Pledge of No-Legiance

Do we still do this?

The Pledge of Allegiance was Pure Psyop*—CHANGE MY MIND?

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*Psyop- is a psychological operation, something our government has had no choice but to admit to doing in the past

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In the 7th grade at Bonnieville Elementary, Hart County, Kentucky, it’s so small they don’t have a middle school. I watched the towers get hit in class. Parents were coming to pull their children out of school for the day. My Dad didn’t have a car, and I didn’t really understand the extent of what was happening, but soon after that year, there was a very—rah, rah, America, don’t disrespect my flag—type of patriotism everywhere you looked. I was a very introverted kid. I hated having to stand up for the “Pledge of Allegiance”, and we did every morning at 8am. The whole school did, through the intercom, every class had a flag, we turned toward the flag, hand on our hearts, and pledged…

I resisted this in about 6th grade. I hated it. I was sent to the office, many times, pulled out of class to be scolded, the teacher would point at me and say, “Up!”. I wanted a reason to not have to do this, so I started reading into the pledge. I seen right away that this was standing on shaky ground.

You're asking a child to pledge his/her allegiance, first off to an inanimate object, second, at this time all they talked about was war, war, war! Before 9/11, I learned of the draft in Civics class, I also learned that as a male, we had to sign-up for the draft when we turned 18.

I became afraid of going to war. 9/11 happening, and pledging allegiance every day, reinforced that fear. I would ask questions and other kids in my class, surely from the influence of the times, would say, “If you don’t sign up for the draft, they’ll send you to jail,” or “I can’t wait to join so I can help defend our freedom.”

They were a heroic bunch, I was not. The teacher would reinforce this by saying things like, “Those people going overseas are fighting for our freedoms, so you don’t have to.” By the way, I’m not against people joining the military, some people it’s for, some people believe it’s good, I don’t. I believe all the branches of military should go on strike today so the war pigs can’t wage anymore without sending their own children to die, **COUGH COUGH** Nikki Haley?

I found an article defending homeschooling—which I don’t love, but it’s great for some families—but there was an excellent passage that I believe applies to school, as it is.

School is not primarily about learning academic skills, literacy or numeracy. School is primarily about discipline. School is about instilling in our children the dominant ideology of our times; it is about the reproduction of the society we live in, a society being smashed on the rocks of greed, individualism and consumption.

I agree with that whole-heartedly, if you look back at where our system of schooling came from, it started with indoctrination, here is a passage from the Foundation for Economic Education:

The earliest ancestor to our system of government-mandated schooling comes from 16th-century Germany. Martin Luther was a fierce advocate for state-mandated public schooling, not because he wanted kids to become educated, but because he wanted them to become educated in the ways of Lutheranism. Luther was resourceful and understood the power of the state in his quest to reform Jews, Catholics, and other non-believers. No less significant was fellow reformist John Calvin, who also advocated heavily for forced schooling. Calvin was particularly influential among the later Puritans of New England (Rothbard, 1979).

Considering compulsory schooling has such deep roots in Germany, it should be no surprise that the precursor to our American government school system came directly from the German state of Prussia. In 1807, fresh off a humiliating defeat by the French during the War of the Fourth Coalition, the Germans instituted a series of vast, sweeping societal reforms. Key within this movement was education reform, and one of the most influential educational reformers in Germany at the time was a man named Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Like Luther before him, Fichte saw compulsory schooling as a tool to indoctrinate kids, not educate them. Fichte describes his aim for Germany’s “new education” this way:

Then, in order to define more clearly the new education which I propose, I should reply that that very recognition of, and reliance upon, free will in the pupil is the first mistake of the old system and the clear confession of its impotence and futility.

But actual education is an organic process and requires free will; this was not an attempt at education. Schools were to be factories that would churn out the type of obedient, compliant workers the state preferred. Here’s Fichte again explaining the desired interaction between teachers and students:

[Y]ou must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will.

Fichte understood full well that a statist vision could most easily be realized if governments were given kids’ minds early on:

Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled, they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished … When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.

Thinking back on this, it seems very obvious. The pledge of allegiance, every morning, hand on your heart—as if that doesn’t seem Nazi-ish—swearing your allegiance to government and allegiance to country is to propagandize you to a lifetime of following rules that don’t benefit you, that you didn’t vote for—you couldn’t have, even if you were old enough—and prepare you to join a system of workers. A good little worker bee. Mindlessly, going through the motions with no ideas of your own. Your voice suppressed to the point that not even a dog could hear it.

I believe it’s time to break free. I am not saying pull your kids out of school but, make sure they know, that they have other choices. This is the age of choice. The age of information. Never again will the bastards hold us back and suppress our voice! We see you now!

Oh, sorry, I’ve gone off on a tangent, what was I saying?

Oh yes, pledge of allegiance in schools, my teacher berated me everyday over that damn pledge of allegiance. Looking back, I think I was the one in the right. The pledge of allegiance in schools was there to propagandize us into patriotism. They didn’t have to do that; they could’ve just made it a nice place to live.

I’d love for someone to change my mind on this but, I think anyone who took a real, objective look at it they’d agree. The shit was silly.

Thanks for reading, Jordan Lee, Editor-in-Chief, Declaration of warLiberty