Maybe they just have no experience with forced fetishism. Or maybe unlike you they see that forced fetishism for what it is.
I promise you, nobody anywhere "worships" THEIR FLAG except here. In the rest of the world there's no such thing as a frickin' "pledge of allegiance". It's kinky shit.
You're not really pledging allegiance to the flag, you're pledging allegiance to America.
Think so huh?
Read me the first sentence. Then tell me what the object of that sentence is. "I pledge allegiance to" .... what?
As I said --- not familiar with the reading thing.
Once again --- it's specifically written as an advertising hook to
sell flags. That's its whole purpose.
Tell that to some Marines, raising the flag on a hill after some of their friends got blown to bits.
This may come as a revelation to the intellectually somnabulistic but emotionally-driven threats-of-violence coercion arguments have never impressed me, ever. The fact that they impress you is (a) not surprising and (b) your problem. Marines --- or anyone else --- do what they do for a country, not for a ******* flag. A public official takes their oath to preserve the Constitution --- not a ******* flag.
Prove to me that it was written in order to sell flags. You made the claim, back it up.
Did you miss the: "and to the Republic, for which it stands" part, or just conveniently forget it?
Exactly --- second billing, as an afterthought. The flag is the direct object, right at the outset. It was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy as a scheme to sell flags to schools. I NEVER come to these batttlegrounds unarmed, Spunky.
>> In 1827, a young publisher founded
The Youth’s Companion, an American children’s publication that focused on “virtue and piety” and “warned against the ways of transgression.” By the late 1880s, it had become the country’s most circulated weekly magazine, with some
475,000 readers. Some of the greatest voices of the time -- Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington, Emily Dickinson, and Jack London -- regularly contributed, and the
Companion gained a reputation for high quality writing.
But the owner at the time, Daniel Sharp Ford, felt the publication wasn't realizing its full potential. In 1888,
as a premium to solicit subscriptions, he launched a campaign to sell American flags to public schools. At the time, a schoolhouse flag movement sought to “place a flag above every school in the nation.”
The Youth’s Companion quickly became its most ardent supporter.
In 1892, Ford’s right-hand marketing man, James B. Upham, was tasked with coining a marketing gimmick that would inspire schools to buy more flags. Upham, in a spurt of genius,
decided to monetize patriotism by creating a “pledge” in which children would declare their undying love for America. He hired Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister, to write something that could easily be
recited in “15 seconds or less.”
A socialist, Bellamy wanted to include the words “equality” and “fraternity” in the pledge, but his editors rejected the idea on the basis that state superintendents opposed the idea of equality for women and African Americans. Bellamy acquiesced, and on September 9, 1892, the original version of the Pledge of Allegiance made its
debut in
The Youth’s Companion:
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all"
.... Bellamy subsequently spoke at a national convention for school superintendents, where he sold the idea that his pledge should be instituted as a part of this “official Columbus Day program.” He was ultimately elected chair of the committee, and formulated the entire holiday around an elaborate flag-raising ceremony and his pledge.
The campaign was massively successful. By the end of the year, the magazine had sold American flags to more than 26,000 schools across the nation -- at a hefty profit for The Youth’s Companion. The pledge became a fixture in public schools; to this day, it is recited in tens of thousands of classrooms. << ---
The Marketing of the Pledge of Allegiance
--- And as already noted, nowhere else in the world does a country genuflect and pray to a flag, except for the colony we were strongarming and decimating at the same time this marketing gimmick came up, the Philippines. That's the entire list.
Learn your own history, Doodles.