I disagree; rituals matter and they never have "no overt meaning." Human communities are rife with little rituals that exist primarily for building connections between the people in a community as well as bonding people to the community at large. The relationship, the bonds, that I have with a friend in my social is different from the relationship that a child has with the government that protects her rights, sustains her security, and provides her education free of charge. So the cementing rituals will be, obviously, different rituals.
Our relationships are less formal than our social contracts with our various governments, and so they'll have less formality in them. The rituals you go through with your friends are personalized, customized to how yall get along. But that doesn't make them unimportant. Rituals build connections and connections sustain friendships past the natural frictions that occur whenever your interest or values might come into conflict.
Personal social rituals exist to help only my personal relationships. The relationship of the citizen with the state is the very foundation of sustaining liveable communities. Both rituals have overt meanings, even if the Pledge is more important. Less is riding on one interpersonal relationship, but that's not to say that it doesn't matter. Having a resilient circle of friends can make a huge difference in someone's life--although it would be on a different scale than one's relationship with a government.
I don't agree that the citizen has some kind of foundational relationship with the state or that this is essential to the functioning of society; surely what is foundational is the relationship of the individual to society, rather than the state. It makes me very uncomfortable to think of "the state" as something that I enter into a relationship with, let alone a relationship that is supposed to be foundational to all other relationships, let alone a relationship that is to be expressed in a daily public ritual. Perhaps I cannot intellectualise this other than saying that to me that just smacks of fascism. And I know it's not fascism and I also know that "slippery slope" type arguments are not good. But I don't like it, and that's all I can say. I would never, ever make such a "pledge" - every fibre in my being recoils against it - and even less would I ever expect a child to make it. It goes against every concept of morality that makes any sense to me.
Apart from anything else, it's surely clear that in fact pledges of this kind are not necessary to make society or the state work. You say that it's just a ritual no different in kind from the little rituals that express relationships at the personal level. But most countries don't have such rituals at all, do they? Or do they? I'm sure we don't in Britain. Perhaps once upon a time we did, when people stood for the national anthem in cinemas and things like that, but we certainly don't now. Does that make our society or our state less strong or less good? Indeed, isn't it the case that the US has a very strong tradition of extreme mistrust of the government? Isn't that what the "tea party" and such movements are, in part, about? Perhaps these things are over-reported (in fact I'm sure they are), but still, it strikes me as odd that the country that instils this "pledge" in its children and which sees it as foundational to a strong relationship between the individual and the state should be the country above all where people seem to dislike their state and want to have as little to do with it as they can.
It strikes me as reasonable and just that the government ask that a child pledge allegiance to our form of government, of which the flag is only a token. This makes sense because this child will be expected as an adult in the future to sustain that form of government so that future generations of Americans can also enjoy the rights and benefits that she as a child is now enjoying. We all have a covenant with future generations to pass along to them a workable, liveable world. Establishing among today's children a sense of being part of that covenant is necessary for sustaining that covenant with the future by sustaining the government that exists to carry out that covenant. This is at the heart of how societies maintain their values over time.
But it's not just a pledge to a particular form of government, but to a particular country. As I said before, what does this pledge of allegiance
mean? Does it mean that the child is promising always to support and prefer republican forms of government over others? So is the child promising never to become a British citizen? What's the value of this? Or what
does it mean? I don't see how you can claim that this isn't indoctrination of some kind. Certainly, indoctrination of the view that republicanism is better than alternative forms of government may be pretty mild or benevolent indoctrination, but isn't that what it is?
What people have a responsibility to do is to sustain
society in such a way that future generations, if there are any, will be all right. (I would call that a responsibility, not a "covenant", since one surely cannot have a covenant with people who don't yet exist.) I don't see that they have a responsibility to sustain the
state or a particular form of
government to do that. And indeed, surely the founders of the United States didn't think that they did, given that they removed themselves from the aegis of one state and form of government and set up a new one of their own invention. (We are still in the History Forum, after all...)
Is this particular flag pledge ritual indispensable? No, it's just a ritual. Maybe someone could come up with a better one. But the very existence and unchanging nature of rituals is part of their strength. If you monkey around with them, they become less important. Rituals have a concrete value: they reinforce social bonds; they communicate social norms; they remind us that there's a larger purpose going on with each day's smaller actions. The absence of ritual exposes those important social bonds to neglect, if they're taken for granted. So ritual is needed; ritual matters.
Yes, but the problem then is that if you view this particular ritual in this way, what are you saying about those who choose not to participate? Are you saying that their social bonds are weaker, that they don't believe in larger purposes? That they are, in fact, less good or less useful members of society? You can't have it both ways: you can't say, on the one hand, that this is an essential ritual which reflects and reinforces the strength of society, and also on the other, that it's completely voluntary and no stigma is attached to not participating. Rituals don't work like that. And that, I suppose, is one of the reasons why I am instinctively repelled from such things, because I see them as, deep down, bullying. They aim, deliberately or not, at removing people's individuality and personal choice and at identifying those who are different as problematic. There may, overtly, be a choice whether to participate or not, but by providing the ritual in the first place and encouraging its performance, the authorities make that choice harder. It makes me think of being instructed to cheer for our team on school sports day. Bullying, authoritative for the sake of it, with no purpose or point to it. If people are going to cheer, or favour one form of government over another, they should do so spontaneously because it's what they actually believe, not because the authorities are telling them to do so.
As a purely philosophical statement, the Pledge to the American flag is pretty bland. You salute the flag and commit to a republican form of government. That's all there is to it.
Well, as I say, that's still contentious; I don't understand what it means for a child to "commit to a republican form of government". And surely there are also references to the United States itself, not to mention God. I wouldn't call that philosophically bland.
But even at that, it's still permissible to opt out. Lots of kids do. It doesn't bother me, because they've at least thought about what they're doing--and a questioning public serves the purposes of a republic anyway.
Right. But in that case it's robbed of its purpose as a social bonding ritual, isn't it? As I said above, it can't be a social bonding ritual
and completely optional; if it's to be the former then there must be at least pressure to conform to it, and if there isn't such pressure, then it's not much good at enforcing social cohesion - indeed a ritual in which most people don't participate would actively
discourage it and act as a symbol of rebellion. Or put it like this: would you be prepared to follow the pledge ritual with a second ritual in which children are invited to pledge allegiance to nothing and no-one, and make that similarly optional?
