The elimination of bin Laden and the routing of al-Qaeda’s leadership since President Obama took office is arguably the singular foreign policy accomplishment of his presidency. His administration achieved much of its success on this front by all but ignoring promises it made to its political base and taking actions even his Republican predecessors seemed to shy away from in scale if not necessarily in scope.

It might not be fair to suggest that President Obama’s admiration for the military expanded with his ascendence to the office of commander-in-chief. The two most significant role models in his young life beyond his own mother were his maternal grandparents in Kansas. His grandfather, he reminds us, served in Patton’s army while his grandmother assembled bombers back home. The experiences that shaped them clearly left an indelible impression on him as a young man and inspire his sense of duty even today.

The president’s address tonight made it clear that he sees the armed forces as a model of what America can be when it tries to be its best. In many ways, I agree. The U.S. armed forces are truly a model of diversity, innovation and adaptability. But what can be said of the armed forces cannot necessarily be said of the armed services.

Of those American institutions that did not atrophy from lack of attention or loss of investment, many have become sclerotic as money, influence-peddling and political polarization have conspired to clog the arteries of our democracy. The resulting death spiral threatens the American Dream and has all but snuffed out our faith in a better future. From his opening remarks to his conclusion, the president called upon Americans to see in the can-do example of our fighting forces the inspiration to revive our democracy and the incentive to renew our nation.

As with previous addresses, the president emphasized the need to establish clear priorities and make smarter choices. He called on Congress to work with his administration to create an America “built to last.” To do this, he called for the restoration of an economy “where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everybody plays by the same set of rules.”

Calls for renewed investments in education, energy innovation and infrastructure took center stage once again this year despite the president’s acceptance of the need to make further spending cuts in other areas, including entitlements. At several points, he noted how government investment had created the very opportunities our men and women under arms have fought to protect and that have benefited the wealthiest among us.

The president’s address not only displayed the rhetorical strengths for which he is rightly admired by supporters and reviled by opponents. His remarks also revealed a growing sense of pragmatism and purpose. The president made it clear that he will meet Congressional obstruction with action. One particularly clear indication of his intentions come from his emphasis on regulatory reforms that will enable some of the savings from defense cuts to be put to work on “nation-building right here at home.”

Before President Obama arrived on Capitol Hill tonight, Speaker of the House John Boehner remarked to the media that the president’s address would amount to little more than a campaign stump speech. Clearly, this president knows the campaign has already begun. And he knows too that re-election is no certainty. But he also seems more committed to reinforcing his accomplishments and taking the fight to his opponents than he did last year.

Something tells me any effort by Republicans to prematurely rewrite Biden’s pre-SOTU summary to serve as an epitaph for this administration — “Obama’s dead, America’a alive” — have another think coming.

Today at 2:00 pm EST/11:00 am PST the first nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System was conducted. Many wonder why it took this day so long to come, but I suspect most who experienced it wonder whether it did any good.

These days, EAS like its predecessor, the Emergency Broadcast System, seems more like a relic of our Cold War past than an essential element of a resilient national telecommunications infrastructure designed to keep people informed. With so many people receiving information on demand through smartphones, tablet computers, their desktop machines, and other “screens,” it’s worth wondering how many people missed the test entirely and remain as blissfully unaware of the system’s efficacy as they were yesterday.

Plans to conduct today’s test have been in development for months (many more months, that is, than we have in a year or maybe even several years). As the date approached, many broadcasters complained the date was coming too quickly. In the end, when it came, the test did little to prove that the technical investments made in recent years to upgrade the system to the latest digital technology and make it compatible with the Common Alerting Protocol will pay dividends, since many participating broadcasters have still not fulfilled the FCC mandate to make changes to their equipment.

I am sure that many of those who did hear today’s test thought it was the same one they hear every week or every month and paid little attention. These local and regional tests, although mandatory for most broadcasters, have never ensured that the system will perform one of its primary functions in the event of a major disaster or national emergency. This test remedies only part of that problem.

