John Wayne Recites the Pledge of Allegiance

This week, the US cel­e­brat­ed its inde­pen­dence. And so it’s per­haps fit­ting to head into the week­end with John Wayne, an Amer­i­can icon, recit­ing and inter­pret­ing the Pledge of Alle­giance. Long live the Duke…

Find more vin­tage audio and video in our col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons.


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Comments (3)
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  • CJ says:

    It would have been nice if he would have said it cor­rect­ly. There is no com­ma (and thus no pause) between “one nation” and “under God”. Far too many peo­ple make that mis­take.

  • ben says:

    does it real­ly mat­ter. I would rather hear some­one say it with the pause whole heart­ed­ly where you know it means some­thing to them, then just some one to recite it and mean noth­ing.

  • Hortense says:

    The rea­son that a pause is felt after “one nation” is because orig­i­nal­ly there was a com­ma after that. The words “under God” were insert­ed in 1954 dur­ing the Cold War to draw an ide­o­log­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion between us and the “god­less com­mu­nists”. Let’s not blame The Duke for the hys­te­ria of that era.

    That inser­tion seems to be the mis­take — it says that unless you’re Judeo-Chris­t­ian, you can’t be a patri­ot. It’s in con­flict with the First Amend­ment and the spir­it of “E Pluribus Unum” of our found­ing fathers.

    I think we should all take a pause every time we get to that spot in the pledge to acknowl­edge the voic­es that aren’t being heard in our coun­try. That would be the Amer­i­can thing to do.

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