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Can Sarah Palin Say the Pledge of Allegiance in Good Conscience?

by Daniel Herman
Mr. Herman is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Central Washington University. He is currently a research fellow at the Clements Center at SMU.

Can Sarah Palin say the Pledge of Allegiance in good faith? Can she take the Oath of Office in good faith? No, she can’t, as I’ll explain below.

Remember when in 2003 Michael Savage said he'd like to rip “traitors” from their cars and beat them senseless because they exercised their constitutional right to speak against the war? Unlike Savage, I want to talk about real traitors: enemies to the Constitution.

As you HNN readers probably know, Sarah Palin has supported the idea of allowing Alaskans to vote on whether to leave the U.S. McCain’s flacks insist that she never really wanted Alaska to leave, but even they--extraordinary liars--refuse to say whether she supported a vote on the matter. No one can ask her about it because she won’t dare talk to the press, but obviously she has supported such a vote, else the McCain people would have said otherwise.

More evidence: as you also probably know, in 2006, Palin told members of the Alaskan Independence Party (as in independence from the U.S.) that they were “inspirational,” adding “God bless you and keep up the good work.” Their chairman called her “our candidate.” For seven years her husband, her “closest advisor,” was a member of the AIP (see the LA Times of September 3, 2008).

What most Americans do not know is that the very IDEA that a state has the right to leave the union is an attack on the Constitution.

Remember that the Civil War was a war against secession first and only later became a war against slavery. In 1861, secessionists were deemed traitors. Palin, however, thinks they are “inspirational.”

What did the founders say about the right of states to secede? Precious little. They left the question open in order to get the Constitution ratified. The Constitution, however, reads “We, the people,” not “We, the states,” which confirms that sovereignty lies in the people of the U.S., not in the states. Too, the Constitution was intended “to create a more perfect union” than the one that existed under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. A union that was perpetual could hardly be made more perfect by being made temporary.

You cannot have a union if you give states the right to leave. Every time a state is angry with Washington, it will want to secede

Because the founders failed to address secession head-on, they left citizens to address it through war. That happened in 1861. The Union lost 360,000 men-and its greatest president putting down secession. The Confederacy lost 260,000 defending it.

Afterward, the U.S. passed the 14th Amendment, in part to prevent any future attempts at secession. The 14th Amendment forbids a state to “abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” If a state leaves the Union, it abridges (really abolishes) those privileges and immunities. In other words, a state CANNOT secede. To attempt to do so is to attempt treason.

Now consider: the oath of office will require Palin to swear on a Bible to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Secessionists are domestic enemies. I suspect that some have ties to militias that would love to bring down our government. I'm not saying that Palin has such ties, but it is likely that some AIP members do.

The founder of the AIP said he had “no use for America or her damned institutions,” and vowed not to be buried on U.S. soil. He was murdered while purchasing plastic explosives (like a drug deal gone bad, but in this case an explosives deal gone bad). One wonders what he was planning to do with those explosives.

If Palin cannot take the oath, neither can she say the Pledge. The Pledge commits us to “ONE nation, under God, INDIVISIBLE,” words explicitly meant to deny the right of secession. If Palin recites the Pledge while believing in the right of secession (even if she does not think Alaska should secede), she violates its meaning. Either she is too shallow to realize the Pledge’s meaning or she doesn’t care.

This is the Pledge that conservatives bitterly defended when it was suggested that “under God” be removed (a phrase added in the 1950s). Yet they ignore the words “ONE nation” and “INDIVISIBLE.”

Sarah Palin cannot take the oath of office or recite the Pledge of Allegiance without making a mockery of both of them, yet somehow our press has ignored that fact.

President Palin? God help us.