Broadcasters are under no obligation to carry most local and regional messages. Beyond installing and testing EAS equipment, participation — with the exception of relaying messages from the national command authority — is essentially voluntary. As such, today’s test really was the first practical test to see whether these investments might really pay-off.

Broadcasters and cable companies have 45 days to report results of the test. Early returns suggest mixed results. That said, it is not too early to ask, what next?

Efforts to rollout a next-generation Commercial Mobile Alert System via wireless (cellular telephone) carriers is already well underway. At least one service provider, it seems, has leaked test messages into the wild. Does this suggest the EAS test is too little and too late?

As citizens become more comfortable exchanging information via smartphones equipped with SMS, MMS, social media, streaming video, and GPS technology, the capacity of public safety and homeland security agencies to both transmit and receive important messages by means other than voice is increasingly outmoded as well as outdated. Investments to catch-up will likely run into the billions of dollars.

Public expectations already exceed public safety communications capabilities, especially when it comes to 911 and public warning and notifications systems. In the current fiscal and political environment, we should be asking not what we need to do about this situation, but how we will get the needed work done.

The past few weeks I have been pondering the growth and spread of the Occupy Movement and the related undercurrent of political disquiet sweeping across the political spectrum here and abroad, and have wondered aloud what they might mean from a homeland security perspective. This week I am in New York to attend the Northeast Conference on Public Administration, which will be focused on the theme “Building Trust and Confidence in the Public Service.”

The paper I am presenting at this conference draws on several themes I have already explored in greater detail in this forum for many months. Drawing on these themes, I question whether the high public trust and confidence typically shown in public safety officers, particularly firefighters, translates into anything meaningful when it comes to public policy and effectiveness. After all, governors and state legislators enjoy incredibly low public trust and confidence ratings, but nevertheless managed to muster the political capital in several states needed to overcome objections by public employees unions and a small but committed band of supporters to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights.

Given my interest in the Occupy Wall Street movement and its spin-offs, it only seemed reasonable to conduct some field research last night in Zuccotti Park. When I arrived shortly before 9:00 p.m., the protesters were still going strong. A police cordon was established around the park perimeter and a strong police presence was evident, including representatives from NYPD’s community affairs unit. The south side of the park was populated by TV satellite trucks from CNN and a couple local stations.

Although activities in the park were lively and loud, they certainly weren’t out of control. Small groups were in evidence amidst the tent city, and small groups of people could be found engaged in conversation. A few protestors on the east end of the park and someone dressed in a Santa suit made sure the TV cameras had something to shoot. At a teach-in or lecture in the southeast corner of the park, the crowd could be heard repeating the speaker’s main points in unison as a means of amplifying the message and projecting it beyond the reach of the meagre sound system.  Tables of leaflets and a lending library at the northeast corner of the encampment provided a large a diverse assortment of propaganda and reading material consistent with unfocused themes filtering through the gathering.

To be certain, the presence of anarchists, truthers, and cannabis legalization activists amidst the throng was clear. But so too were people from 18 to 80 years of age from what seemed a wide range of social, ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds. This was not simply a student protest or a protest led by unemployed workers or one promoting any single social agenda. The unifying theme, to the extend one could be found, seemed to be the overwhelming sense that the vast majority of Americans have grown disaffected with and disconnected from the social and economic system they once believed would ensure their success in exchange for hard work and good behavior.

Probably the most striking characteristic of the gathering was the utter absence of evidence that it was organized in any way. That said, posters at the main entry points promoted what passed for community standards. They seemed more like a plea or a pledge than any kind of command.

As I completed my walk around the perimeter of the park, I stopped for a moment to speak with one of the NYPD officers on the cordon. Officer Sheehan seemed young, but by no means naive or inexperienced. When I asked him whether he was yet to the point of having dreams that he came to work and found the park empty and the protesters dispersed as if nothing had happened, he smiled wanly and said he didn’t think the protesters were that much trouble. “They don’t want a piece of us, and we don’t want to mess with them,” he said.

