Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: The Pledge of Allegiance

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

The American Pledge of Allegiance is much more interesting than you might think. Give us 12 minutes and we'll fill you in. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Jerry, just as it should be, short stuff.

Let's go. Do you remember the Pledge of Allegiance by heart? I do, I was at a city council meeting the other day, and I said it, yeah. I was like, oh, I'm a little rusty, it's been a while. I know, I did the same thing. I went to say it in my head and was like, I think I'm getting some of these words wrong,

but this is about the Pledge of Allegiance. I think we should, I'll just read it real quick so everyone knows what we're talking about. This is what we do in our country, everybody, every morning when we wake up. When you wake up, the loudspeaker in everyone's house commands you to rise and say the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States

of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under who, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all, all, everybody. That was the most bizarre rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance I've ever heard in my life. That's right, and as it turns out, as we will see, the Pledge of Allegiance was a marketing tool. It was, it really was.

It was an add-on for sales for a little magazine called The Youth Companion, which just is not a good name for a magazine, but- It sounds, I know it's not, but that sounds so Nazi. It does, it sounds blandly menacing somehow. Right. But it was edited by a guy who was the opposite of blandly menacing,

a guy named Francis Bellamy, or he was a, yeah, he was an assistant editor at the time. And his last name might sound familiar. His cousin, Edward Bellamy, wrote a very famous utopian novel called Looking Backward. And Looking Backward was basically about how, by the year 2000, inequality will have been done away with and people won't work or retire at 45

and have a life of leisure, and things are just gonna be a lot better than they are now. And one of the ways that they were going to get better, according to Edward Bellamy and his cousin Francis, who's the main character in the story, is through Christian socialist values. And so Francis Bellamy was a Christian socialist. What's that, Josh?

It's a socialist who's a Christian. That's right. It was a group of people who said, you know what? We can get a equitable society. We can go further as a people through Christian values. And being Christ-like, who we can all agree was probably a socialist. Oh, most decidedly.

Everybody knows that. So at the time, this is the 1890s when our story really is set. There was a huge influx of immigrants in the United States. And it's very much like it is today. There was a lot of division over, is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Are they going to take over our jobs?

Are they gonna drive wages down? It was a time of great change for the United States. There was a huge amount of inequality, just like there is today. It's, I don't wanna say a mirror image of our time, but there were a lot of similarities. And so Francis Bellamy was like, I believe that having immigrants is a good thing,

but I also believe that they should become members of America. They should become Americanized. And one of the ways that he... Members of America. One of the ways he thought that that would be a good way to carry that out is to basically inculcate their children in school, in public schools. Yeah, start them early.

It's an old trick, oldest trick in the book. Yeah, it really is. This is not like radical, innovative thinking. No, get it going with the kids and you got them. This was a big deal though, because pre-Civil War, there wasn't some big, huge public school system. It was post-Civil War, 1870s and 80s, when you really started getting the ramp up

in public schools and the idea that, hey, we've got all these kids trapped all day long. Yeah, we can do whatever we want. We can, we can do whatever we want. And we can make them good citizens, as well as educating them. And we can do it all. Hey, I read this article years back.

I don't remember when, but it basically said that the public school system, I guess starting about this time, was training kids for the sole purpose of going to work in factories. Oh, really? Like mindless, busy work, sitting still and quiet for eight hours a day.

So that's how it took its shape. Yeah, that that was ultimately what they were teaching kids to do. And I was like, wow, that was an eye-opening thing to read. Wow. So sorry to blow your mind like that, Chuck. But around about this time, the Colombian exposition was about to happen.

And we know that by its other name, the World's Fair of Chicago in 1893. That's right. It was at March the 400th anniversary of Columbus's first New World journey. And so the youth companion, the magazine that we've mentioned, and Bellamy, they said, hey,

we can really get involved in this thing and we can really ramp up the patriotism. If we team up with some civic groups and we can sell a lot of American flags, we can get a lot of new subscribers to our magazine. We can make some serious coin. Yeah, make some big money basically. And so we're gonna print a program,

a patriotic program for these schools all over the country that kids can recite on this date on October 21st, 1892, which was the big celebration day nationally for the Colombian celebration. And they said, Bellamy, you go write this thing, go put something together. Yeah, and he did.

He came up with plays, patriotic songs, ways to honor, I don't know what the word I'm looking for is. I don't know. I guess profiles of Civil War heroes. Okay. It's just typical patriotic American stuff, but one of the things, just one of these things

that were part of this big whole program and wasn't meant to be some standout thing like it became, was a pledge of allegiance. And it was kind of like the one that we have today, but a stripped down version. And we will really get into it right after this message. And I'll see you guys next time. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called,

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends.

