Let me begin by stating at once, that I am not a person who believes in absolutes. Absolutely NOT! Oh wait...what just happened there? Not even a full paragraph into my first blog and already I have created a conundrum for myself. Anyway...what I mean to say is that in my fifty-one years and counting of life, I have learned that if anything is certain, it is that things will change. I am neither fazed by nor frightened by change. It has to happen. Change is a good thing! If things never changed we would all still be living in the tops of trees debating just how insensible it would be to try to make a go of it on the ground. On the ground??? Where the dirt and bugs and animals are? Puuhleez!!! Things have to change. And yet certain things should not be made to change or to be disgarded merely because a minority of people (and let me digress immediately here to make the point that a minority of people are those who are fewer in numbers than the majority of people, hence the term 'minority') are bothered, offended or afraid of them. If the majority of people, and again, I pause to suggest that the 'majority' of people are those greater in number than the minority, are in agreement that something is good, then that thing should be left alone. Some things should be left alone. Consider if you will the current debate over retaining or disgarding the Pledge of Allegiance.
It would seem that a very vocal minority (see above for definitions) are once again calling for the wholesale destruction of the Pledge of Allegiance. Or at the very least, they are clamouring to get rid of the purile and insensitive phrase "under God". Yes, I do know that it was not originally part of the Pledge. But it has been part of the Pledge ever since I have been reciting it, so to me, it makes sense. I have been reciting this Pledge for as long as I can remember. I don't once recall anyone, ever, saying to me..."Hey! You cut that out! I am OFFENDED!" Or shreiking "What! Don't you say 'God' in my presence! How dare you bring religion into this!" Granted, I guess the reason for that was that I have always been surrounded by people of a like mind on the matter. You know...Americans? I guess if during my three year stay in the Federal Republic of Germany, if I had attempted to recite the Pledge at a non-US Army function, it may have been a bit awkward. Or...if during my recent stint as a Police Instructor in Amman, Jordan, had I gone to the Local Mosque and started off my beloved Pledge, yes...it may have been taken as an offensive thing. But we're talking about reciting it here, In the USA. And by saying that I have always been surrounded by people of a like mind, I mean Americans. That is, Americans who are proud of their nation. Every time I recit the much maligned Pledge, I still get a serious thrill out of it. It's rather like the Lord's Prayer. Every time I recite the Lord's Prayer, whether it be at Mass (oh...sorry...you didn't notice the last name was Finley? You didn't notice that I descend from the Auld Sod? You didn't observe then that I am....gasp and wait for it....an Irish Catholic? Oh...Lawdy Lawdy Help me! I'm such a stereotype! Quick...get Hollywood on the phone...surely there is call for a reality TV show about the trials and tribulations of an Irish Catholic. We'll put Jon and Kate off the air in a fortnight!!! No one will ever have need to visit the subject of the Octomom, Michael Jackson or Angelina Jolie again!!!) I get a serious lump in my throat and often, tears in my eyes. Both the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord's Prayer have that effect on me.
Pause for a moment for me to clear the air on something. I am about as Irish as Emperor Hirohito. Yes, yes. I know I look the part. I have blue eyes, fair skin and white hair. But just because there was a fellow at some point, long ago whose name was Finley, and from whom I happened to be descended, it doesn't make me the heir apparent to the True Irish Crown. I will state, clearly and for the record, that I am adamently opposed to anyone hyphenating themselves. It's all well and good to state for the record that one is of Irish extract, or that your roots go back to Paris before the Terror. It is a good thing to know where one comes from. But I don't like anyone being a (fill in the blank) hyphen American. Either your in or your out. Either your American, or your not. If you feel the need to put something else in front of being an American, then you don't really respect who we are or what we have come through as a nation. But...I digress. However, do stay tuned to that subject, because one of my next few blogs will tread heavily on this whole "I am a hyphenated American" pile of doody.
