You could say it before you could spell it.
And even now – years later – you can recite the words with ease.
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Yes, the Pledge has been amended… most notably in the 1950’s, when the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, led a public campaign to add the words “under God.” On June 14, 1954 – Flag Day – President Eisenhower signed a bill into law adding that phrase to the Pledge.
Might someone mount a similar effort today?
If so, who… and what changes would they want to make?
It’s not a wild leap of imagination to conclude that the “woke” among us might offer the following alterations:
“I choose to express my conditional support for this flag, which represents the People, who can freely change what it stands for, through their collective will, based on their genuine feelings. While haters promote division, we the enlightened embrace a future of diversity, equity and inclusion for all.”
“Big Guy,” J.D. Hayworth, Author
Don’t laugh.
It’s already happening.
What amounts to a “pledge” to uphold DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion – is in statewide circulation.
No, it’s not occurring in elementary schools.
Granted, it is not performed as a public recitation.
Instead, Arizona’s taxpayer supported universities are getting it in writing… and while it does not focus on the flag, a leading public policy organization has quite properly “flagged” it.
The Goldwater Institute released a report last month that most assuredly will not be the last word on the long-term leftist goal of redefining indoctrination as education.
The January study is entitled “The New Loyalty Oaths: How Arizona’s Public Universities Compel Job Applicants to Endorse Progressive Politics.”
The Goldwater scholars and researchers took to Twitter to reveal the report’s disturbing conclusion:
“Arizona’s public universities FORCE job applicants to provide MANDATORY ‘diversity statements.’ It’s a full-frontal attack on free expression and equal opportunity for ALL…”
If you’re scoring at home – or, more importantly, if your hard-earned money is being used to pay tuition at one of our three state-supported universities – it’s only fair to ask: “Just how widespread is this mandated ‘profession of faith’ in DEI?”
ASU (USA spelled backward) leads the way, making such statements mandatory in 81% of its job postings; NAU requires the same in 73% of its job applications; and the U of A lags far behind at a surprisingly low 28%.
Unsurprisingly, the Goldwater Institute advises that all of this nonsense should stop. “The Arizona Board of Regents and/or state lawmakers must prohibit this practice.”
Such a prohibition would “restore the ideological neutrality of taxpayer-funded universities and restore compliance with the state constitution’s ban on political tests.”
The not-so-funny thing is that the way in which DEI is utilized in “woke” constructs. It clearly fails the contextual requirements needed for passing the most elemental of freshman vocabulary tests. “Diversity” is not “uniformity,” “equity” is not “equality,” and “inclusion” does not promote “exclusion.”
Then again, “War is Peace… Freedom is Slavery… Ignorance is Strength,” reads the official motto of the fictional nation of Oceania in George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece “1984.”
The administrative “educrats” in charge of our three public universities are so collectively comatose that they are choosing to restrict the rights guaranteed in our Constitution. And, in so doing, they are helping establish a real-life American dystopia.
It seems the least they could do is rearrange the order of the acronym to which they pledge their allegiance.
Sure, “diversity, equity and inclusion” are not arranged alphabetically… but it would more accurately reflect the fate these so-called intellectual elites would insure for our Republic.
It would D-I-E.
That’s easy to spell.
Written by J.D. Hayworth for West Valley View ~ February 16, 2023