Fourth of July

Happy July the 4th. Yes, technically it's "Independence Day" (even if a guy wandering the beach in California can't find many bubble heads that know from whom) but there's nothing wrong with either description so long as the meaning remains.

The evil Fox News has a feature today about true meaning: little known facts associated with the holiday, including this one about the Pledge of Allegiance:

Our Founding Fathers Would Not Have Recited the Pledge: Another patriotic tradition that gets a lot of attention, particularly around this time of the year, is the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge did not exist during our Founders' lifetimes -- something that is very clear when looking at its text. The Pledge was written over a century after America's founding in 1892. It was also written by a socialist -- Francis Bellamy, whose original text was: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." According to our Founders, the states are not indivisible, but very much the opposite. In fact, when ratifying the U.S. Constitution, some states, such as Virginia among others, specifically declared the right to secede from the Union should they feel it necessary just as an extra precaution to make sure that that state right was understood. Our Founders took their states rights very seriously and considered the U.S. Constitution to be a compact amongst the sovereign states so that any state could secede if it felt the federal government had become oppressive. So, if not with a pledge, how would our Founding Fathers begin meetings and celebrations? The answer: most likely with a prayer. In fact, the very first resolution brought before the First Continental Congress, and immediately passed, was the declaration that they would open every meeting with a prayer.

Imagine a man-on-the-street quiz on any of that. But yep, there are probably more than a few state constitutions that would fall within a violation of the Separation of Church according ACLU types due to mentioning reverence to a deity--including the Declaration itself. It's amazing nobody has tried to have these documents amended or removed from the schools.

As to the pledge--many know the roots. While the founders might not have cottoned to a pledge I see nothing wrong with the amended version. They added "under God" and "the United States of America", which addressed the state sovereignty issue while reminding the socialists that the phrase 'endowed by their Creator' wasn't actually referencing the federal government.