McCain's remarks about the Pledge of Allegiance




DEAR FRIENDS, IF EVER A PICTURE WAS WORTH A 1000 WORDS. PLEASE READ.




John McCain's remarks about the Pledge of Allegiance
In light of the recent appeals court ruling in California, with respect to the Pledge of Allegiance, the following recollection from Senator John McCain is very appropriate:





'The Pledge of Allegiance' - by Senator John McCain
'As you may know, I spent five and one half years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. In the early years of our imprisonment, the NVA kept us in solitary confinement or two or three to a cell. In 1971 the NVA moved us from these conditions of isolation into large rooms with as many as 30 to 40 men to a room.


This was, as you can imagine, a wonderful change and was a direct result of the efforts of millions of Americans on behalf of a few hundred POWs 10,000 miles from home.


One of the men who moved into my room was a young man named Mike Christian.
Mike came from a small town near Selma , Alabama . He didn't wear a pair of shoes until he was 13 years old. At 17, he enlisted in the US Navy. He later earned a commission by going to Officer Training School Then he became a Naval Flight Officer and was shot down and captured in 1967. Mike had a keen and deep appreciation of the opportunities this country and our military provide for people who want to work and want to succeed.


As part of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some prisoners to receive packages from home. In some of these packages were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing.


Mike got himself a bamboo needle. Over a period of a couple of months, he created an American flag and sewed on the inside of his shirt.

Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike's shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance.


I know the Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most important part of our day now, but I can assure you that in that stark cell it was indeed the most important and meaningful event.


One day the Vietnamese searched our cell, as they did periodically, and discovered Mike's shirt with the flag sewn inside, and removed it.


That evening they returned, opened the door of the cell, and for the benefit of all of us, beat Mike Christian severely for the next couple of hours. Then, they opened the door of the cell and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well as we could.


The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept Four naked light bulbs hung in each corner of the room.


As I said, we tried to clean up Mike as well as we could. After the excitement died down, I looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim light bulb with a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was my friend, Mike Christian. He was sitting there with his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received, making another American flag. He was not making the flag because it made Mike Christian feel better. He was making that flag because he knew how important it was to us to be able to Pledge our allegiance to our flag and country.


So the next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance, you must n e ver forget the sacrifice and courage that thousands of Americans have made to build our nation and promote freedom around the world. You must remember our duty, our honor, and our country.'


'I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisable, with liberty and justice for all.'


PASS THIS ON... And on... And on! You can even send it back to me, I don't mind, because its worth reading again.
oh......and then you have this clown, who refuses to place his hand on his heart and say the pledge......
Subject: Remember this picture on election day!
Let's all remember this on election day...if you have family serving in the military, make sure you send it along. I don't care for Hillary, but at least she shows respect for the country she lives in!
I had heard about this but a picture is definitely worth 1000 words! God save us!!!

Senator Barack Obama, Governor Bill Richardson, Senator Hillary Clinton and Ruth Harkin stand during the national anthem.
Barack Hussein Obama's photo (that's his real name).....the article said he REFUSED TO NOT ONLY PUT HIS HAND ON HIS HEART DURING THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE, BUT REFUSED TO SAY THE PLEDGE.....how in the hell can a man like this expect to be our next C ommander-in-Chief

Well done...and thank you for posting. Remember "character" matters and in November Americans will vote accordingly

Too many Americans believe that type of story is too corny and obsolete in our "enlightened" day and age. God help us.

bsli, i thought from posts on the forum about bush doing a good job that you and i had much different opinions about politics, but on this i agree whole-heartedly...good post!

Originally Posted by gfmucci

Too many Americans believe that type of story is too corny and obsolete in our "enlightened" day and age. God help us.

To dovetail on a great post.... The day all of this becomes "corny," then we really don't have a country anymore. One of the best story-songs I have ever heard mirrors this. How many of the situations described in the song have you done? For me, not enough of them!

Have you ever spent the late afternoon watching the purple shadows deepen in Arizona desert, or seen a herd of Elk plow their way through waist deep snow on a cold Colorado dome?

Did you ever see the sun go down in Hawaii, or seen the stormy waves break over the rock bound coast of Maine, or have you ever see an eagle fly up out of the mists of Alaska, or a big October moon hanging full over the still Dakota badlands?

