I pledge allegiance to the cow?

I pledge allegiance, to the cow, of the United States of America.

We are a nation centered around our flag. American's today believe that anyone who defiles a flag is a communist Al Qaeda member, who hates America and all it stands for. In America we seem to almost have a flag fetish. I tried to find another country that had such strict etiquette with regards to their national flag, but I was unable to find one. As a matter of fact, I only found one sight that talked about the etiquette of other nation's flags other than America.

While A might stand for Apple Pie or An Archer, the US flag stands for freedom and democracy, to Americans at least. But I ask, would things be different if we made a pledge to a different object? Would we still care so much about flags? Instead, what if Francis Bellamy decided that America's national symbol was not the flag, but the cow. Now we find ourselves pledging allegiance to the cow of America. After 9/11 there was a back order of cows because of the upwelling of patriotism. There are numerous laws that tell you how to handle your cow and how to dispose of an old one. This sounds rediculious because we have been reciting the pledge almost daily in primary school. I believe this is one of the reasons why flags are so important in American culture.

We started every school day by pledging our allegiance to the flag. Crain talks about how these images are ingrained in us from childhood. Passing on our culture and heritage. Crain says that "the child is similarly the medium through which the alphabet permeates culture." (p.56) We can see how the previous generations try to instill upon us the importance of the American flag.

We have the idea that the flag is the symbol of American, but it could just have easily been another figure. We try to convince others that the US flag represents liberty and freedom, but wouldn't a cow do just as good of job?