Give your Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the flag.  Rarely do words make me sick, but these really do it for me. It conjures up images of grade school standing next to my desk pledging my life to a concept I couldn't possibly understand at the time.  Little did I realize that, as a part of my male privilege, once I turned eighteen I'd be forced to register for selective services. Lucky for me, we have a completely voluntary military and I didn't go through what my fathers generation did. It is, however, a constant reminder that my country believes it owns me.  I was lucky - all of my friends returned home from war, though not all of them whole mentally or physically I had the privilege of watching them sort through the dogma they were fed trying to accept the things they did.  To the republic, for which it stands - we are individuals. We are owned by no one but ourselves. I have a higher claim to myself, my property, and my productivity than any other individual or government.

I grew up in a country that was free. Where men in far away places fought so that I wouldn't have to. So that I could live a good, happy life free of tyranny. As a man I see it was all a lie. The heroes of my youth went off to war, fighting for American "Interests" abroad. Many have died throughout the history of the United States, but it has been so long since we actually fought to defend ourselves, for any realistic definition of the word justice. Even World War II, we engaged in the European front after being dragged into a confrontation in the Pacific. At every turn, The United States as chosen to escalate violence. This is not the banner of a free society, this is the banner of the war machine.

As I sit here I listen to men lamenting the loss of the Pledge in schools. Veterans who were duped by their country into believing they were protecting their families at home by killing people abroad; I can only think of Francis Bellamy, a Christian socialist who wrote the original pledge in 1892. A national pledge is, by its very nature, a collectivist/socialist gesture.  From Wikipedia:

In 1940 the Supreme Court, in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, ruled that students in public schools, including the respondents in that case, Jehovah's Witnesses who considered the flag salute to be idolatry, could be compelled to swear the Pledge. A rash of mob violence and intimidation against Jehovah's Witnesses followed the ruling. In 1943 the Supreme Court reversed its decision, ruling in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that public school students are not required to say the Pledge, concluding that "compulsory unification of opinion" violates the First Amendment. In a later opinion, the Court held that students are also not required to stand for the Pledge.

Our government has even legally recognized the nature of a pledge in a free society, yet the masses continue to bicker over it.  How ironic that the American ideal of individuality, accountability, and keeping the fruit of ones own labor could be symbolically destroyed with a fifteen second pledge.

I am a free man. I pledge allegiance to myself and to my family. I am owned by no arbitrary political border. I will conduct voluntary transactions with any, act morally following the non-aggression principal. I will exist as a true patriot, to raise my voice and shout in dissent to tyranny so that myself and my fellow man may live unobstructed for a time.  The State will claim our lives until you relinquish your permission.