As we talked, I explained that I was intrigued by his response in light of both my reason for visiting New York this week and coming to the park on this particular night. I told him I was more and more doubtful that public trust and confidence were helpful in implementing public policy even if they are useful to its making. As we talked candidly, I wondered aloud whether the best if not the most we could hope for in the near term was respect for government and its agents as opposed to genuine trust and confidence in their intentions and actions.

As we ended our conversation, Officer Sheehan sighed and said, “Yeah, respect. That would be nice.” Maybe the Occupy protesters are onto something after all.

A couple of weeks ago I questioned the meaning of the growing protest movement that started with Occupy Wall Street and its relationship to the economic discontent expressed in other quarters by the Tea Party Movement. This angered at least a few readers who claim to have moved on from reading this forum regularly.

In a follow-up comment, I noted that despite my sympathy for their message, I was less than sanguine about what the rising tide of discontent on display around the country (and now the world for that matter) might portend for the nation as disaffection spreads from those angry with the government to those who work for the government in our public safety services.

Recent media commentary on the Occupy movements has questioned their sustainability in the absence of clear leadership, a coherent direction, and some sort of decisive action beyond sign-waving and chanting. Others have noted that the movement is doing just fine without these things, and, in fact, has articulated a clear and convincing objective: Ending capitalism as we have known it, at least in the United States. This leads some observers, particularly those who see themselves targeted by the movement, to believe the group is anything but benign and probably not as disorganized as it might seem to some.

This makes me wonder, does this make the Occupy protestors economic terrorists? Some might think so, especially if their activities begin having a destabilizing effect on markets or market actors. The Geneva Center for Security Policy defines economic terrorism as, “varied, coordinated and sophisticated, or massive destabilizing actions [undertaken by transnational or non-state actors] to disrupt the economic stability of a state, groups of states, or society.”

Clearly, the Occupy protestors see themselves quite differently. They have been telling us for weeks now that the real terrorists are the bankers, hedge fund managers, and barons of international high finance who have so thoroughly coöpted and corrupted the engine of democracy that it no longer serves the interests of ordinary people.

Occupy protestors and their supporters have noted with disgust that the number of people arrested at rallies now far exceeds the number charged with crimes arising from the financial debacle that has so ruined our economy. The tactics employed to enforce local ordinances against such misdemeanors as curfew, camping in public parks, excessive noise, interfering with traffic, and tramping through flower beds have often involved the application of force to detain or remove protestors. These actions stand in stark contrast to those used in the detention and prosecution of those accused of felony financial crimes.

Despite police actions in quite a few cities, the American protests seem mild compared to the unrest sweeping some European cities as instability accompanying the debt crises in Greece, Italy and other nations continues. As the frequency and intensity of strikes and riots mounts, one can only speculate as to whether the mood here will turn from gloomy and overcast to stormy.

As we watch the drama unfold here and abroad, wondering what will happen next, it’s worth remembering: One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.

I don’t know how many of you have noticed, but things are getting a bit tense out there. If life inside the Beltway was making you anxious, you might not want to avert your gaze. The view farther afield is not such a pretty sight these days.

With the Tea Party on one hand and the Occupy Wall Street and We Are the 99 percent protestors on the other, a growing proportion of our fellow citizens are actively expressing disgust with the status quo. And this doesn’t even include all the others like No Labels, the Coffee Party Movement and more who in their efforts to re-establish a middle-ground have ended up — often from the comfort of their home computer or smartphone — on or near the edge of a growing disquiet.

This morning I listened in a state somewhere between fury and amazement as Bill Frezza, a venture capitalist and fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, complained bitterly on NPR that those making more than $250,000 a year were being unfairly cast as “whipping boys” for failing to pull the economy out of its tailspin by creating jobs. His full-throated defense of free market capitalism worked about as well as sending the fire department to pour gasoline on a blaze.

