The U.S. pledge of allegiance was written by a socialist.

I must confess I knew nothing about the U.S. pledge of allegiance and not much more about the Canadian oath of allegiance for that matter. However while surfing around I came upon a remark that the U.S. pledge of allegiance was actually written by a Christian Socialist. I wonder if Glenn Beck knows that. I checked just to make sure and indeed it is true:

""The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855-1931), a Baptist minister, a Christian socialist, and the cousin of socialist utopian novelist Edward Bellamy (1850-1898).

Bellamy's original version read as follows:

1892
"I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all."

From the start there were critics who wanted to make things clearer so the preposition "to"was added so the pledge is to the republic as well as the flag.

1892-1923

I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all."

In 1923 critics again decided that it should be clear which flag my flag was and so my flag became the flag of the United States. But then which United States maybe it was the United States of the Philippines or the United States of Lower Slobovia so the wording was changed to the United States of America. So we end up with:

1924 to 1954

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all."

In 1954 the phrase was added "under God"

1954 to Present
"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.

The pledge has been challenged by many groups from atheists who of course object to the under God provision to Jehovah's Witnesses who object to pledging loyalty to any but God. Others complain that the pledge violates the constitution by establishing religion.

In Canada we do not have a pledge of allegiance in schools as far as I know but parliamentarians, many other government officials, and new citizens take an oath of allegiance. Our oath strangely enough does not even involve pledging allegiance to Canada but to the Queen!

This has resulted in some rather anomalous situations. There is a separatist party in Quebec called the Bloc Quebecois. They are pledged to separate from Canada and to establish Quebec as a sovereign state. Of course these separatists took the oath of the allegiance to the Queen that symbol of anglophone dominance in Canada! In 1993 we had the spectacle of her Majesty's Loyal Opposition being composed of a party that was bent on breaking Canada apart and severing ties to her Royal Majesty! She had in fact a disloyal opposition. Nevertheless it functioned just about as well if not better than the regular loyal oppositions did. If we ever go to war with the UK no doubt we will do so with troops duly swearing allegiance to the Queen unless we bite the bullet and change the oath to saying something about allegiance to Canada. That would probably be too revolutionary for us.

So the tales of the U.S pledge and the Canadian oath are rather different but interesting. At least we know now that the socialist trajectory of the U.S. is not due to Barack Obama but to Francis Bellamy.