The Pledge of Allegiance has always given me a creepy vibe, but as Lewis Black once said, it's used now as a type of "coffee for third graders." In other words, it gets them up and helps focus their minds. I don't so much object to it being used in that way as long as people are given the option to opt out of it (which they are). I'm pretty sure the POA came about as a response to nationalist movements in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries (and also as a way to help encourage recent immigrants to adopt a loyalty to the new country). And, yes, the "under God" phrasing was added in the 1950s as an intended counterbalance to "godless" Soviet communism. Hardly "foundational."
Anyway, my opinion is the same as the one Justice Jackson articulated in 1943:
"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us."
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)
Anyway, my opinion is the same as the one Justice Jackson articulated in 1943:
"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us."
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)
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