Under God

The Supreme Court ruled recently on a case that attempted to strike the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.

The words "under God" that were added during the 50's to differentiate us from those godless commie pinkos.

Let's look at the pledge, shall we?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
[So far, so good. Sort of weird pledging allegiance to a symbol, but we can live with that.]

and to the republic for which it stands:
[OK, this line is out there for literalists like me, thank you.]

one nation
[This seems to play on the idea of unity. I'm starting to wonder if the pledge was written around the time of the Civil War, as a single nation was in question then]

under God,
[Take that you Ruskies! God's on our side, beyotch!]

indivisible,
[Again with the unity. Wait, did you think it was "individual"? I'm pretty sure it's indivisible. It makes better sense to me that way, anyhow.]

with liberty and justice for all.
[Just a bit of filler there. Sounds good, even if it's not particularly true. Everybody knows liberty and justice is for those who can afford it.]

In actuality, the pledge is mostly filler. If we diagram the sentence, the subject is "I". The verb is "pledge". The direct object is "allegiance". Indirect object is "the flag". All the rest is flowery crap describing the indirect object.

The phrase "under God" contradicts the "liberty" later on. After all, the Congress shall make no law establishing religion, now, should it?

The fascinating thing to me, is that the spirit of the run on sentence that is the pledge is that it is very clearly an optional statement. You can choose to pledge or not. No one is required to recite the pledge. What is the pledge exactly? It's not a requirement of citizenship. It's not an oath that we take. Can someone explain to me what the pledge is legally?

*Google turns up this great short history of the pledge. Turns out that the pledge has been modified a bit over the years, and was created by a Christian Socialist!