Seventy-five years ago, at the height of America’s involvement in World War II, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that guaranteed public school students’ right to refuse to stand in patriotic salute.
Donald Trump’s vision of America clashes sharply with the original intent behind the Pledge of Allegiance, penned during the Gilded Age to promote equity, tolerance, and progressive ideals.
The narrative is based on the collective denial that the American Republic was founded on the enslavement of people of African descent along with the expropriation of the land and property of the Native Americans, he said in an interview.
