"When I was growing up in south Alabama in the 1930s and 1940s and later serving as a youthful Army enlisted man I took pleasure in voluntarily reciting the Pledge of Allegiance because it meant that I could (a) honor as my flag that of the United States, not that of the Confederate States of America; (b) celebrate the fact that, because of the Union victory in the Civil War, we were 'one nation, indivisible'; and (c) most important of all, declare my pride in a country that stood for liberty and justice for all, not the slavery and injustice that was part of my region's heritage.

I stopped reciting the pledge after 1954. That was the year the Congress, in the midst of McCarthyite hysteria, inserted 'under God' in the Pledge. For one thing that seemed a violation of our republic's commitment to the separation of church and state; for another, forcing the new form of the Pledge offended the sense of liberty and justice of American citizens who didn't believe we were a nation under God or who objected on religious or other grounds to pledges.

We should have learned long ago that both genuine patriotism and authentic religious belief arise more securely from inspiring leadership and free choice than from state coercion. It is good that Senator Barry has withdrawn his bill. His angry assertion that it was 'pinkos' on the House Education Committee who sabotaged it must strike anyone familiar with Virginia as both absurd and disheartening. On the other hand, it is true that Francis Bellamy, a former Baptist minister who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892, was a socialist.

Paul Gaston (electronic email, February 15, 2001)