Each morning, the Banker & Tradesman staff trudges into the auditorium to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
No. Not that one. Ours goes like this:
“We pledge allegiance to the authority
Of the Banker & Tradesman publisher.
And to the shadowy Cayman Islands holding company
For which he stands,
One newspaper, one puny salary schedule,
With raises and bonuses for none.”
We’ve never challenged it in court, unlike that other Pledge of Allegiance. There’s no mention of God in our version (except for that “publisher” thing); we don’t have a church-state case. We have no inclination to argue that it’s too militant or demands too much patriotic fervor. If the Boston Globe ever goosed up its banking and real estate coverage, we’d all gladly grab our quill pens, march across town, and stab them all to death.
No, our pledge is tranquil, unlike that other pledge, which has spent most of its bedraggled life in one courtroom or another, being challenged.
The latest assault comes in Brookline, where Brookline Political Action for Peace is agitating for a ban on reciting the pledge in town schools – where, of course, in a Northeastern, lefty, progressive kind of way, the recitation of the pledge is already optional.
While the issue has led to some verbal squabbles in Brookline, it has prompted little of the crazed agitation of decades past. The nation’s courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have been littered with pledge cases over many decades – and nobody ever seems to be having a good time.
Poor Gov. Deval Patrick, asked what he thought about the Brookline issue, quickly dived under his desk and mumbled about having other things to worry about.
The Brookline debate seems unlikely to stagger on up through the court system; it lacks juicy constitutional law recreational value.
Uneasy Alliances
The best pledge cases to boost ticket sales were the Jehovah’s Witnesses cases in the 1930s and 1940s, when it dawned on a number of states that Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to recite the pledge – as if they were Brookline suburbanites.
After those cases went public, mandatory pledge requirements in about 15 to 20 school systems nationwide popped up, with expulsion the punishment of choice. The targets: Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The U.S. Supreme Court pondered two different Jehovah’s Witnesses challenges, in 1938 and 1943. The justices flip-flopped, rendering two different opinions, which were hard to articulate, because they were all holding their noses while talking about the cases.
In the first case, the justices said the school system had the right to require the pledge; or, put another way, your religion didn’t necessarily free you from an obligation to follow the rules; or, put another way, what is this crap doing in our courtroom? As Justice Frankfurter put it in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, that “national unity” thing is a good idea, and in any case, it was “an issue of educational policy for which the courtroom is not the proper arena.”
This particular 8-1 decision might be quoted from a bit in Brookline, where opponents of the pledge suggest that it has no educational value – quite aside from the patriotic fervor it presumably engenders.
But, of course, this is “pledge” litigation we’re talking about. After the Gobitis decision, the justices took a long, hot shower and realized they had botched things a bit.
Next came West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, where the justices issued up a big, fat “oops” – and changed their minds. “We think the action of the local authorities in compelling the flag salute and pledge transcends constitutional limitations on their power…”
The Brookline dispute is less dramatic, of course. No one is attempting to play a practical joke on specific religious groups – nor are the players squabbling over the “under God” language in the pledge.
Those anti-pledge folks in Brookline are, for the most part, suggesting that the pledge is an unnecessary, militant, emotional thing that will inflame the kids – who will then invade New Hampshire and install a personal income tax.
It will eventually be settled at a dull school board meeting. That is my pledge. Oops.
