[Ghoulish Delight]

I'm cool with a certain amount of patriotic indoctrination in as much as it leds to civic pride and shared ethos. However it can be, and usually is, taken too far, given too much weight. And the pledge particularly grates on me due to its near-idolatry. As if it weren't bad enough to be brainwashed into thinking that the US is absolutely perfectly right and the greatest of all possible nations, we've also got to bow to a piece of cloth? No thanks.

I don't know how I'd approach it with my own kid if and when the time comes. Seeing as they wouldn't be able to understand either side of the argument, I'd probably just pretty much let things be. I don't think it did me any irreparable harm to recite it, so whatever. When they kid is aware enough to start asking their own questions about it, that's when I'll address it.