Variations on a Pledge

-- Lonnie G. Bunch,

director, National Museum of African American History and Culture

I pledge allegiance to the fairness for which this country stands, to its generous sympathy for the plight of its own and others around the world, one nation, sometimes divided, but always committed to respect and decency for all.

-- Joseph Epstein, writer

I pledge allegiance to my fellow citizens, with whom I will work to uphold our freedoms, fulfill our responsibilities to one another, and maintain our place as a responsible nation in the community of nations.

-- Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy

I pledge my support for the semiautonomous, evolving, complex dynamical network known as the United States of America and for those principles that maximize the degrees of freedom and independence of its human nodes.

-- John Allen Paulos, mathematician

I pledge allegiance to jet lag over the United States of America. And to the glazed public forsaken and bland, one germ-infested mob, in stagnant air, indefensible, with chattiness, strep, bloated carry-ons, bulging bellies and crying babies for all.

-- Peter Mehlman, film and television writer

I pledge to honor the common hopes of all Americans and imagine a world of equals, living many decent ways, with liberty and opportunity for all.

-- the editors, the Boston Review

I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, to its people and to the ideals which they aspire to and have fought for: democracy, equality, liberty, and justice for all.

-- Minxin Pei, senior fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

I pledge allegiance to the myth that government knows what it's doing. And to our illusion, proudly proclaimed, that cruise missiles, when well-intentioned, bring liberty and justice for all.

-- John Brady Kiesling, former diplomat, resigned to protest the Iraq war

I pledge myself to the ideal of liberty and justice for all the people of the United States of America.

-- Greg Nagy, director, Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington

And comments from two who chose not to revise:

I love our imperfect country, and I love it partly for the ideal of respect for differences, the dignity of the unique individual. No communal incantation can embody that ideal. I don't believe that I got much from chanting sentences of allegiance in school each morning. Patriotism is not the same as piety. My classmates and I would have been better off, and it would be more in the best American spirit, if the teacher had read a different passage from "Leaves of Grass" each morning.

-- Robert Pinsky, former poet laureate

I've concluded the Pledge of Allegiance is about as perfect as imperfect humans could devise. It pledges loyalty and love to a symbol of our nation, the nation itself, and its constitutional form; it asserts unbreakable unity, acknowledges God, and aspires, at the end, to democratic perfection. Pretty good! And in only 31 words.

-- Peggy Noonan, former presidential speechwriter