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Sieg Heil!

Tuesday, 11 Mar 2008 at 3:26 pm

Dale McGowan, author of Parenting Beyond Belief, gave me one more reason to dislike the pledge of allegiance. Take a gander at the original gesture for saluting the flag:

8O

Dale’s smarter than I am, but I’m not going to take just his word for it. This set off my urban-legend alarms, so to keep up my skeptic street cred, I had to look for another source. I found a FoxNews article to corroborate Dale’s fishy story:

The original gesture when reciting the Pledge was not the current right hand held over the heart, but the “Roman salute” — a movement of the right hand away from the heart until it pointed away from the body. That fell out of favor when the Fascists in Italy and later the Nazis in Germany adopted the same salute.…

In 1942, soon after America entered World War II, Congress officially endorsed the Pledge of Allegiance and instituted the current hand-over-heart gesture.

To be fair, we used the straight-arm salute first, so they’re the copycats. :P

Actually, if you prefer your history with a hint of conspiracy theory, Rex Curry has a lot to say and provides some provocative visual aids:

[girl scout porn]

I bet fewer people would be complaining about the Boy Scout uniform if more girls like Kate had been in their troop. (There’s more of Kate in her uniform, if you dare.)

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6 Comments

  1. mel said,

    March 11, 2008 @ 6:28 pm

    Yeah, it seems any aspiring empire worth its oats gets the Roman thing going. I recall thinking as a kid that the national symbol — the bald eagle — was unique to the US. The bald part, yes, but the eagle no.

    What cracks me up too is when folks take offense at America being called an empire. American exceptionalism knows no shame. :P

    BTW – the first porno I ever saw had a boy scout theme. It was altogether too much for this eagle scout.

  2. C. L. Hanson said,

    March 12, 2008 @ 5:28 am

    Did you see the trackback linking to this post that showed up on Z. D.? It’s the line about seeing more pics of Kate in her uniform. So all these Mormon guys (with their secret porn “problems”) are trying to have a serious discussion of scouting, and you linked ‘em straight to scouting-related porn — you naughty one!!!

    This is how we exmos wear out our welcome on the bloggernacle… ;)

  3. Jonathan Blake said,

    March 12, 2008 @ 8:25 am

    America is an empire. If we don’t like that, then we should start acting differently.

    That trackback was purely unintentional, I promise. :)

  4. Kullervo said,

    March 16, 2008 @ 7:00 am

    Also, the evil crew of the Enterprise used that salute in the mirror universe during the episode, “Mirror, Mirror,” which is pretty much the most awesome original Trek episode ever. Except for “Arena.”

  5. Jonathan Blake said,

    March 16, 2008 @ 11:57 am

    Spock with a goatee was pretty awesome.

  6. Kullervo said,

    March 17, 2008 @ 9:40 am

    Hell yes.

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