It's "I pledge allegiance" not "I pledge of allegiance".

Post Reply New Topic

The attempted divide was illegitimate and responded to with overwhelming deadly force.
It's indivisible and that's backed by a demonstrated willingness to use force to address attempts at dividing it.

If the US adopted the logic you're espousing that would amount to granting legitimacy to the traitors and their secessionist movement. The attempt at dividing America didn't succeed, the US remained the sole legitimate nation fighting.

It's "One nation UNDER GOD" thanks to the McCarthy witch hunts in the 1950s. Let's not forget our own Spanish Inquisition, perpetrated by misdirected patriotism.

I knew some kids in high school who got the "indivisible" part of the pledge wrong. They would think it was "individual" or "invisible".

I think this depends on how you define "wrong".
Since the point of language is to communicate, if people understand you, then you're not "wrong".
However, even if you're understood, you're still saying the exact opposite of what you mean, which makes you sound like a moron. It's like if you're talking about Chinese history and you mention as a side note that 2+2=5; it doesn't affect what you're trying to say, but it still makes you sound like a moron.
And it's not an idiom--idioms are not meant literally, but they mean something at least distantly related to their literal meaning. Not the exact opposite of their literal meaning.
This mistake bothers me a thousand times more than spelling errors or apostrophe misuse, because every time someone uses it, they make it more socially acceptable to look like a moron. I could care a LOT less about that.

You're ignoring tone (which generally provides additional context) but are insisting it's the other party that sounds like a moron despite you being the one who's intentionally choosing to ignore part of the information.

That's a bold strategy, but it doesn't sound like it's working out well for you. It sounds like a needless source of frustration, especially since you fully understand what the other party means.

It's one thing to pretend to not understand sarcasm to mess with someone who's being insulting. It's even understandable when the failure to notice sarcasm is genuine, but to just ignore it and act like the other party is in the wrong will cause most people to identify one of you as the idiot, but not the one you're hoping for.

You make some good points. I suppose it's mostly an irrational pet peeve. I have plenty of those, from Americans using non-American spellings to people who aren't handicapped pressing handicapped buttons instead of just opening doors. It especially bothers me when people say things that aren't true, even if it doesn't affect the point they're making. It doesn't really matter, but I still can't stand seeing someone say something false and not be corrected. I think saying "I could care less" would fall under that umbrella.
If I had to argue for the rationality of this pet peeve, I would say that when people (unintentionally) say the opposite of what they mean, it demonstrates that they are not thinking about what they are saying. It may not matter in this scenario, but when people never think about what they're saying, a lot of stupid things can result. So by saying this, they're demonstrating a larger flaw in the way they speak.
But mostly I think it's just an irrational pet peeve. To be fair, though, I'm a lot more lenient about the way people talk than my parents are.

So had the rebels won, it wouldn't have been considered divided? If not a full blown war, what exactly constitutes a nation being divided?

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Corporate States of America, and to the Republicans for which it stands, one nation, under debt, easily divisible, with liberty and justice for oil." -- Wiley Miller, as Danae Pyle, in Non Sequitur, 2005-01-24

No. It wouldnt "work that way".

If the "Rebels had won" we would be two separate nation states now. North and South. Each with its own "pledge of allegiance", and each (perhaps) calling itself "indivisible" within itself. Just like the USA as it exists now changes the words of "My Country tis of thee" from "God save the queen/king" to "of thee I sing" because we broke from Britain 250 years ago and thus have no reason to "pledge allegiance" to their monarchs anymore.

You can have loose federations, like the European Union, that dont claim to be "indivisible". You can Brexit out of, and then even reverse Brexit back into the EU, if you choose, even though the EU operates in many ways like an uber nation state overseeing its member states. So any patriotic song or POA of the EU just wouldnt mention "divisible/indivisible".

And there have been cultural and linguistic regions that fail to unite politically.

Both Germany and Italy were both just collections of feuding little countries for centuries UNTIL they were famously united (around the time of our Civil War)by Bismark and by Garibaldi (respectively). So Germany and Italy (like the US) celebrate their recent hard won unity today.