I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Every day, I’d start my school day by reciting those words. I have heard people say it was no longer done in our schools so I searched the internet and still see that it is the same today. Of course, I knew that because my wife has been a teacher in Florida and Wisconsin. Can you force someone to say the pledge? Since 1943 the Supreme Court ruled that you can’t. I agree with that ruling. Making someone say the Pledge of Allegiance is like making someone pray. If they don’t believe in it then it has no meaning. In a free country, someone should not be made to pledge something they don’t believe in, if they are made to then we are not a free country. When I say the pledge, I don’t say the words “under god” because I don’t believe it to be true and wasn’t part of the real pledge in the first place. Those words were added during the Eisenhower Administration in the 1950s. I do believe in the pledge but part of being a true American is questioning it when you think it is wrong and not just following it blindly.

Sometimes I think we say too many pledges and oaths that have no real meaning to us. In many cases, people make pledges and oaths just because it is a requirement of the job. Every single Congressperson and Senator has taken an oath to protect the Constitution. In some cases, how can they take an oath to something they don’t believe in? In the Constitution, we have 3 equal branches of government. We don’t have a Republican and a Democrat branch of the government. We have Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of the government which are all equal. That is not what is being done today. Right now, we have political parties and not the branches of government that are in the Constitution. We have Trump writing Executive Orders acting like they are the law and we have a Congress that is supposed to write the laws doing nothing. That is not the vision that was the founding fathers. It has always been a problem with the creation of political parties but I have not seen such political polarization in my 70 years. In just over a month Trump has already issued 73 executive orders. It took Biden a whole year to write that many and I remember the Republicans calling him a dictator. Biden only averaged 41 executive orders a year, whereas Trump 45 averaged 55 executive orders per year. Trump has also said that only two people can say what the law is, him and his Attorney General. By the Constitution that is the job of the Judiciary Branch. Trump does not believe in the Constitution even though he took an oath to protect and uphold that Constitution.

Someone asked me if I thought America was great. When we put a man on the moon, we were great. When Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, we were great. When we helped defeat the Nazis, we were great. I have seen many things that have made us not a great Nation. I witnessed us sending our young men to fight and for some to die in Vietnam for an unwinnable cause and then turning their backs on those same young men when they came home. I witnessed the oppression of American citizens because of their skin color. I have seen us treat victims of homelessness like they were criminals. I have witnessed us keep the minimum wage so low that it helped billionaires keep their employees in poverty. To just say that any nation is great without addressing and working to correct its faults is just showing just how far from greatness we are.

I saw us stand side by side with our allies and neighbors to the Soviet aggression that threatened the stability of the world. We did not stand up to the Soviets alone, we had allies. We were part of NATO the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The only purpose that NATO was to defend its members from aggression. To put it another way, it was a defensive organization and not an offensive organization. Nations had nothing to fear from NATO because of that reason. Helping form NATO may have been one of our greater accomplishments. It created an organization that would oppose Soviet aggression which led to eventually the downfall of the Soviet Union without having to go to war. Russia is basically what is left of the old Soviet Union and is still a powerful country that has proven that it is serious about military expansion. Russia fears NATO so much that it attacked Ukraine to try and get assurances that it would never become part of NATO. Trump of course is threatening to withdraw from NATO. Russia would love nothing more than to create a rift between the United States and the rest of NATO because it would weaken both NATO and the United States.

This last week the United Nations passed a resolution condemning the Russian aggression against Ukraine. There were just a handful of countries that voted against the resolution. We were one of those handful of counties that voted against it. We joined Russia, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, and Israel. To me, it felt like we had just voted with the Axis of Evil. We went from being great in the eyes of the world to being a supporter of Russian aggression. Right now, I don’t think we are a great nation but I think we can be great again. All we have to do is remember what we did to become great. We are great when we are truly one of the leaders of the free world and not part of the Axis of Evil.