“Actually it has its roots in socialism, which is why I never participate in the pledge.”
Brother that is some interpretation....please expound.
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/whats-conservative-about-pledge-allegiance
...From its inception, in 1892, the Pledge has been a slavish ritual of devotion to the state, wholly inappropriate for a free people.
It was written by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist pushed out of his post as a Baptist minister for delivering pulpit-pounding sermons on such topics as “Jesus the Socialist.”
Bellamy was devoted to the ideas of his more-famous cousin Edward Bellamy, author of the 1888 utopian novel Looking Backward. Looking Backward describes the future United States as a regimented worker’s paradise where everyone has equal incomes, and men are drafted into the country’s “industrial army” at the age of 21, serving in the jobs assigned them by the state.
Bellamy’s novel was extremely popular, selling more copies than other any 19th century American novel except Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Bellamy’s book inspired a movement of “Nationalist Clubs,” whose members campaigned for a government takeover of the economy. A few years before he wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, Francis Bellamy became a founding member of Boston’s first Nationalist Club...
Look up Francis Bellamy.