I Pledge Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

I stand at attention with my hand over my heart. In spite of the literal meaning of this pledge, my pledge is of allegiance to the nation, its ideals, its principles, not the fabric. The flag is a living symbol. I treat it with respect as a symbolic gesture of how I want to treat those principles, those ideals, this great nation.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

A republic is a nation or state in which the power belongs to the people, administered by their elected officials. This is in contrast to a monarchy where the leader is supreme. In a republic, the people share an equality in standing.

One nation under God.

It is by the grace of God that we are a nation. And it will only be by the grace of God that we might one day truly be one nation in heart as well as polity. In that Latter-day Saint canon of scripture, we have a story of Enoch who walked with God and was translated to be with God, along with all in his city Zion. In Moses 7:18, we read, "And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them."

Indivisible.

Wait. This word just does not feel appropriate. The news is filled with examples of division. Our government is at gridlock because of a great divide. Campaigns are driven by fear of the opposition or by fear of our neighbors, painting the opponent as an enemy motivated by evil designs. Our history has been filled with division, the worst of which being the Civil War. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

But it has ever been our destiny rather than our history that has defined this nation. The constitution with the bill of rights established a government by the people and for the people. The preamble states that it was created, in part, "to form a more perfect union." The constitution provided a framework that the founders believed best provided for the possibility of a perfect union. A perfect union might never be obtained, but we can always work to make it more perfect.

With liberty and justice for all.

All lives matter. All are equal. Except when they aren't. Black Lives Matter, as a movement, originated to highlight abuses by police against people of color, where heavy-handed police action resulted in serious injury and death. For those of us for whom such experiences are foreign, we want to think of these as exceptions. But what if you had grown up with a history of police who resisted civil rights, who literally fought against integration, who participated in ruthless beatings of otherwise peaceful marches? What if the beat cop in your neighborhood used racist language? I can only imagine that it would be so easy to interpret unexplainable deaths of my brothers and sisters as racial injustice. I dare not judge the motivation of those who protest on the streets at the same time that I condemn the violence of the few who take advantage of these protests to strike out in anger and cause new injury.

Even if examples exist where deadly force is justified or where deadly force may be used without racial motivations, these examples do not negate the reality of racial injustice. And even if some loud voices try to turn every tragedy, justified or otherwise, into a rallying point for their cause, this does not reduce the value of the cause itself.

What can I do? At the very least, I start to listen. I try to understand. I read Twitter threads about #DrivingWhileBlack and compare them to #CrimingWhileWhite. I can work toward the ideals, the aspirations, and the dream of what the United States of America represents—one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Now, why even bother to write about this? I am seeing so many posts in social media about athletes respecting or disrespecting the flag.

Last year, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, then-49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat for the national anthem to protest the oppression against black people with police brutality. After meeting with veterans, he began to take a knee in an effort to show more respect to their sacrifices. Only a few other players really joined in this protest.

Enter the ever-campaigning President Trump. Never one to leave a good controversy alone and probably wedge an even greater divide between his supporters and his detractors, he used his bully pulpit to criticize the kneeling players and called for fans to undertake a complete boycott of the NFL if the teams won't fire those few who are protesting. At a rally in Alabama, he used profanity to describe these players if they won't respect the flag. Regarding the Charlottesville protest, he said, "You also had some very fine people on both sides."

The president has no interest in unifying the nation based on shared values. He somehow thinks that patriotism is nationalistic pride. In his inaugural address, he stated, "At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other."

He imagines that this patriotic pride can magically heal long-standing wounds. He also said: "When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice." Maybe it could if that patriotism were more than waving a flag and buying American and was extended to include a love of neighbor.

President Trump also quoted Psalm 133:1, "How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity." This is true. But what is being done to inspire this? Maybe the neighborhoods who really fear a heavy hand of racial injustice will be inspired by the president speaking to law enforcement:

When you see these towns, and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in — rough — I said, 'Please don't be too nice.' Like when you guys put somebody in the car, and you're protecting their head, you know? The way you put your hand — like, don't hit their head, and they've just killed somebody? Don't hit their head? I said, 'You can take the hand away, okay.' 

I mean, surely the suspect is guilty so it's okay. After all, they are thugs.

Or maybe African American communities will be encouraged by the tough-on-crime attorney general who has led the Justice Department to rescind criminal-justice reform that relaxed minimum sentencing guidelines, considering the disproportionate incarceration rates of African American men relative to the population.

Now, one more quote from the inaugural address: "There should be no fear – we are protected, and we will always be protected. We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we are protected by God."

In 1976, the year of our nation's bicentennial celebration, Spencer W. Kimball was the prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In June of that year, he published an article titled "The False Gods We Worship" in which we wrote the following.

We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching: 

“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:44–45.)

We forget that if we are righteous the Lord will either not suffer our enemies to come upon us—and this is the special promise to the inhabitants of the land of the Americas (see 2 Ne. 1:7)—or he will fight our battles for us (Ex. 14:14; D&C 98:37, to name only two references of many). This he is able to do, for as he said at the time of his betrayal, “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26:53.) We can imagine what fearsome soldiers they would be.

So, yes, we can be protected by God's hand. According to His word, we should rely on His arm and not the arm of flesh. There is an interesting account in the Helaman 4:11-13 from the Book of Mormon that explicitly discusses what wickedness might lead to the Lord withdrawing His hand of protection:

Now this great loss of the Nephites, and the great slaughter which was among them, would not have happened had it not been for their wickedness and their abomination which was among them; yea, and it was among those also who professed to belong to the church of God. 

And it was because of the pride of their hearts, because of their exceeding riches, yea, it was because of their oppression to the poor, withholding their food from the hungry, withholding their clothing from the naked, and smiting their humble brethren upon the cheek, making a mock of that which was sacred, denying the spirit of prophecy and of revelation, murdering, plundering, lying, stealing, committing adultery, rising up in great contentions, and deserting away into the land of Nephi, among the Lamanites— 

And because of this their great wickedness, and their boastings in their own strength, they were left in their own strength; therefore they did not prosper, but were afflicted and smitten, and driven before the Lamanites, until they had lost possession of almost all their lands.

It is not a time to divide our nation, nurturing that false vision that a minority struggling to have their concerns honestly heard and addressed are an unpatriotic enemy to be stamped down. It is as though the comfortable are saying, "Your protests are fine—so long as they don't interfere in my interests or intrude on my attention. Protest where I don't need to watch."

I stand for my flag. I stand in honor of the ideals and principles on which our nation was founded. I pledge allegiance to the flag in behalf of this nation and the hope it inspires, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Some of my brothers and sisters see our nation injured by injustice. Even if I can not perceive this because of my experiences (yes, call it privilege), I acknowledge that they do. I don't mind if they take a knee. Isn't that what you do?