“I Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

I hate saying that. But I go ahead and say it anyway and hold my right hand over my heart and face the flag like everybody else. But I hate it.

Why do I hate it? Because it is a fake and phony thing to say, right from the beginning and all the way to the end of it.

Why should anyone have to recite a pledge of allegiance to one’s country? Shouldn’t that be taken for granted?

If everyone in the room recites the pledge, does that mean that there are no traitors among them? Is that the purpose of it? To weed out traitors?

But wouldn’t a traitor be happy to recite a pledge? What difference would it make to him? Having to recite such a fake proof of patriotism wouldn’t bother a traitor, or an idiot either.

The only type of person that it could bother would be one of those, such as myself, that believe that true patriotism is diminished by such fake and phony proofs of patriotism and allegiance to one’s country.

From Oct. 1967 through Oct. 1968, I was an LOH (light observation helicopter) crew chief assigned to the Scouts, B Troop, 7/17th Air Cav, stationed primarily at Camp Enari, near Pleiku in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.

During the time that I was there, three of the Scout helicopters assigned to me were shot down, killing everyone aboard. Each time it just happened to be on a day when I was assigned to some other duty on the ground.

But I flew enough to get the Air Medal. And I was there long enough to know the most courageous men that I’ve ever met and what it’s like to be in combat and have to face the reality of people dying and bullets being fired at you.

Did all that prove my patriotism? Not really. I was against the war but I was drafted into the Army and was left with no other choice. I preferred to take my chances as a soldier than go to jail or leave my home and escape to another country.

In my opinion none of those who died in Vietnam or served in Vietnam did it out of patriotism or because they felt they were defending America’s freedom.

Those that died there and those that served there did it because they were caught up in that great, big black hole of fake patriotism which is at the hot core of American politics and government of, for and by the people – that required them to go along with the program, even at the risk of their lives.

That program is still in effect today and it just keeps getting dumber and dumber. And who can you blame except government of, for and by the people doped up on fake, phony patriotism that doesn’t have a thing to do with true patriotism or love of one’s country, or of individual thinking or sacred honor.

Where do we get these dumb thinkers that program this dumb machine that spits out these robots in such great numbers that think such dumb things as “We’re fighting them over there so we won’t have to fight them here,” and we’re fighting for our freedom and to spread freedom around the world.

I believe they come straight out of the belly of government of, for and by the people and have been brought up programmed to recite fake patriotic pledges every morning in their schools as some sort of required proof of their Americanism and goodness, rather than being respected as free individuals whose patriotism should be taken for granted until proven otherwise, and who should be expected to think and reason according to the ability that God gave them.

Patriotism itself is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a natural thing that doesn’t have anything to do with the Pledge of Allegiance or the waving of flags. The love of one’s country comes as natural as the love of one’s mother and father. And yet, no one has come up with a daily pledge for that.

I hate it when I see our Congressmen and Congresswomen all standing together like school children in the morning with their hands over their hearts facing the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

To me, this is something that would seem more reasonable if this were Germany during the reign of Hitler instead of being the United States of America. It’s a dumb ritual that doesn’t prove anything except that we love our dumb rituals.

I don’t think George Washington and the other founding fathers would have ever imagined such a thing. They knew what patriotism was. It was part of their character and actions and sacred honor and didn’t have to be recited as part of some two-bit pledge written up by some two-bit writer of some two-bit boy’s magazine.

I hate that Congress begins it’s sessions with a prayer written up by some hired preacher with the gall to believe that he is officially responsible for dragging God into this mess and giving God instructions as to how God should enter into the minds of everyone present and lead them to intelligent thinking and wise decisions.

I hate it all, just because of the dumb, stupid hypocrisy of it. I really do believe that the greatest evils that have plagued the world from the beginning is because we feed our young on the same dumb, stupid hypocrisy that we grew up on.

If that’s not so, why can’t the American mind realize that terrorism is the killing of innocent people and that through our illegal and unjustified attack on Iraq we’ve killed more innocent people, in the form of acceptable collateral damage, than all the terrorists will be able to do in our lifetimes?

How else can it be explained, that America is bleeding itself to death with unnecessary war on Iraq (and more to come on the drawing board), and unknown billions for prisons and police in our stupid and hypocritical war on drugs, and unknown billions because we’re too stupid to plan and take care of the responsibilities we owe to our poor and the middle class and the challenges of nature and the continued existence of life itself on the planet?

America needs to get smart and a good place to start would be to just throw all of our fake and phony ideas of patriotism overboard, along with our incredible and insane self-righteousness, and put our minds to thinking.

Yes, thinking. Even in our schools. Education, regardless of how much money and effort is thrown into it, doesn’t mean a thing if we can’t figure out some way to trigger the thinking mechanism inside the minds of our young people, instead of just turning out robots that can recite the Pledge and keep us going in the same direction of world destruction the way we’ve been going since the Second World War.

That is what true patriotism is, even more than doing one’s duty as a soldier or raising a family of good citizens or serving in Congress or as the President of the United States, it’s using one’s mind to help bring about a better way for one’s country and all the peoples of the earth, “under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”