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| Site of the speech, more than half a century later |
[Originally published on September 10, 2006, without an image.]
This morning I came across the text of my eighth-grade graduation speech. Typed single-space on seventeen 3x5 cards, its opening paragraphs say that the graduating class has just recited “The American’s Creed,” written by William Tyler Page. [I later found out that Page wrote it in 1917 for a contest, which he won, in competition with over 3,000 other entrants.] The eighth-grader I was says he’s privileged to speak on the second of the creed’s two paragraphs: “I therefore believe it is my duty to my Country to love it; to support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its Flag; and to defend it against all enemies.”
This “American’s Creed” didn’t sound familiar to me now, so I looked it up on the web. The Daughters of the American Revolution page I consulted revealed a first paragraph that was familiar:
I believe in the United States of America as a Government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed – a democracy in a republic, a sovereign nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable, established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.The DAR informed me that Mr. Page described the creed as “a summing up, in one hundred words, of the basic principles of American political faith...as set forth in its greatest documents, its worthiest traditions, and by its greatest leaders.”
I was rather shaken to read, a few cards, further on: “To me, the most heart-warming gesture of American youth takes place each morning when they place their right hand over their heart, stand at attention, and say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. When I think of what the Flag stands for, a thrill runs through my being.”
When I wrote and delivered those words fifty years ago, I’m sure I must have meant them. I hadn’t developed any of the cynicism that I subsequently learned from Watergate, El Salvador, Chile...the ascendancy of the ultra-partisan Republican Party. And especially from the reality that an over-privileged, under-deserving, intellectually challenged, morally hypocritical incompetent can occupy the White House.
Addressing Page’s “respect for the Flag,” the eighth-grader that I was goes on to describe what its colors stand for, what its stars and stripes signify. Then he lists the wars in which many paid a price in blood to defend the Flag from its enemies. Nearing the conclusion, he asks, “What is the greatest enemy of freedom-loving people of the world today?” His answer, in 1956, was, of course, communism.
And, fifty years later, I think I may have discovered why I feel such loathing and disgust for George W. Bush—the man who wraps himself in the Flag and desecrates language for partisan advantage while he savages our government of, by, and for the people to favor the super-privileged and sends the sons and daughters of the unprivileged off to die in a conflagration onto which he, out of ideological blindness and lack of understanding, smugly tossed the match.
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[Two days later, on September 12, 2006, I posted a follow-up:]
Retrieving a Childhood
In response to my 9/10 post, a friend wrote to me: “You got a post out of [that speech], but you got so much more. You were fortunate enough to be able to retrieve a tangible piece of your childhood. That’s priceless. Hang on to it, always.”
I think the speech occasioned even more than the retrieval of part of a childhood. When I read those 3x5 cards, I was struck perhaps most of all by the indication of the kind of civic indoctrination that was surely going on in the community where I had attended the eighth grade. The graduating class (and everyone present, probably) recited “The American’s Creed” that evening, and my speech was extremely patriotic. While all that is positive, I was also struck by the impression that the 13-year-old boy who wrote and delivered that speech could very well have grown up to become an active member of the Republican Party. I even wondered whether George W. Bush could have given a similar speech at HIS eighth-grade graduation....
Provocative.
| Copyright © 2006, 2020 by Moristotle |
I was raised around and on military bases. My father and uncles found in both WWll and Korea. When I joined the Army, I believed and felt as you did giving that speech. Then Vietnam came along and the world changed. And, it never stopped changing...not for the better. I miss the feeling I had back then, even knowing that it was false.
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