"One Nation Under God (Except for the Blue States)"
Tuesday, August 2, 2005 at 08:29AM
Figaro

flag shirt.jpgQuote: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible…"

Figure of Speech: Parenthesis (puh REN the sis), the by-the-way figure

Parenthesis means "insertion" in Greek. It lets you insert a thought within a thought. The Pledge of Allegiance contains a literal parenthesis: Congress inserted "under God" in 1954, 57 years after a socialist(!) minister wrote the Pledge.

Advocacy groups want to insert more parentheses. Some pro-lifers want the Pledge to end "with liberty and justice for all, born and unborn." Personally, we’d like "liberty and justice for all, except people who drive while talking on their cell phones."

Snappy Answer: "'One nation' and 'indivisible' seem a bit out of date, don't you think?"

Article originally appeared on Figures of Speech (http://inpraiseofargument.com/).
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