Have you ever tasted the gumbo in New Orleans, Bar-B-Que in Carolina, or the chicken wings in Buffalo?

Have you ever had Brunswick stew in Macon, or cornbread in Burmingham, or brisket slow cooked over hill country mesquite wood?

Did you ever drink the water from a gurgling branch in Utah, or stand on the mountain above El Paso Del Norte and see the lights twinkling clear over into Mexico?

Did you ever jangle horses in the pre dawn stillness of a perfect Texas day and watch their shodded hooves kicking up sparks on the volcanic rock, or tended a trout line on a foggy Carolina morning, or heard the distant song of a lovesick whippoorwill On a pristine Tenneesee late night?

Have you seen the faces on Mount Rushmore or stood at the Vietnam monument?

Have you ever crossed the mighty Mississippi, or been to the daddy of them all in Cheyenne, Wyoming, or seen the mighty Vols run out on the football field on a chilly autumn afternoon?

Did you ever see the Chicago skyline from Lake Shore Drive at night, or the New England follage in the fall, or the summer beauty of the Shenandoah valley, or Indiana covered with new snow?

Did you ever see a herd of wild horses running free across the empty spaces in Nevada, or caught a walleyed pike out of a cold Wisconsin stream, or marveled at the tall ship docked in the harbor at Baltimore?

Did you ever see the early morning dew sparkling on the Blue Grass, or, the wind stir the wheat fields on a hot Kansas afternoon? or driven the lonely stretches of old Route 66?

Have you ever heard the church bells peal their call to worship on an early Sunday, in some small town in the Deep South, or pass through the redwood forest just as the sun was going down?

Have you ever been to Boise or Batchlee or Beaufort or Billings?
Have you ever passed through Sanford or Suffolk or San Angelo?
Have you ever seen the Falls at Niagara, the Ice Palace in Saint Paul, or the Gateway to the West?

This, then is America! The land God blesses with everything; and no Eiffel Tower, no Taj Mahal, no Alps, no Andes, no native hut, nor Royal Palace can rival her awesome beauty,
her diverse poplulation, her monolithic majesty.

America the Free ! America the Mighty! America the beautiful !

I pledge alligence to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all!

This Charlie Daniels' masterpiece always chokes me up....

I couldn't agree more. GOD bless america--Steve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance

The Pledge of Allegiance sure has an interesting history.

"The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855-1931), a Baptist minister, a Christian Socialist, and the cousin of Socialist Utopian novelist Edward Bellamy (1850-1898) who wrote Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897). Bellamy's original "Pledge of Allegiance" was published in the September 8th issue of the popular children's magazine The Youth's Companion as part of the National Public-School Celebration of Columbus Day, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of America, conceived by James B. Upham."

This is from the Wikipedia article.

God bless America ---- Man does not live by a turkey in every oven or a color TV set in every home. Man lives by faith and hope and love, by the star on the horizon, by the trumpet that will not call retreat.
- E. Merrill Root

I can never get enough of America. Yes I am a Veteran like so many other guys on TOTV, but there is something other than that, bigger than that. Soldiers are part of a brotherhood and by default love their country. America is part of us all and we are all part of America. Don't let me hear God Damn, America and don't let me see some idiot burning our flag. Good and decent men and women lost their lives for that flag and America.

Johnny, you posts brought back a lot of memories. One was in 1969. I was born and raised in KC. I'd traveled a bit to the east coast and even eastern Canada, but never west. I had finished Tech School in Wichita Falls, TX, and was on my way to my first duty assignment at Holloman AFB in Alamogordo, NM, from home in KC. I was young enough in those days to routinely drive all night. I entered New Mexico around sunrise and started driving into the mountains as the sun was getting higher and brighter. As I looked around in awe, something suddenly hit me, basically a blinding flash of the obvious. To this day, I remember say out loud in amazement, "My God, the mountains really are purple!"

Still today, I enjoy nothing more than my occasional drive-abouts when I can see someplace new, be it PA Dutch country, the Upper Peninsula, the Badlands and Mt. Rushmore, or Crawford, TX.

I agree with all these posts.
Glad to be American.
:bigthumbsup: :bigthumbsup: