Pledge
 

I pledge an affinity to the ideals
of the United States of America
And to the freedoms for which they stand:
One humanity, indivisible
With liberty and justice for all.

I dig it.
:snap:

Ooh, you've done it now. God's gonna be maaaad.

The under God thing aside, I never much liked pledging allegiance to a flag. The whole flag culture thing always seemed to border on idolitry.

Oh no. Do we have to define what these ideals are? That sounds like a fun conversation!

MBC might have to buy me a new monitor. Lol!!!:snap:

Thus I discarded "allegiance". I like the much more fluid implication of "affinity".

You might have to wait a little while for that. I'm saving up for an espresso maching for scaeagles once he has at least some limited control of his sphincter again. :)

Yes! I had the devil's own time getting permission to not salute the flag every morning in high school. (even though I believe it's illegal to require students to do so.) The argument is that the flag represents the ideals, but I disagree. The flag represents a political entity, and while the ideals may be implicit, they're also not stated outright and therefore can be conceptually separated. I'd much rather explicitly pledge to the ideals.

I never had any problem for teachers for not saying it. They were more caught up on how it was possible that I wouldn't want anything done for my birthday than me not pledging allegiance or putting my hand over my heart during the national anthem.

The "one humanity, indivisible" is where I get caught up since humanity is almost infinitely dvisible and people like it that way.