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Upgrading the Pledge of Allegiance

By Tom W. Bell and Glen Whitman

Back in 2005, I criticized the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance and offered an improved alternative. My version of aimed to correct "the odiously unconditional" demands of the present pledge and thus better honor the ideals that gave rise to the U.S. in the first place. Field testing and theoretical musing convinced me, however, that I needed to have another go at debugging the Pledge of Allegiance. I here offer an upgrade for 2008:

I pledge allegiance to the laws of the United States of America, on condition that it respect my rights, natural, constitutional, and statuory, with liberty and justice for all.

Why upgrade to Pledge v. 2008? For one thing, it matches the cadences of the currently popular pledge?which history suggests we might call "v. 1954"?more closely than my earlier alternative did. It proves especially helpful, when you're saying this latest version in a crowd, that it starts and ends with the same words that everybody else says. It also follows the same cadences as v. 1954; consider the following parallels:

Pledge v. 1954	Pledge v. 2008
I pledge allegiance	I pledge allegiance
to the flag	to the laws
of the United States of America,	of the United States of America,
and to the Republic	on condition that
for which it stands,	it respect my rights,
one Nation	natural,
under God,	constitutional,
indivisible,	and statutory,
with liberty and justice for all.	with liberty and justice for all.

I also tweaked the content of this latest version of the pledge to make it still more palatable to friends of liberty. Note, for instance, that it now has you pledge allegiance not to the flag, nor even to the political institution for which that flag stands, but rather to "the laws of the United States of America." After all, a republic that breaks its own laws does not deserve your allegiance.

Note, too, that v. 2008 conditions your allegiance on the U.S. respecting three kinds of rights you can claim?natural, constitutional, and statutory. This upgraded pledge thus offers powerful protections for your liberty. Indeed, you might well wonder whether, given those strict conditions, Pledge v. 2008 commits you to anything at all! I leave the answer to that question, however, to the dictates of your conscience.

Full post as published by Agoraphilia on June 04, 2008 (boomark / email).