If Frezza and his ilk are to be believed, the country has it all wrong: executives are just like entrepreneurs; consumption always precedes production, and employment is an input to a healthy economy not a byproduct of it. And, oh yeah, corporations are citizens too. Of course, Frezza and his friends are the same folks who creatively destroyed not only some of the nation’s biggest corporate brands, but also brought us the savings and loan scandal, the dot.com bubble, and collateralized debt obligations.

After 30 years of vilifying civil servants and public policies aimed at protecting much less expanding the middle class, these economic elites want us to believe that consumers have only themselves and the left-leaning political pawns they elected to blame for the lack of jobs, growth and real competitiveness.

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman and co-author Michael Mandelbaum have another take on this. Their book, That Used to Be Us, contends that four trends underlie our current situation (summary taken from ‘That Used to Be Us’: Tom Friedman’s Rx for America to Get Its Groove Back at Yahoo! Finance):

1. Misreading the end of the Cold War, which was not a military “victory” but the start of a very big challenge to U.S. hegemony.
2. Taking a bad course after 9/11 by focusing on the losers of globalization vs. the winners.
3. Underestimating the impact of technological change which has made the world “hyper-connected.”
4. A generational shift from the “Greatest Generation” who believed in thrift and “sustainable values” to the Baby Boomers who use “situational values” and prefer to ‘borrow and spend’, instead of save.

Friedman and Mandelbaum suggest that the remedy to our current ills lies in what they call the ‘Five Pillars of Success,” outlined as follows:

• Education
• Infrastructure
• Immigration
• Regulation
• Research and development

In all five areas, the government, they argue, plays the key role, not just in jump-starting our economy, but in restoring confidence in our greatness as a nation. They make a compelling case that without competence in these five areas, the nation cannot expect to reclaim much less retain its position as the world’s preeminent power.

About the same time Friedman and Mandelbaum’s book hit the stores last month, James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic, was discussing a damning essay by former GOP Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren and conveying some pretty salient observations himself (see here, here, and here) about the degree of unrest emerging around the country as a consequence of the growing distrust of our political elites.

More than a few commentators have begun to suggest in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways that the Arab Spring could be followed by an American Fall. As homeland security professionals, we might rightly ask ourselves what this means for us. Which side are we on? Do we stand with the state or the citizens?

I don’t know about any of you, but I’m not eager to play the part of the Egyptian Army if Zuccotti Park becomes the new Tahrir Square.

I thought his ideas were worth republishing since the implications of his argument extend beyond Utøya.  What would happen if a multi-event like Oslo and Utøya happened in the United States, and if the person or people who committed the act were not affiliated with our usual ideological suspects?  Does our political genetic code allow us to see through the ideologies that mask terrorism’s explicit goal: to create fear.  Fear, and a profoundly deep sadness that lures us to abandon who we are as a nation.

Falkvinge’s post has been lightly edited; the original, along with links, can be found here.

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As the shock passes into reflection of the Utøya massacre — could anything have been different? — and the grief for and honoring of  the missed and wounded, people will start asking questions as to how this could possibly happen.

Having gone through the methodology used … we can examine one step after another of Breivik’s plan.

I frequently say that power in society is about information advantage. If you know more about your opponent than your opponent knows about you, then you will have the advantage. In this case, Breivik knew how to not look like the nutjob he was.

It’s not even particularly hard. As long as you do whatever horrible deed you plan to do alone, you will evade all wiretapping and data retention. The largest civilian spy program in history is useless against people like Breivik.

It’s a matter of knowing what sets off red flags in the system, and taking active steps to not have them pop up.

Breivik had guns. Three of them: a Glock handgun, a scoped hunter rifle and a shotgun.

Well, yes. So maybe you should have gun controls and strict background checks.

Except Norway has that already. Strictest on the planet, even; same as Sweden. You need to be a flawless, regular and standing member of a licensed shooting club for a full year to get a 9mm handgun license, with a spotless criminal record (Breivik had just a ten-year-old traffic ticket). A hunting license is separate, with extensive and different tests, and apparently Breivik had that too. This doesn’t redflag in itself.

