The Freedom Not To Speak

I recently connected with an old friend whom I have not seen since High School. We were assigned to the same home room and my most vivid memory of him was his refusal to attend to the one common ritual uniting almost all of the public schools in the United States: The Pledge of Allegiance. Each day when the loudspeaker implored everyone to please rise, he sat. When the words of the Pledge were recited, he remained silent in his seat. Now, his small act of protest might have been merely a diversion, or a quirk in most classrooms. But our home-room teacher had a son serving in the Marines, as he was proud to tell us, and he took it as a personal affront that my friend failed to "recognize his son's sacrifice." Our teacher would literally stand over my friend. My teacher's face would turn a complexion that would put a beet to shame. His veins would protrude. His eyes could not hold back the hatred he felt for the student. He would scream at the boy to stand up, "Say the pledge!" But my friend would remain silent and would stay still in his seat.

Now, at the time I took offense to the whole Pledge ritual myself. While I stood, mostly not to make problems, I remained silent. No one bothered me because I did not draw attention to myself but I was secretly thrilled at my friend's act of intransigence. Not because I was ungrateful to America opening its borders to my grandparents who were refugees fleeing Nazi Europe but rather because I considered the whole exercise silly and contradictory.

First it has never made sense to me to pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth. If I were to pledge allegiance to anything it would be to the Constitution and the philosophy on which this nation was built. In fact I have taken an oath as an attorney to defend and support the Constitution and do so proudly.

But more paramount, it made no sense to me that a country that expresses its pride in individualism would feel threatened by some student choosing not to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States. This country uses the concept of "freedom" as a mantra. It is not without good cause that America expresses pride in its freedoms: freedom in thought, freedom in religion and freedom in speech. But how is freedom advanced by the pledge? Public School are the largest welfare project under administrative control. The pledge is an exercise of mass verbalization that would not be out of place in a third-world dictatorship. The recitation proves nothing except for adherence to authority. It does not create good citizens, it creates automatons.

The whole pledge exercise reminds me of the scene in the life of Brian where the orator says "you are all unique" and the crowd repeats "we are all unique." My friend would be the halting voice following which answers, "I'm not."

Freedom of speech means nothing without the freedom not to speak. If one cannot dissent without fear of punishment then freedom is illusory. Whatever his motives, my friend's silent protest, and the fact that he was able to go through high school despite of it, speaks to what makes this country unique in the world and in history. It's too bad our teacher didn't understand that.