrably, the biggest ideologue on BB. But I just couldn’t do it.

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Ah, “people like you,” yes. How wonderful. Say, could you go ahead and say “communist” or “socialists” for me? Even better would be “socialist communists.” I always love it when someone says that. Anyhow, I thought we were talking about the enforced indoctrination usage of the Pledge of Allegiance, or at least that was a tangent off of its origin story. This leaves me wondering how the phrase “basically decent things” came us, as this inculcation is anything but that.

But hey, while we’re sharing stories …

I know I must have received this sort of low level brainwashing when I was a kid, but I don’t recall it going on past the first grade or so. However when I joined the USAF, I found it throughout basic training and other instructions, to no one’s surprise, I’m sure. At the start of each day, at an assembly before breakfast, we were compelled to sing the “Air Force song,” aka “the Wild Blue Yonder.” To say it started to grate very quickly is a bit of an understatement. To this day, I still actively hate that song, and while it’s not one that you run into randomly very often, it still occasionally happens, and causes me to twitch a little and turn it off as quickly as possible, if possible.

But hey, I’m sure it seemed like a good idea to someone …

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Do a little dance.

Make a little love.

Get down tonight.

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In many places across the country, for one, especially in the 1920s, when they had millions of members - try reading some history on the topic:

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Except by all the people who were in it and saw it as a righteous defense of whiteness (though many certainly feared it, too). It’s dwindled in it’s most recent iteration, but in years past it was a nation-wide, powerful organization.

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Hrm. According to Wikipedia on the Bellamy salute, while the fascist salute was modeled after the Roman one, the American one seems to be a case of parallel evolution? That is, not derived from the Roman model at all, but ending up in pretty much the same place as those that were.

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Oooh, there was another BB post about how the pledge was written by a quasi-Socialist?

[reads "original post]

#NOPE

While article does quote the author as being a Christian Socialist, it is quoted on in passing, and is not the focal point of the story.

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In his novel Immortality Milan Kundera talks about how there’s a finite number of gestures so parallel evolution doesn’t surprise me. There are, I guess, only so many ways to salute.

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I blame the Nazi Nazis.

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Anybody else ever wonder why the pledge had the word invisible in it, but said it anyway???

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