Nobody would imagine that the handgun was planned to be used for point-blank executions with the scoped hunter rifle being planned for teenagers who tried to swim to safety. No program would catch it. Doing so would require mind reading.

Breivik could make tons of explosives. Metric tons.

Well, yes. The nutjob literally bought an entire farm to stay under the radar on this one. Nobody is surprised that farms buy tons of fertilizer; ammonium nitrate, specifically. Nor is anybody surprised that farms need diesel fuel. This was all that was needed, and with a minimum of 8th grade chemistry.

If you are going to prevent either one of these, where do you want your food to come from in the future? Or should we ban the knowledge of chemistry, or perhaps license it? Remove the books on basic chemistry from libraries and censor web pages that mention that knowledge?

Again, it is a matter of information advantage. If you know how to blend in, you will survive in an environment hostile to your intentions.

Which brings us to the last part:

Breivik intended to kill — no, execute — people.

Right.

As despicable as that is, how would you like to catch it, the key word being “intend”? He didn’t speak to anybody about it. Even his parents were caught completely off guard. He planned it alone; for nine full years, according to some sources. We have neither mindreading nor precrime technology.

And yet.

We now have wanton en-masse ubiquitous wiretapping in Europe (specifically Sweden), explicitly for national security purposes, which would pick up a lot of what is said and spoken in Norway as well. We have individual location tracking of all citizens. Still, for all this surveillance which is the most extensive in human history, it was utterly and totally useless.

If we cannot prevent an event like Utøya, the worst killing spree ever in world history and the worst terrorist act in entire Europe in two decades, by any means conceivable — why are we playing this security theater and giving up hard-won civil liberties one after another?

The only thing that would have caught Breivik would have been frequent police raids turning his farm inside out, leaving no room to hide his experiments in chemistry. Turning all industries and homes inside out with sharp regularity might have prevented this. Even still, a person as determined as Breivik would likely have been able to blend in even under such circumstances.

Benjamin Franklin famously said, that “a people who gives up its freedom to gain a little security will lose both and deserve neither”.  But now that it has been shown in the most gruesome, in-your-face way that we don’t even gain a little security by giving up these freedoms, then why are we doing so?

Norwegian Prime Minister Stoltenberg is absolutely right when he says we must fight antidemocratic lunacy with more democracy and more humanity. His quote from one of the young on Utøya, “if one man can show so much hate, imagine how much love we all can show together,” is one of the most statesmanworthy I have seen in my entire life. Both when it came from the young surviving lady right off the island, and from Stoltenberg on repeating it in his official capacity.

It brings me to tears, and to something more important: hope.

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In the pantheon of devastating events, hurricanes rank high. One of the few handles a hurricane offers defenders for at least mitigating loss — if not taking charge — is that you can see it coming, hence the benefit of hurricane watch and hurricane warning. Indeed, official sites exist to explain the difference between the two (such as www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/basics.shtml).

Why not apply similar lessons to riots, such as the sore loser Stanley Cup riot that Vancouver experienced June 15th?

Some fundamental differences compel attention, however. First, a hurricane is a natural disaster. A riot is an induced catastrophe. (Mayer Nudell first breathed life into this distinction for me in his classic Handbook for Effective Emergency and Crisis Management, available at www.amazon.com).

Consequently, there are fewer political impediments to declaring a hurricane warning — an announcement that a hurricane is imminent — than to declaring a riot warning. After all, to declare a riot warning is to admit to failures of planning and prevention — something that Vancouver’s (or any jurisdiction’s) leadership would hesitate to do for fear of inspiring lawsuits and removal from office.

But what about a riot watch? Wouldn’t this be more benign and easier for a police agency or merchant’s association to announce every time a public event is likely to produce crowds, the sine qua non for mobs and riots?

Assuming this to be the case, what is a merchant to do? Again, transferring a lesson from hurricanes to riots may avail.

