The Propaganda We Teach Our Kids

How Glittering Generalities Create Blind Loyalty

The most disarming propaganda is beautiful. And it’s so easy to believe.

A Daily Ritual of Allegiance

Every morning in schools across the United States, children stand, face a flag, put their hands over their hearts, and recite a loyalty oath. The Pledge of Allegiance is a state-sanctioned daily ritual embedded in public life and codified in federal law:

"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."

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Most people know the words by heart, but few stop and ask what they mean. Before you continue, whether you still say the Pledge, stay silent, or just go along with the ritual, answer this—how do you understand those 31 words? Add your take in the comments and compare.

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According to 4 U.S. Code § 4, the Pledge should be delivered with this full ceremonial deference, if you choose to say it. Military personnel and veterans are granted the option to salute. Men must remove hats unless they’re religious.

“The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag...should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. When not in uniform men should remove any non-religious headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Persons in uniform should remain silent, face the flag, and render the military salute. Members of the Armed Forces not in uniform and veterans may render the military salute in the manner provided for persons in uniform.” - 4 U.S. Code § 4

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Christian socialist, during a nationwide push to promote patriotic unity, particularly among schoolchildren and immigrants. It was designed as a unifying performance. The original version referred only to “my flag,” but this was changed in 1923 to “the flag of the United States of America” to eliminate confusion among immigrant students. In 1954, the phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge during the Cold War to create a religious distinction between the United States and the “godless” