The words "under God" were added to the US Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, during the Cold War, under the Eisenhower administration, to mark a distinction between the USA and so-called 'godless' communism of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.
When people today quote "one nation, under God" as evidence that the founders of this country created a Christian Nationalist country, they are repeating historical inaccuracies. You are welcome to correct them.
@SRLevine
This cultural history is also good. American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon.
https://www.librarything.com/work/9795113
You are also legally allowed to be an atheist exemption. The ACLU will threaten to sue your school if they won't let you sit out the loyalty oath. That's, like, the one legal benefit of being an atheist in america.
I didn't bother. I mouthed the words if the homeroom teacher objected to me standing there with my mouth closed.
It was bush1 era. I had zero faith in the legal system
@Uair @VisualStuart I didn't even stand up.
It didn't go over well, but I didn't budge. Fortunately, nothing ever really came of it. Maybe I just had decent teachers.
@draeath @Uair @VisualStuart I didn’t stand either. I was told I’d face in-school suspension every day that I refused.
Sent an email to the American Humanist Association that morning and by the end of the day the principal called me into the office and said “Fine, you can do whatever you want.”
Sad that it took the threat of legal action to respect a student’s rights.
That’s also about the time that the US adopted “In God We Trust” as a national motto, supplanting the older but unofficial “E Pluribus Unum”
That phrase dates from considerably earlier, though.
Here's Aleister Crowley(!) with "A Hymn for the American People": https://hermetic.com/crowley/international/xii/3/a-hymn-for-the-american-people, in 1918.
(His voice here: https://aleistercrowley.bandcamp.com/track/hymn-to-the-american-people-on-the-anniversary-of-their-independence)
Sure, it dates back a good ways, but to the OP’s point: these symbols are not some founding legacy - as they are so often presented - but were deliberate choices made within the lifetimes of people you can go talk to. Choices that can be just as simply unmade.
Much like the ‘biblical’ claims of american evangelicalism, the coinage is pretty recent once you scratch away the patina of originalist pretence.
@DavidM_yeg @VisualStuart Absolutely agree. I myself am very anti-clerical. If God existed, He would be one of the least trustworthy creatures ever.
To be honest, I just wanted to show off that recording of Crowley. 😁
@NorCalWineLady @DavidM_yeg @VisualStuart
Oh, sure, as I said, I think of "Magick" as snake oil (i.e., not just false but a deliberate rip-off).
Crowley does deserve to be remembered for creating the first detox facility for drug addicts though - before the concept of "addiction" was even understood.
His "Diary of a Drug Fiend" is still very readable where most of his material is not.
@Ralph058 @NorCalWineLady @DavidM_yeg @VisualStuart
Oh, that's Crowley's spelling of "magic" to differentiate it from magic tricks.
@VisualStuart I've been saying it like this for years:
"One nation,
OH MY GOD!
I'M INVISIBLE!"
Fam loves it.
@VisualStuart who is Richard Stans?
"...and to the government, for Richard Stans,
One nation
Invisible
With liberty and justice for all!
PLAY BALL!!!"
@VisualStuart @martinv good to know.
Also, when people say #khaneman has a #Nobel price for economics?
There is no nobelprice for economics. #economics wants to be a hard science, but its a social best practise exercise. The Nobel price for "economic Science" is funded by a bank and not a real Nobel price.
economics is not a science. Be sure to remember people of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences
Also, "In God We Trust" is even more recent. The phrase appeared randomly since the 1860s but was officially mandated under by law for money in 1955 and as the US motto in 1956.
I don't know how many times I have had to point out to fanatics that the phrase was NOT included in the nation's founding documents.
Also, the Confederate Army used the phrase before the Union Army did ... 😁
@VisualStuart 1954! Today I Learned something.
I knew "under God" was added recently. And I've never even been to USA!
@VisualStuart @gdinwiddie: The pledge itself wasn’t written in the time of the founders - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance
See also “In God We Trust” - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust
The irony in US pledge of allegiance: "one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all".
Liberty, except to leave out "under God".
@VisualStuart I never say that part. Which god?
And... the original music of the "National Anthem" is a British drinking song from a gentlemen's club.
@VisualStuart And the Pledge of Allegiance itself, along with other patriotic rituals like the adoption of an official National Anthem and the notion of playing it before sporting events, came out of anxiety about the mass immigration of the late 19th and early 20th century, and the concern that immigrants needed to be trained into loyalty to the United States.
("In God We Trust" is an interesting one: it has sporadic early usage and there's a similar line in "The Star-Spangled Banner" which was of course written as a poem in the early 19th century, but it only became an *official* motto of the US during the same Cold War period that introduced "Under God" to the Pledge, for the same reason.)
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