Everyone has seen certain supplies run out as people prepare for hurricanes, including plywood and duct tape. If I were a merchant in downtown Vancouver, I would anticipate the destructive impact of a possible riot the same way a Floridian counterpart would try to minimize damage to the store in the face of an approaching hurricane. Seal off the shop. Affix plywood panels to cover the display windows, under the likely assumption that if any crowd is transiting the area in large numbers after being stoked on high emotions, liquor, or drugs, the best of glass-break sensors and intrusion alarms will never summon any response force that will be able to arrive in time to defend your property and source of livelihood.

Private security will not be able to reach your store and police will have other, life safety priorities taking precedence over protecting your inventory. So, if you do not see to your own defenses, looters and vandals will likely face no impediment to stealing and destroying your shop and any others in their path. Under the circumstances, making access to your business just a little more difficult than to the next shop may make all the difference between staying in business and going broke.

Here is where I would veer a bit off the hurricane preparations, though. Paint the plywood in the colors of the local sports team, whatever it might be, and then stencil across these plywood window protectors a message of support for the local team. In Vancouver’s case, the message would be, “Go Canucks!” Then, affix a small sign on your front door saying, “Closed for the game. Go Canucks, go.”

What does this do?

For rioters whose inspiration or pretense for mayhem retains even the thinnest connection to the sporting event that drew them to congregate in the first place, your sign is the equivalent of a metaphorical cross before a vampire. Attacking your shop so adorned takes on the symbolic appearance of attacking one’s own team — sacrilege to even a drunken sports fan.

Best of all, this serves your interests equally regardless of whether the home team wins or loses. Remember that riots increasingly break out among exuberant crowds even when they are celebrating home team victories as much as when they are lamenting home team defeats.

Do I have research-supported data guaranteeing this defense will work? Not at all. But compared to the high cost of insurance and potential exclusion of coverage for riot-related damage, a business owner may well feel there is more to gain than lose by trying it out.

-Marine Committee of the Second Continental Congress, June 14, 1777

June 14th is Flag Day.

According to the National Flag Day Foundation,

On June 14th, 1885, Bernard J. Cigrand, a 19 year old teacher at Stony Hill School, placed a 10 inch, 38- star flag in a bottle on his desk then assigned essays on the flag and its significance. This observance, commemorated Congresses adoption of the Stars and Stripes as the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777.

[On] May 30, 1916, [President Wilson]issued a proclamation calling for a nation wide observance of Flag Day. Then in 1949, President Truman signed an Act Of Congress designating the 14th day of June every year as National Flag Day.

You can read this year’s presidential Flag Day proclamation here.

In part, you will see President Obama urges:

… all Americans to observe Flag Day and National Flag Week by displaying the flag…. and to publicly recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America.

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When I was in grade school, I remember we started each day standing by our desks, placing our right hands over our hearts, and in one voice saying:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I think it was the first poem I memorized.

When I entered sixth grade in 1955, after summer vacation, we all had to learn a slightly different poem:

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, with liberty and justice for all.

I was eleven years old at the time. I was not troubled the state required me to start each school day saying I believed the nation was under God. It didn’t bother me because I had no idea what those words meant.

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A month ago I attended a public meeting that began with the Pledge of Allegiance.

For reasons of my own, I left the “under God” part out.  I thought back to sixth grade, and realized I had no idea why the words changed from 1954 to 1955.

In the depth of my historical ignorance, I suppose I figured the Pledge emerged whole from the ferment of the Continental Congress during or shortly after the Revolution.

Wrong.

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According to several sources (here, here and here), the original pledge was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy as an expression of patriotism. (Bellamy was a socialist or a christian socialist, depending on who you listen to.)

The first Pledge read:

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

In 1923, concerned the new crop of American immigrants might interpret the phrase “to my Flag” to mean their previous country, a clarifying amendment was added:

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

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In the early days, the Pledge was accompanied by a military salute.

Here’s how that salute was described in an 1892 magazine article :

At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the flag the military salute — right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it. Standing thus, all repeat together, slowly, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” At the words, “to my Flag,” the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side.

