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Short Stuff: The Pledge of Allegiance · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Jerry. Just as it should be, short stuff. Let's go.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Do you remember the Pledge of Allegiance by heart? I do.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I was at a city council meeting the other day
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: and I, um, as you do said it. Yeah. I
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, I'm a little rusty. It's been a while.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I know I did the same thing. I went to
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: say it in my head and I was like, I
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: think I'm getting some of these words wrong. But this
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: is about the Pledge of Allegiance. I think we should
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: I'll just read it real quick so everyone knows what
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: we're talking about. This is this is what we do
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: in our country. Everybody every morning when we wake up.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: When you wake up, the loud speaker in everyone's house
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: commands you to rise and say the pledge. I pledge
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: and and to the Republic for which it stands, one
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: nation under who, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: for all all everybody. That was the most bizarre rendition
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: of the Pledge of Allegiance. I've ever heard in my life.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: That's right, and as it turns out, as we will see,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the Pledge of Allegiance was a marketing tool. It was,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: it really was. It was an add on for sales
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: for a little um magazine called The Youth Companion, which
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: just is not a good name for a magazine. But
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: it sounds that. I know it's not, but that sounds
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: so Nazi, it does. That sounds it sounds blandly menacing
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: somehow right. But it was edited by a guy who
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: was the opposite of blandly menacing, a guy named Francis
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Bellamy Um or he was a Yeah, he was an
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: assistant editor at the time, and his last name might
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: sound familiar. His cousin, Edward Bellamy wrote a very famous
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: utopian novel called Looking Backward, and Looking Backward was basically
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: about how you know, by the year two thousand, inequality
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: will have been done away with and people won't work,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: will retire at forty five and have a life of leisure,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: and things are just gonna be a lot better than
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: they are now. And one of the ways that they
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: were going to get better, according to Edward Bellamy and
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: his cousin Francis, who's the main character in this story,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: is through Christian socialist values, and so Francis Bellamy was
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: a Christian socialist. Josh, it's a socialist. Who's a Christian?
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: That's right. It was a group of people who said,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: you know what, we can get a equitable society. We
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: can go further as a people through Christian values and
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: uh being christ like who we can all agree was
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: probably a socialist. Oh, most decidedly. Everybody knows that. So
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: at the time, and this is the eight nineties, um,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: when our story really is set. Um, there was a
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: huge influx of immigrants in the United States and it's
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: very much like it is today. There was a lot
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: of division over you know, is that a good thing?
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Is that a bad thing? Are they going to take
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: over you know, our jobs? Are they going to drive
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: wages down? Um? It was a time of great change
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: for the United States. There was a huge amount of inequality,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: just like there is today. It's it's I don't want
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: to say, a mirror image of our our time, but
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of similarities. And so Francis Bellamy
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: was like, I believe that having immigrants is a good thing,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: but I also believe that they should become members of America.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: They should become Americanized. And one of the ways that
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: one of the ways he um, he thought that that
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: would be a good A good way to carry that
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: out is to um to basically inculcate their children in school,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: in public school. Yeah, startom early. Uh. It's an old trick,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the oldest trick in the book. Yeah, it really is.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: This is not like radical innovative thinking, No, get get it,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: going with the kids and you got them. Um. This
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: was a big deal though, because um, pre Civil War
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: there wasn't some big, huge public school system. It was
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: it was post Civil War eighteen seventies and eighties when
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: you really started getting the ramp up in public schools
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: and the idea that hey, we've got all these kids
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: trapped all day long. Yeah, we can do whatever we want.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: We can we can do whatever we want. We can
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: make them good citizens as well as educating them, and
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: we can do it all. Hey. I read this article
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: years back. I don't remember when, but it basically said
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: that the public school system, I guess, starting about this time,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: it was training kids for the sole purpose of going
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: to work in factories like mindless busy work, um, sitting
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: still in quiet for eight hours. That Yeah, that that
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: was ultimately what they were what they were teaching kids
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: to do. And I was like, wow, that was an
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: eye opening thing to read. Wow. So sorry to blow
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: your mind like that, Chuck. But um, around about this time, uh,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: the Colombian Exposition was about to happen, and we know
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: that um by its other name, the World's Fair of Chicago.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: That's right. It was at marked the fourth anniversary of
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Columbus's first New World Journey. And so the Youth Companion,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: the magazine that we've mentioned, and Bellamy, they said, hey,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: we can really um get involved in this thing, and
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: we can really ramp up the patriotism if we team
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: up with some civic groups and we can sell a
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: lot of American flags, we can get a lot of
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: new subscribers to our magazine. We can make some serious coin, yeah,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: make some big money basically. And so we're going to
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: print a program, a patriotic program for these schools all
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: over the country that kids can recite on this date
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: on October, which was the big celebration day nationally for
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: the Colombian celebration. And they said, Bellamy, you go right
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: this thing, go put something together. Yeah, and he did.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: He came up with plays patriotic songs, um ways to
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: uh um uh honor. Well, I don't know what the
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: word I'm looking for is. I don't know. I guess
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: profiles of Civil War heroes. It's just typical patriotic American stuff.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: But one of the things, just one of these things
