I remember back in the day...

Like 2nd or 3rd grade they indoctrinated you to the PLEDGE of your ALLEIANCE to the flag of the United States...Every morning like clockwork you were to stand-put your right hand-the one facing the door-(which is how I still remember my right from my left today) over your heart and recite the pledge to your country-As a 2nd and 3rd grader, my goal was just getting through it-I had no ideal of the significance this pledge would have on me in years to come-It would have been cool to learn about the guy who actually came up with this 23 word pledge-His name is actually-Francis Bellamy-Bellamy, was a former Baptist preacher, and he irritated his Boston Brahmin flock with his socialist ideas.

But once he became a w writer and publicist at the Companion, he had no such boundaries. In a series of speeches and editorials that were equal parts marketing, political theory and racism, he argued that Gilded Age capitalism, along with “every alien immigrant of inferior race,” eroded traditional values, and that pledging allegiance would ensure “that the distinctive principles of true Americanism will not perish as long as free, public education endures. He was an advertising guy who needed a jingle-a slogan for a client-He worked on this poem for two straight years and settled on these 23 words-“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands—one nation indivisible—with liberty and justice for all. ”Crazy thing is with a child like spirit...I believed it...these days not so much-there has not been justice for all-To those who have received such justice-few look like I do-

Many have spent more than they have to get nowhere-Many of our sons, husbands, brothers, grandsons and daughters, moms and grandmothers are wasting away in prisons without any path to redemption-without any road leading back home or to a home-America feels like a widow whose husband has perished while fighting for a worthwhile goal all while defending the "lost cause". America is like that cousin that owes you money but constantly asking you for more-and until that debt is paid...the turmoil you initiated will never be resolved-This guy went on to write musical jollies for many years to come-But his favorite bit of copy remained the pledge—“this little formula,” he wrote in 1923, with an ad man’s faith in sloganeering, which “has been pounding away on the impressionable minds of children for a generation."