In case you have a difficult time visualizing what the words “the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation” look like in practice, here’s a picture:

In December 1942, the salute was changed.  People were instructed to keep their right hand over their heart.

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In 1954, President Eisenhower heard a minister called George M. Docherty give a sermon encouraging the US to add “under God” to the pledge.

The minister said,

“…I could hear little Muscovites repeat a [pledge similar to the US pledge] to their hammer-and-sickle flag in Moscow with equal solemnity, for Russia is also a republic that claims to have overthrown the tyranny of kingship…. [What is missing in our pledge is the] one fundamental concept that completely and ultimately separates Communist Russia from the democratic institutions of this country. … Once [we add] ‘under God,’ then we can define what we mean by ‘liberty and justice for all.’ To omit the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance is to omit the definitive character of the American way of life.”

Congress eventually agreed with Docherty and Eisenhower and the Knights of Columbus and gave us the current version of the Pledge:

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, with liberty and justice for all.

The bill changing the language was signed by Eisenhower in 1954, on Flag Day

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There has been a lot of criticism over the years about the Pledge of Allegiance.

But in case anyone has problems with the “under God” logic, Congress in 2002 thoughtfully included 16 Findings — as a part of Public Law 107-293 — demonstrating why “under God” just acknowledged the historically obvious.

My favorite finding is Number 16: ignoring the nation’s history with God could “lead to the absurd result that the Constitution’s use of the express religious reference ‘Year of our Lord’ in Article VII violates the First Amendment to the Constitution, and that, therefore, a school district’s policy and practice of teacher-led voluntary recitations of the Constitution itself would be unconstitutional.”

Some people are still not convinced. They want the Pledge to be restored to the way it was said during World War Two. Others think the language should read, “…one Nation, Under the Constitution….”

Still others do not believe we need any pledge:

No truly peace-loving nation would ask its people to pledge allegiance to any flag. Flags are for battlefields: potent symbols of a nation’s military power and prowess. Currently, our nation’s government seems infinitely more committed to the well-being of a piece of colored cloth than it is to the welfare of its own people,

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I am disturbed by the claim that we are a nation under God.  I think the assertion is too small.

If we want to bring God into the national discussion, I have a difficult time understanding why we don’t hedge our bets and acknowledge our entire planet is under God — especially as we evolve from a nation state to a market state.

But if we are not ready to surrender the nation state — and I think I’m still in that group — then I much prefer “one Nation, under the Constitution.”

Our nation has a history of the occasional anti-Catholic, and anti-Mormom and anti-Jewish hysteria. The anti-sharia law movement in this country continues our unfortunate tradition of I-am-anti-your-version-of-god-because-it-is-not-the-same-as-my-version-of god rhetoric.

I do not think God approves of this.

I would like to see Congress remove “under God” from the Pledge and replace it with “under the Constitution.”

When the Supreme Court ruled in 1962 it was unconstitutional for public schools to allow prayer, President Kennedy suggested [see a brief clip here] people who disagree with the Court’s ruling have “a very easy remedy, and that is to pray ourselves and I would think that it would be a welcome reminder to every American family that we can pray a good deal more at home, we can attend our churches with a good deal more fidelity, and we can make the true meaning of prayer much more important in the lives of all of our children.”

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While I am waiting for Congress to act on my suggestion, I will still fly the American flag on Flag Day. I will talk to my children about the history of Flag Day and the history of the Pledge. I will invite them — encourage them — to say their version of the Pledge with me.

Happy Flag Day

Although the economic situation in Germany and Japan are not much better than here in the United States (and some would argue much worse), the stories grabbing the biggest headlines in these countries are very different from those here at home. Indeed one might wonder whether the tables have now truly turned since the end of the Second World War.

Those Americans who worked to defeat the axis powers in World War II have come to be known as the Greatest Generation for their willingness both to make difficult decisions and to make significant sacrifices at home and on the battlefield for the sake of future generations. Their leadership benefited not only our generation, but those too of the nations they fought.

