On This Day in Weird, September 9...
1892: America's "Pledge of Allegiance" appears for
the first time in Youth's Companion magazine, written by Baptist
minister Francis Bellamy. Contrary to the claims of modern super-patriots, the
Founding Fathers had no part in writing it, and Bellamy's version contained no
mention of a country "under God." A right-wing Congress added that
contentious phrase in 1954, originally added six years earlier by Chicago
attorney Louis A. Bowman, over loud protests from Bellamy's descendants
insisting that he favored strict separation of church and state. Nothing
Fortean here, just another example of religious zeal tossing a spanner in the
works of life. Bellamy, incidentally, favored a straight-arm salute to
"Old Glory," later adopted by Fascists worldwide.
No comments:
Post a Comment