They love that Bellamy salute though

It turns out socialism was a scare word even through the 19th century, then meaning government provided for the public good, such as roads, schools and libraries.

Features like social safety nets and disaster relief came after the US went through a few ordeals and got traumatized by all the mass suffering and death.

And from the cotton plantation owners to the industrialists to the tech bros, the owner class hated the notion, and continued to organize and plot against it.

Under God wasn't even part of the original pledge. It was added in the 1950s iirc.

Did you know it's illegal to say "We should kill the president"

When my kids were younger they had a lot of those same comments. I would talk about the christian god in the same way I talked about Zeus.

Oh I treat those all as teachable moments. The hard part is keeping them from getting themselves in trouble.

I just don't want my kids to get shot.

The best thing to arm a child with is feeling comfortable to ask "why".

This can be a double edged sword with very talkative or inquisitive kids.

My kid is too damned smart and wants to know how everything works, so they ask why. But often we don't know, or they're not satisfied with the answer and keep asking why. If screens didn't disregulate them so much I'd go tell them to look it up, but I til then I have to answer the string of 10,000 whys (to later get told I'm wrong by the kid who had no idea what we were talking about 20 minutes ago, and is now an expert despite not looking into it at all ...) and mentally scream because I refuse to douse that curiosity, even if I run out of patience for it at times.

Young kids are attracted to actiony state roles (e.g. police, firefighter, astronaut) because they're visible early on. As teens they develop a better sense of what their interests are and what roles would be a good fit.

And then capitalism throws that all away, gives the cool jobs to cronies, and forces them to be grocery baggers, office clerks and customer service agents that work phones.

The best thing to arm a child with is feeling comfortable to ask “why”.

That pretty much encompasses the entirety of my parenting approach. Good to see! Your kid(s) are lucky to have you :)

/s and all, except for the majority of people, literally this.

If brainwashing people into nationalism didn't work, countries would barely exist at all.

Nah it's all weird.

It is incredibly weird and bad for a self titled republic to require its children to pledge allegiance. Arguably, only public officers (millitary, elected officials, government workers, etc) should be pledging allegiance as a sort of oath ceremony.

Dont get me started on Texas's state pledge

Isn't the flag just a symbol, considering the person in charge changes? If so, you could argue pledging allegiance to whoever is top dog is much worse than pledging allegiance to a mortal person. Not necessarily comparing US and NK here.

Not everyone is from the US of A. As a European it is not unrealistic that this would have been the first time I heard of it.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1053/

What's the alleged dichotomy? It sounds like they're saying pledges of allegiance are bad, regardless of whether it's ours or the scary foreigners.

Rich from an account that has been previously caught sock puppeting.

Are they insinuating it’s worse or not as different as we were told?

Litteraly nothing here insinuated worse. That all came from you.

You missed it. The reference to NK was simply to draw in a rube to search and discover the truth that it's really the U.S. that asks for it. However, I doubt there are many Americans who are unfamiliar with the Pledge of Allegiance. But, the meme did get the people talking.

Physical abuse of children isn’t the answer.

You young guys have just gone soft because you weren't abused on a daily basis.

FTFY

Older generations love to talk about how hard they were because they were beaten, mistreated, and given brain damage but were too cowardly to standup against it, and can't stand that the younger generations have the spine to tell you to go back to your home and wait for your children to never visit you.