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: that we're part of this big whole program and wasn't
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: meant to be some standout thing like it became, was
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: a Pledge of Allegiance. And it was kind of like
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: the one that we have today, but a stripped down version.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: And we will really get into it right after this message. Alright,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: So it's uh right, I got this big celebration going
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: on honoring the great, great Christopher Columbus, who did everything
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the right way. I love that guy. Everyone does. And
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: there was already a Pledge of Allegiance in eighteen eighty five.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: We should mention which came about for the very first
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Flag Day celebration. Poor George George T. Balk Or Balch.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: It's probably marked from birth. What was that name? Yeah, yeah,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: it was never gonna work out for him. He actually
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: wrote the first Pledge of Allegiance and in some schools
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: they were doing this and it said, I give my
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: heart and my hand to my country, one country, one language,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: one flag. Not bad. The whole thing on us reads
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: like a yawn. No, it didn't in Bellamy. I mean,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Bellamy could have just republished this, but he's like, I
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: can do better, he said, he called it childish. Yeah,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: he did. So he wrote his own pledge, a new
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: pledge of allegiance, and it said, I pledge allegiance to
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And so in
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: all of the schools that got this UM program recited this,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: I guess all at once. It was kind of like
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: the predecessor to Hands across America or something like that.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: And Bellamy said, um, he was. He was pretty proud
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: of it. But apparently he was going to add liberty, equality,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: fraternity at the end, like the French slogan, um, the
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: French republic slogan. But he's like, it's too fanciful, so
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: he just left it, left it as is. That's right.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: And he also Chuck recommended a way to salute the
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: flag during the Pledge of allegiance. Dud didn't he sure did? Um,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I mean there's no other way to describe the Bellamy
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: salute other than a Nazi salute, an upside down Nazi salute. Yeah,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: but this was, um, this was way way way before
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: that came about. So obviously there was there was no
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Nazi salute. There were no Nazis. No. But apparently that's
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: so rather than you know, just imagine the Nazi salute,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: but rather than um, your your palm down, your palm
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: is up kind of like almost like you're like a
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: backup dancer, like like given it to the to the
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: lead dancer at the front, but then you got to
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: do both hands and start them at your waist and
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: bring them up rights. Have you ever seen that dream
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Hands video. No, I'll send it to you, and you're
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: gonna love it. It's like an instructional dance video for
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: you know, upward bound kids, and uh, it's I'll just
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: send it to all right. But anyway, so, it wasn't
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: until nineteen forty three that we ditched the reverse upside
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: down Nazi salute to the flag. Until ninety post war
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: people were doing that, actually, not post war Perry War. Yeah.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: I think nineteen twenty three though, was when they had
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: the first revision to the not lyric, but I guess
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: you could sing it. Um. At the National Flag Conference,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: delegates there said that my flag. They said, you know,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: this little vague, and we don't want anyone thinking that
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: immigrants are talking about their home countries flag. So they changed.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: So they changed it to the flag of the United States.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Then I think about a year after that tagged on
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: of America, just so everyone knew what was going on,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: and so um, everybody went bonkers for this pretty pretty
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: much out of the gate. UM school started reciting it,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: like said, they were reciting the other pledge before. Now
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: they picked up this new one. And UM in New
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: York became the first state to make reciting the pledge
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: in schools compulsory, which is a whole different jam than
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: everyone just saying the pledge is part of this. You know,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: um uh this to Christopher Columbus, right, And so very
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: quickly after that, especially around World War One, at the
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: beginning of the US's involvement, UM, more and more states
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: started requiring compulsory pledges in schools too. That's right. And
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's no coincidence that those aligned with
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: moments of political and and certainly warlike upheople in this country. Yes,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: and then yeah, we gotta mention and under God because
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: I think you noticed it and never said that up
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: until this point in the podcast except at the beginning
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: when I read it right. That didn't come about until
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: are I know Eisenhower said, you know, he's the Knights
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: of Columbus said you know what, Dwight, maybe you should
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: throw under God in there, and he did, and they said, Um,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I think the quote was, uh, they felt that schools
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: in the United States were under threat of infiltration by
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: godless communists, so let's just throw that in there. And
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I wonder if they're going to further change it too,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Uh highly divisible instead of indivisible. So so divisible, yes, Um,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: there was. There's been a couple of Supreme Court cases
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: about it, too, Chuck when UM States passed it as compulsory.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Now it's compulsory typically for teachers to lead the pledge,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: but not for students. That's not how it always was
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: UM until ninety three, students were compelled to say the
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: pledge as well. But then in three in the case
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: West Virginia Board of Education versus Barnett, which involved some
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: hope has witnessed children who were like, I'm not supposed
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: to be doing this. It's a religious thing, um, students
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: who are Finally, the Supreme Court said no, you can't.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: You can't force anyone to say the pledge. That's right.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: So that's it for the Pledge of allegiance. Huh Yeah,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: good stuff. Thanks to Dave Rouse, our old, our old
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: pal there. And that's gonna be uh, this is hot
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: off the presses. This is going to be on the
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: house Stuffworks website. Yeah, so good. Check it out at
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: house Stuff Works and in the meantime, Short Stuff is out.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
• 13:34
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• 13:37
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• 13:40
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