(February 18, 2019 at 1:59 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: The pledge of allegiance is a strange thing to my British eyes. We have nothing like it over here. It looks like indoctrination, a bit like the oath the Wehrmacht made to Hitler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoZw9xz0OY4
Well it doesn't look like an oath to Hitler at all, since the pledge of allegiance isn't to a person. I'm not a big fan of the pledge because I think that it is wrong to take oaths from children. I never took an oath until I joined the Air Force. The pledge isn't indoctrination, because it isn't followed up with anything doctrinal. So the students really do just see it as meaningless words. Being from a culture where oaths are a super serious thing, I see a problem with the pledge trivializing the entire concept of oaths. When some kid spends 13 years repeating an oath every day that they see as being meaningless, I don't know if I can take their word for anything or not.
We do not inherit the world from our parents. We borrow it from our children.