In high school, I had a friend who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and it was one of the more scandalous events to strike my small-town Louisiana high school.
I’d been saying it every morning in my public school classroom, hand half-heartedly raised to my heart and monotone recitation. But when the class stood before morning announce- ments, he stood there, hands at his sides, respectfully declining to take part as we droned on.
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands; one Nation under God, indivisible, with lib- erty and justice for all.”
It wasn’t until a 10th grade civics class that I started to think about what those words meant.
I consider myself to be American. I come from a middle-class, modest, small-town Louisiana family. I worked hard in school and at my minimum- wage, after-school job. I get my taxes deducted from my paycheck, and I get my tax return in the mail every spring.
But I also recognize a handful of problems in America. Specifically, in how the day-to-day lives of its citizens are affected by political and religious forces that seem to have a neverending army of people and financial contributors.
Today, I do not recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Instead, I will stand silently and respectfully while others around me do. I do not feel comfortable
saying the phrase “with liberty and justice for all” because of my views on several social, racial, economic and gender-related issues. But one of the things I have learned to love about my nation is that we have the potential for change.
It is not American — nor is it patriotic — to blindly recite words without questioning their credibility. I would not consider myself American if I did not have hope for a better country, nor would I consider myself patriotic if I believed the rules written by men who didn’t know what a germ was could be wholly applicable to a country 200 years later.
In a 2011 Pew Research Report on the Views of the Nation by generation, it was found that only 32 percent of our generation says the United States of America is the greatest country in the world.
America isn’t a table in the cafeteria where all the popular, smart and successful kids sit. It’s a country founded by the people, for the people. Sowhyareweinanyrushtobe“the greatest country in the world?”
And why are we assuming that a generation of youth aware of its countries faults is a negative thing? If you look at the criteria that would make a country “the greatest country in the world,” we aren’t exactly dominating each category.
According to country profiling site Index Mundi’s 2012 comparison of 183 countries across several demographics, America is 22nd in literacy, 18th in HIV/AIDS related deaths, 6th in adult obesity and 50th in life expectancy.
We are second worldwide in health expenditures and first in oil consump- tion. So if you asked me, a member of the millennial generation, if I believed America was the greatest country in the world, I would have to say no.
I will give us credit for being one of the most influential. Somehow, America has accomplished what every punk kid of average intelligence has done in class — getting on everyone’s nerves and affecting their days.
Sure, we sometimes use our cool-kid status to keep the bullies from picking on the smaller students, but if we’re voted class president, it’s probably going to be because of that military power, not intelligence.
It should be concerning that my generation doesn’t consider itself patriotic. But instead of asking why your cleverly packaged American dream isn’t being bought up by millennials for the highest price, ask what older generations are doing to keep us from molding the country into our own.
Jana King is a 20-year-old communi- cation studies junior from Ponchatoula, Louisiana. You can reach her on Twitter @jking_TDR.