When I was a kid the flying ace veteran "attendance officer" at my high school hauled me out of the auditorium and threw me up against the wall and 'splained to me with his cigarette breath in my face about why he had a problem with me playing grab-ass with my buddies while the pledge was being recited, him being a patriotic veteran and all. Well, I come from a house full of patriotic veterans, various uncles drinking themselves to death over the horrors they saw liberating the camps, dad with medals up the gazatch (incl. the combat infantryman's badge of which he was proudest), my bro just as highly decorated as a 101st airborne heavy weapons platoon sergeant in Viet Nasty, a conflict I protested after my discharge from the USMC... shit. I knew then and I know now that the PlejAlleejuns is jingoistic cant. I take great pride in my American citizenship and have great hope for continuous improvement of our seriously messed up system, but this wag-flaving symbolistic nonsense is a wall we run into that inspires fear in otherwise loving and thoughtful hearts. When they come for me, the bottom line is I still don't take oaths. It's my country, and my loyalty belongs to the people and the land, my respect to the constitution and the courts, not to some banner stolen in a weird capture the rag contest in Florida last fall.