Political Quotes

“I am about to yield to my friend from New York (Ms. Meng), but I am inspired by the remarks of the gentleman from Wisconsin, especially about the word ``Republic'' which, of course, comes from res publica, the public thing. He happened upon a subject that is of a lot of interest to me because I wrote a paper about it when I was in sixth grade. The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a radical Baptist minister named Francis Bellamy--I am not sure if the gentleman is aware of that--on the 400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the new world. Reverend Bellamy, who was an abolitionist in Vermont, was concerned about the continuing salute of the Confederate battle flag in the southern States. He wanted to write a flag salute that would be unifying for the union, and he wrote: I pledge allegiance to my flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, with liberty and justice for all. You notice what is not in there. He did not have ``under God.'' That was added in 1954 by Congress several weeks after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. In any event, I am not quite sure what the relevance is of the gentleman's invocation of the Republic or of Ben Franklin and the famous vignette about him saying: If you can keep it. Ben Franklin was, of course, a big supporter of immigration to the country, although he did display an anti-German bias in some of his writings.…”