I Pledge Allegiance

In my senior year of high school, I stopped standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. It was at that time that I discovered the libertarian works of Mises, Rothbard, and Rockwell. I began to discover that nationalism was very detrimental to the cause of liberty. You see, the pledge was used as a way to convince students, since schools are where you will hear the pledge these days, the US government was ultimately good, even if in reality it wasn't and had never been. Even though this was done covertly, I saw through the ruse. I got ridiculed by some people. Well, most people, actually. They would say I hated America, or I was just trying to cause a disturbance. But what struck me as odd was no one asking me why I wasn't standing for the pledge. Not one single student. Not one single teacher. They all just assumed I had ulterior motives. In reality, I was protesting the worship the citizens of this country feel must be bestowed upon the Leviathan government that currently resides in the Beltway. Though, I don't think it would've made much of a difference then.

But that is why I am writing today. Because someone, somewhere, may read this and discover what I did five years ago. We have only a few things that we should pledge our allegiance towards: family, friends, truth, and liberty. A nation is not one of those. Especially a nation like ours, with draconian drug laws, never ending foreign invasions, and immoral tax laws. Local governments are putting in regulations to 'curb' our food habits and try to save us from ourselves. Our country has not been the Republic that is referred to in the pledge since the first Republican president, the tyrant Abraham Lincoln. It was in that presidency the founders' view for this nation were eliminated by a man hellbent on controlling everything that he deemed his, which consequentially was everything. But that is a story for another time.

The last few weeks I've decided to regard the national anthem in the same light as the pledge. It is nothing but beating of the chest for a government that has been tyrannical for more years than it has been of freedom. We as people have no obligation to the state. No obligation to give it praise or give it money. We only have an obligation to freedom. An obligation to take the moral high ground so our future generations may reap the rewards of a free society in which we currently live. We must all remember the famous quote from Benjamin Franklin, “Where liberty dwells, there is my country.”