Clearly, before you even read what I wrote for my Facebook page, you, my dear reader(s), if any, have already sleuthed out the fact that I am a fan of the Pledge. Bravo! Read on then and see what madness led me to start what I hope will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship between us:
Pledging Allegiance
Pledging allegiance to our country and to the institutions which have given us so much is a noble, almost sacred thing. It is something every American should take seriously. As a citizen of this great nation, naturally born or naturalized, if you wish to partake in all that is America, you SHOULD pledge allegiance. You need not agree with every decision that issues forth from Washington D.C., but here at least, in America, you have the right to disagree. You even have the right to oppose it and possibly have it reversed in the political process. Try that in Iran or North Korea. Try having a Town hall meeting in Zimbabwe. If you don't agree with America, return with all speed to your native soil where life was clearly more free and so much more fulfilling! Do not come to our country to make a better life for yourself, and then try to change this nation into the very one you just left. Does anyone else see the dichotomy there? People who come here, or who were born here, and who find the need to hyphenate themselves and invent reasons to destroy such fine institutions such as the Pledge of Allegiance have only a single intent in mind; division. If you cherish any other place in the world so much that you feel the need to recreate it here , by speaking only your native language, by building enclaves of only your own people, or by saying that Pledge of Allegiance offends you...then please, by all means head back to your native land and enjoy! If life was so rosy for you back in dear-old-wherever, then please...by all means, the next flight leaves within the hour. If you are to be an American, then have the courage to call yourself an American! Act as an American. Delete the hyphen, the color and the national origin from your identity. Be an AMERICAN! Take the rights and responsibilities that go along with that including pledging ALLEGIANCE. THIS is the United States of America. This is the place where freedom allows dreams. I FIRMLY pledge allegiance to that.
Wow...okay...granted I am not Rush Limbaugh (thank you Jesus!) or Arianna Huffington (I lack the proper biological equipment, although I suppose in her case that is debatable) but even I can sense that the person who wrote the above statement is a proud American. Indeed I am! Let me wax a little less than poetically about my American background.
I was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. My father, Billie Randle Finley Sr., was a General Motors assembly line worker and my mother, Rosetta Mae Finley née Jackson, was a stay-at-home wife and mother who raised four children. My parents were both born and raised in Arkansas as were my three older sisters. The family moved to Michigan in 1951 so that my father could work for GM through the winter of '51-'52. But since he never left Michigan until the winter of '80 when he retired from GM, it was, as he was fond of saying, a very long winter.
Of course, when I say my father was an assembly line worker, what I really mean was that was his day job. Or rather, his night job when I was very, very young. Prior to and for a few years after my totally unexpected arrival in November 1957, he also ran a service station and owned a car lot. He worked as a building contractor and built a number of houses in the Flint area in the late '50's. In his spare time (was there any?) he did bump and paint work in our yard to make a few extra bucks. Oh no...we were never wealthy by any stretch. You see, he HAD to work those insane hours because he had four kids and a wife to care for. And he was the kind of man who was going to pull the weight himself. When my mother once suggested that she could get a job at GM and help him pay the bills, he told her that was fine, but on her way to the GM employment office, she needed to make one stop first. She needed to go by the courthouse and file for divorce because no wife of his was going to work. She was going to stay home and take care of the house and kids. Good God! What a blinkered, philistine, pig-ignorant philosophy! What a horribly unenlightened savage he must have been! Probably some knuckle dragging, beer swilling, wife beating type with all the charm and sophistication of a sea lamprey.
Say that to my face and I will deck you with all the power my six-foot-six inch, three-hundred pound frame will muster.
My father was a very good man. My mother a very good woman. Together were a magnificent and indestructible team. Like just about every American from my generation, my parents were children of the Depression and they believed in family first above all. They believed in friends and in freedom. They believed in America. They knew, because they had learned, through the dubious distinction of having lived during the horror and magnificent desperation of both the Great Depression and World War II, that if one had no freedom, then one had no life. Money means nothing if you don't have the freedom to live the life you want to live. Better to live dirt poor than to live a repressed, enslaved life. They knew that it took hard work to make things happen. They knew, that if you didn't take care of yourself and your family, no one else would. They trusted in God and in each other. They Pledged Allegiance every day of their lives. Every act of rising in the morning to face the new day was a pledge of allegiance to each other, to us kids and to the Nation that nurtured us. Every time my mother told me she loved me, or said that to one of my sisters or spoke it to my father, it was complete and compelling recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Each time my father said it to me, it was a resounding declaration of the freedoms that this great nation provides. Each time I say it to my wife or children, it echos back to my childhood and even before my meagre existence with the voice of every American or every person who ever aspired to BE an American. Read it, live it and be it.
I pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,
And to the Republic for which it stands,
One nation, Under God,
With Liberty and Justice for All.
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