The turnabout decision this week by Germany to abandon nuclear power by 2022 and invest heavily in renewables with a target of supplying at least 80 percent of their domestic demand by 2050 reflects nothing short of a payback on our nation’s post-war investment in rebuilding war-ravaged Europe. Germany’s decision and the actions that must follow are no less ambitious than the mobilization of labor and capital required in the United States to supply the war effort 60 years ago. The German people will only succeed in reaching their goal through a combination of expanded capacity, technological innovation and significant reductions in demand through energy conservation and increased efficiency.

A segment of the population of that other great power of the war era has shown a different kind of foresight and fortitude that reflects a more personal sort of sacrifice. The lingering crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant has fueled the loss of faith in the government and is now mobilizing a segment of Japanese society that one might assume has every right to sit back and wonder what happened to the country they helped build as the successors to the generation defeated by our grandparents. Instead, this generation of retirees and grandparents is volunteering to expose themselves to dangerous levels of radioactivity by helping cleanup the damaged nuclear reactors rather than leaving the job to younger workers who would be more likely to suffer the long-latent effects of such significant radiation exposures.

In both instances, the decisions and actions we see taking center-stage overseas reflect the sorts of values that made our forebears great. At the same time, their presence, even prominence in the news from abroad makes their absence from our own political debate that much more glaring and indeed worrying for our stability, stature, security and future prospects of success.

What sacrifices are we willing to make to maintain our greatness? How hard are we willing to work? How much would we pay to remain an exemplar of the can-do spirit for other nations to follow?

Judging by the crisis of confidence afflicting both the political and economic spheres, it seems the answers to these questions are “not so much.” Our crisis will continue, if not deepen, unless those who can start doing. Americans should not expect leadership of the sort displayed in Germany and Japan this week to come from politicians alone. As the examples of our former rivals aptly illustrate, we need leadership at every level of our society if we are to restore our greatness.

Much of what needs to be said about the skill and courage of the President and those who conceived and carried out the mission has been said many times over in the past few days. How salient is it, however, that we can acknowledge and discuss the basis for our opinions about the performance of these individuals rather than relying solely on our predispositions to trust the opinions of others? In light of the consequences of public opinion on ongoing support for operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, it strikes me a particularly important that people not only can reach conclusions of their own about these actions, but also that they seem to be doing so without any particular help from the punditocracy. (This, of course, in no way deterred the talking heads from babbling, often incoherently, about the whole affair. Despite substantiation of leaks about the subject of the President’s remarks, their distracting dialectic diminished in quality as the interval between the scheduled start of President Obama’s address and his actual appearance became increasingly delayed.)

The policy environment surrounding national defense and homeland security are filled with discontinuities and uncertainty despite bin Laden’s demise. How will we end our involvement in Afghanistan? Will the government of Iraq to extend agreements for the U.S. military to continue advice and support arrangements? How will the administration and Congress resolve their pitched political differences over fiscal restraint and debt reduction without undermining our ability to meet commitments here and abroad?

Notwithstanding the release of some erroneous information that has required correction and elaboration today, the administration seems to have done itself (and us) a huge favor by making as clear as possible the basis of its assessment that al-Qaeda and its affiliates remain a threat to the U.S. and its interests. They have also made it clear that lessons about cooperation and information sharing have been learned. And perhaps most important of all, they have demonstrated the potency of patience, confidence, determination and resolve when exercised in the right proportions.

These lessons reinforce one last point: The success of this operation was not so much the product of superior technology or the investments of vast sums of money (although both undoubtedly helped ensure the careful and skillful execution of this mission), but rather the diligent and precise application of human and social skills in gathering, processing and acting on intelligence, which included precise and scrupulous attention to the most minute details.

Much more of this story remains yet to be told. But this should not hinder our understanding of the extraordinary efforts that led to this achievement nor discourage us from continuing the work required to protect our country and others affected by the threat of violent extremism.