Variations on a Pledge
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.
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.
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