Loading ...Palin: Keep founding fathers’ original ‘pledge of allegiance’
flockwoodAccording to the Eagle Forum Alaska blog, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is a little misinformed about the pledge of allegiance.
Palin was asked the following question by the Eagle Forum when she ran for governor in 2006:
“11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?”
Here’s her answer:
“SP: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.”
This one’s going to have the late night comedians chuckling. Huffingtonpost.com and DailyKos.com are already howling about it. It turns out the founding fathers never said the pledge of allegiance. No Americans did for the first 116 years of the republic. The pledge was actually written in 1892 by a Baptist minister. It was altered slightly at least two times: In 1923 (“my flag” was changed to “the flag of the United States of America” and in 1954 (when the words “under God” were added.)
The quote about the flag calls to mind a quote attributed to former Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, who reportedly opposed the teaching of foreign languages: According to the New York Times, Ferguson explained her opposition succinctly: “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.”
[By the way, I know it was in the New York Times, but did Ferguson really say this?]
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:55 am
One is also reminded of the Baptist preacher who rejected modern translations of the Bible because “if the King James Version was good enough for St. Paul, it’s good enough for me.” I mean, this is a woman whose only claim to fame, as far as I can tell, is coming in second in a beauty contest. In Alaska.
Something tells me that neither theology nor history are her strong suits.
September 2nd, 2008 at 11:37 am
Caleb, on the other hand, we have Obama, who said that he would visit all 57 states in his campaign.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:02 pm
By the way, Caleb, when you say “neither theology nor history are her strong suits”, it should be “is her strong suit.” English is not your strong suit.
Nice condescension to attractive women.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Larry, I often condescend to attractive women, but they rarely condescend to me. And, on the grammar point, you’re right: in the unlikely event that I have a strong suit (I once had one made of seersucker that was pretty tough), it’s not English.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:22 am
has any one read the preamble of each state constitution? These might be the founding fathers she was refering to.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:47 am
Peach, I can’t imagine that Ms. Palin knows what the preambles to the various state constitutions say; I don’t know what the preamble to the Kentucky Constitution says and I practiced law here for years. This was just an unfortunate slip of the tongue. As much as I’d like to make this woman out to be an uneducated idiot, even I don’t think that she would have said this if she’d thought about it for ten seconds. The point is that she didn’t. If this gets to be a habit, she might become the Dan Quayle of this campaign.
And I say that recognizing that Quayle wasn’t a dummy: He was a skilled politician who kept making little slips of the tongue, none of which individually amounted to anything, but which together made him look like a buffoon. She needs to be careful that the same tag doesn’t get applied to her.
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Frank, I looked around and could find no hard evidence that the originator of the quote was Gov. “Ma” Ferguson of the Great State of Texas. It has also been attributed to a number of other people so one should strongly doubt that Ma ever uttered the sentence. But it’s a good story and a good illustration.
I also must point out that although the NYTimes did in fact print the questionable attribution to Ferguson, it was in an Op-Ed column by Nicholas Kristof, not in a news article or an official Times editorial. Surely the Times allows great license to the authors of opinion pieces, and accordingly the paper does not vouch for accuracy of the contents. The authors of these opinions are not uniformly liberal and have, in fact, included names such as Cheney, Gonzales, and other members of the VRWC.