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By Cynthia Annett | March 30, 2004
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When the story about the Pledge of Allegiance first made international
news, my Russian colleagues were shocked, but not because of the
religious implications of the phrase "under God" nor because the "under
God" phrase had been inserted during the Red Scare of the 1950s as an
anti-Communist move.
No, my Russian colleagues were stunned that, in America, we
required a loyalty oath of our children. They told me that even at the
height of Communist repression, children in Russia were never forced to
make a public loyalty oath on a daily basis. Then they asked me to
explain how it was that an open democracy like the United States could
have such a repressive institution.
I honestly did not have
an answer for them. The pledge is so ubiquitous in our nation's schools
that most people don't even think about it at all, let alone think
about it as a forced loyalty oath recited by minors. But maybe that is
the point -- it is so ubiquitous that we no longer even think about it.
During the past 15 years, I have watched my Russian colleagues struggle
to bring democracy to their country. They sacrificed a lot to
participate in the pro-democracy movement that toppled the Soviet
regime. That is why they were entitled to an answer, yet I can find no
reasonable explanation as to why we celebrate our democracy by having
our children recite a public loyalty oath on a daily basis.
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Originally published by the Lawrence Journal-World.
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