Those watching Trump in the Rose Garden on July 11, 2019 to hear him officially drop his controversial bid to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census and, instead, announce that he was issuing an executive order that instructs federal agencies to report data to the Commerce Department in order to better tabulate the number of U.S. citizens because,
“It is essential that we have a clear breakdown of the number of citizens and non-citizens that make up the U.S. population — imperative. Knowing this information is vital to formulating sound public policy, whether the issue is healthcare, education, civil rights or immigration” by
“ordering every department and agency in the federal government to provide the Department of Commerce with all requested records regarding the number of citizens and non-citizens in our country,”
may have written off his offhand comment about the Pledge of Allegiance as one of his characteristic off script nonsequiturs.
He was talking about citizens and non-citizens, claiming that Democrats were not supportive of the idea of citizenship when he threw in a brief reference to a decision by a Minnesota city council to remove the Pledge of Allegiance from its meetings, saying in passing without context,
“The Pledge of Allegiance to our great Country, in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, is under siege,”
before moving on and back to his topic.
The city council there had unanimously voted to no longer recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of meetings to ensure everyone from diverse backgrounds felt welcome.
Reciting the Pledge, after all for some people, is the proof of good old fashioned patriotism.
The Pledge of Allegiance, as it exists today, was composed in August 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist and cousin of socialist utopian novelist Edward Bellamy. As a socialist, he had initially considered using the words “equality” and “fraternity”, but decided against it when composing his pledge for the Youth’s Companion magazine’s celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus because he knew that members of the committee organizing the celebration were against equality for women and African Americans.
Christian Socialists, Like Bellamy, promoted the rights of working people and the equal distribution of economic resources because these were inherent in the teachings of Jesus.
The year before he composed the Pledge of Allegiance, Bellamy, a Baptist minister, was forced from his pulpit for preaching against the evils of capitalism, and moved to Florida where he was shocked by the racism he saw there and stopped attending the Baptist Church.
His career as a preacher ended because his tendency to describe Jesus as a socialist was not poplar.
He was known to offer public education classes on “Jesus the socialist”, “What is Christian Socialism?”, and “Socialism versus anarchy”. The sermon that got him fired in 1891 called for a strong government and argued that only a socialist economy could allow both the worker and the owner to practice the golden rule.
It is interesting that one of the greatest measures of patriotism, according to the uber-patriots, is the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance written by a Christian Socialist who believed that political democracy should be aligned with a socially owned economy that emphasized de-privatization of the economy and workers’ self-management, and that capitalism is inherently incompatible with the values of equality and liberty which can be achieved through Christian Socialism in his day and Democratic Socialism in ours.
The pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist who actually meant “liberty and justice for all”.
Your move conservatives.