To come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in

as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

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And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. Yeah, if so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen,

so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh. All right, so it's 1892. Right. Got this big celebration going on,

honoring the great, great Christopher Columbus who did everything the right way. Exactly, love that guy, everyone does. And there was already a Pledge of Allegiance in 1885, we should mention, which came about for the very first Flag Day celebration. Yeah. Poor George, George T. Bulk, or Balch.

It's probably Bulk. He was marked from birth. What, with that name? Yeah. Yeah, it was never gonna work out for him. He actually wrote the first Pledge of Allegiance. And in some schools, they were doing this, and it said, I give my heart and my hand to my country,

one country, one language, one flag. Not bad. That whole thing almost reads like a yawn. Yeah. So it didn't stick. No, it didn't. And Bellamy, I mean, Bellamy could have just republished this, but he's like, I can do better.

He said he called it childish. Yeah, he did. So he wrote his own pledge, a new pledge of allegiance. And it said, I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And so in 1892, all of the schools that got this program recited this, I guess all at once

was kind of like a predecessor to Hands Across America or something like that. And Bellamy said, he was pretty proud of it, but apparently he was going to add liberty, equality, fraternity at the end, like the French slogan, the French Republic slogan, but he's like, ah, it's too fanciful. So he just left it, left it as is.

That's right. And he also, Chuck, recommended a way to salute the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance, too, didn't he? He sure did. I mean, there's no other way to describe the Bellamy salute other than a Nazi salute. An upside out Nazi salute. Yeah, but this was way, way, way before that came about.

So obviously there was no Nazi salute. There were no Nazis. No, but apparently that's, so rather than, just imagine the Nazi salute, but rather than your palm down, your palm is up, kind of like almost like you're like a backup dancer, like giving it to the lead dancer at the front. But then you got to do both hands

and start them at your waist and bring them up. Right. As you sing. Have you ever seen that dream hands video? No. I'll send it to you. You're going to love it. It's like an instructional dance video for, you know, Upward Bound Kids, and I'll just send it to you. All right, but anyway, so it wasn't until 1943

that we ditched the upside out Nazi salute to the flag. It's until 1943. Well, post war. People were doing that. Actually not post war. Perry war. I think in 1923 though, was when they had the first revision to the lyric,

not lyric, but I guess you could sing it. Sure. At the national flag conference, delegates there said that my flag, they said, you know, this little vague and we don't want anyone thinking that immigrants are talking about their home country's flag. Right.

So they changed it to the flag of the United States. Then I think about a year after that, tagged on of America, just so everyone knew what was going on. Yeah. And so everybody went bonkers for this. Big hit. Pretty much out of the gate, schools started reciting it. Like we said, they were reciting the other pledge before.

Now they picked up this new one. And in 1898, New York became the first state to make reciting the pledge in schools compulsory, which is a whole different jam than everyone just saying the pledge is part of this, you know, this ode to Christopher Columbus. Sure. Right. And so very quickly after that,

especially around World War I, at the beginning of the U.S.'s involvement, more and more states started requiring compulsory pledges in schools too. That's right. And you know, it's no coincidence that those aligned with moments of political and certainly warlike upheaval in this country.

Yes. And then we got to mention under God, because I think you notice it never said that up until this point in the podcast, except at the beginning when I read it. Right. That didn't come about until 1954. Isn't that crazy?

I know. Eisenhower said, you know, he's the Knights of Columbus said, you know what, Dwight, maybe you should throw under God in there. And he did. And they said, I think the quote was, they felt that schools in the United States were under threat of infiltration by godless communists.

That's right. So let's just throw that in there. Yeah. And I wonder if they're going to further change it to highly divisible instead of indivisible. So, so divisible. Yes. There've been a couple of Supreme Court cases about it too,

Chuck. Sure. When states passed it as compulsory, now it's compulsory typically for teachers to lead the pledge, but not for students. That's not how it always was. Until 1943, students were compelled to say the pledge as well, but then in 1943, in the case West Virginia

Board of Education versus Barnett, which involved some Jehovah's Witness children who were like, I'm not supposed to be doing this. It's a religious thing. Students were finally, the Supreme Court said, no, you can't force anyone to say the pledge. That's right. So that's it for the Pledge of Allegiance, huh?

Yeah, good stuff. Thanks to Dave Ruse, our old pal there, and that's going to be, this is hot off the presses, this is going to be on the HowStuffWorks website. Yeah, so go check it out at HowStuffWorks, and in the meantime, short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's HowStuffWorks.

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