Why does public debate focus on the wrong questions?

It is not about whether the pledge of allegiance has educational value or is fascist.  It is about whether it violates the establishment clause of the Constitution (as does our form of currency)  and whether (as Governor Patrick allowed in a moment of atypical candor) we don’t have better things to worry about.

People who claim that the pledge is a fundamental part of our heritage of course don’t have much of a clue about history.  The pledge, although first published in 1892, was formally instituted by Congress in 1942 , well after World War I, the Spanish American War, the Civil War, the War of 1812, the American Revolution, the Shot Heard Round the World, the Louisiana Purchase, the founding of the American West, the birth and death of all the Founding Fathers and just about every revered political and literary figure in American History.  It was adopted around the time we were herding Japanese Americans into concentration camps, but let’s not get too sardonic here.

Also, it was written by a socialist (gasp) as part of a proposed celebration of Columbus Day, a day in honor of someone born in another hemisphere who is honored for a discovery he did not make, and in form pledges allegiance to a flag, which is an emblem used for centuries as a signal or identification of armies during warfare. Quite a pedigree….

Then, since I am already in trouble with those who respond reflexively to the soft symbols of simple emotion without marking ideas or feelings to the market of logic, let me jump fully into the quagmire of the just-concluded 9-11 rememberances.  The debate isn’t whether we are better off reliving in detail those events or whether we are best to now — after a full decade — move on to consideration of the future.  The question asks us to elect between two choices which are not choices at all.

How can one not remember?  Most of us do remember and, until we are overtaken by senility, cannot forget.  Modern media will enshrine these events in our collective cultural heads for so long as there is a country here; we even Remember the Maine, the Alamo, 54-40 or Fight, all sorts of elements of history/culture of far less substance.

And how can we not move onward anyway?  The calendar compels no other choice.  We do not live in the movie Groundhog Day.  I bet, since today is September 12, that when (if) we awake next time it will be — September 13, tomorrow!  And although as I have pointed out  we will of course remember 9-11, because of the WAY in which remember  such  things (as emotional mind-bites), that rememberance will not interfere with the functioning of tomorrow (unless you are flying through Newark and trip the security sensors, in which case all is lost).

H. L. Mencken described our country’s general population as “homo boobians.”  It is a harsh sentence, but one worthy of consideration.  It is not so much that we do not know the answers that makes us dangerous to all living things including ourselves; it is that we don’t even know the questions.