Is Your Country Despotic? A 1940s Guide to Freedom | Hacker News Reader

Is Your Country Despotic? A 1940s Guide to Freedom

theatlantic.com

61 pointsrmah35 comments

In the short clip of Americans reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, they said, "...one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." When this program was made, the line "under God" had not yet been inserted into the Pledge. Wikipedia tells me it wasn't added until 1954.

The whole idea of a "pledge of allegiance" strikes me as extremely creepy. Having our kids giving their daily state worship by saying a "prayer" and physically submitting themselves to a state icon is something that I would expect would upset both secular people like myself and religious people.

The United States Supreme Court held in 1943 that school pupils may decline to participate in the pledge of allegiance.[1] Most but perhaps not all state governments in the United States make saying the pledge a routine part of the school day (at least during primary schooling), but education regulation in the United States is mostly by state law, so perhaps there are some exceptions to this general pattern. Of course homeschoolers like my family make their own decision in such matters.

[1] http://www.rethinkingschools.org/special_reports/sept11/16_0...

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vo...

Oh legally they may decline, but peer pressure and words like "patriot" or worse still "traitor" probably mean most who don't want to feel compelled to.

IMHO, this sort of thing is as much brain washing as religious versions are.

In elementary school, I stood up, put my hand on my heart, and zoned out. I don't remember ever getting called out on that.

Then I started making extemporaneous variations that followed the meter but inverted the meaning.

Which is interesting, because I was sent home one day in elementary school because I refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance. They called my mom, and they had her come pick me up.

5th grade, in Columbus, Indiana. 1993

Yes, many school officials behave lawlessly.

I had a feeling someone would bring this up. My main counter here is that there is a power dynamic at play here that makes it extremely unlikely that a child will be able to decline. Imagine a teacher saying to an 8 year old "Stand up, face the flag, put your hand over your heart, and say these words." To a child, this is not a suggestion, but a command, and few kids are going to stay seated and respond "Sorry teacher, but due to the 1943 Supreme Court decision, I have the right to decline participation and will now exercise that right."

Similar things became quite common in the upsurge of nationalism in the early 20th century. Most countries dropped them either after the fall of Naziism or the fall of communism, but the US one seems to have fallen through the cracks.

As a foreigner, I'm shocked and very creeped out whenever I'm in the US and see people directly giving the pledge.

A country should pledge allegiance to it's citizens, not the other way around.

Quadruple that for me as a German. I'm pretty certain that if videos surfaced of children reciting the pledge or something similar in front of a German flag in a German school, a scandal would ensue, resulting in disciplinary measures against school staff (or a shutdown in case of a private school).

I'm a Christian, and I'm always baffled by the blindly-patriotic attitudes many Christians hold and promote. If you tie your religious loyalty to a specific government, what happens to your religion when the state turns on you?

I assume that _religious_ loyalty isn't tied into the US pledge of allegiance as such; it has some religious undertones, but I doubt many people making it would feel it impinges on their beliefs.

I think a reminder that you're part of a community and you should be working to improve it is pretty healthy. The ritual nature is a bit creepy but it's not a prayer. Allegiance is not worship.

I suspect it's more because this sort of ritualised patriotism/nationalism has really nasty associations for many people; for Americans, who are used to it, it probably looks entirely different.

As an American I find it creepy but minor. It's a largely-meaningless ritual that you forget about immediately.

"adoration or devotion comparable to religious homage, shown toward a person or principle."

"devotion or loyalty to a person, group, or cause"

Can you tell which definition I cut and pasted the above from without using google? One is allegiance and the other is worship, but its hard to tell them apart although as a hint the "comparable to" does kind of give away which is vaguely religious.

Hard core nationalism/statism never ends well. As a cultural vaccination program, forcing children to pledge themselves to blind worship of a bunch of crooked leaders should be banned on general principles.

The flat definitions don't do a good job of taking degree into account. You have allegiance to your boss at your job. You don't worship your job.

Four years earlier and you would have seen them doing the Bellamy Salute which was dropped from the Flag Code in 1942 due to its similarity to the Italian Fascist and German Nazi Salutes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Students_pledging_allegia...

Yikes - the Charlie Chaplin mustache of gestures.

Well that's awkward.

This is an interesting archival find. I looked in the film archive[1] that stores videos of this Encyclopedia Britannica film and found that this film[2] was apparently produced in 1946.

One of the comments at the direct link to the film in the archive[2] is shocking in its ignorance and bigotry. On the whole, viewing this film is a good discussion-starter for thinking about current issues.

I have lived in another country (Taiwan) when it was a dictatorship[3] so I appreciate genuine democracy. In the community I live in now in the United States, there is a high degree of general respect. And I have substantial practical power to resolve social wrongs and improve the well being of my family and myself. I'm glad to report that Taiwan, the former dictatorship I lived in, has since become a genuine democracy, and also rates well as to respect and power to all the people.

[1] http://archive.org/details/prelinger

[2] http://archive.org/details/Despotis1946

[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985720

There was no shortage of ignorance, bigotry, or outright racism in 1940s America. The WWII era propaganda films are so bad most can't even be shown on television any more, even what was supposed to be harmless children's fare, like Warner Brothers cartoons.

> There was no shortage of ignorance, bigotry, > or outright racism in 1940s America.

To be fair, that was probably true worldwide in that time frame.

This is surely true, but most countries weren't making movies like America was. It's just that America's racism is preserved in these various time-capsules.

There's shades of this that persist to this day, like Black Peter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet), rituals from a time when that sort of thing was considered normal.

"Seventy years later, however, some of the film's warning signs still seem prudent."

Some? I don't think people realize just how deep we have sunk in all these matters. The central powers have just become much better at disguising it --much better at placating the masses with cake and shiny bobbles.

Exactly. Each of the markers are worrisome today.

The respect scale portion is interesting. It mentions class, race, and religion as reasons why people may not show respect to others. I think if we add political views to that, our country has bottomed out on the 'respect scale'.

EDIT: Also, it's kind of scary how topical this video is.

For me, the most important part of this video is when they are reciting the pledge, and say "one nation, indivisible".

Ironic, then, that it's that word that gets excised and replaced with a very divisive term.

Personally, "indivisible" is much worse than "under god".

Here is the video in Theora: https://archive.org/download/Despotis1946/Despotis1946.ogv

"In communities which depend almost entirely on a single industry, such as a factory or mine, maintaining economic balance is a challenging problem."

Almost a throwaway line, and of course, propaganda and dated -- but the Silicon Valley arguably has this problem. Is the Bay 'heading into despotism'? What do you think?

I get a 404, but the video is also available here: http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/280695/how-to-know-if...

Sir, this article is perfect!

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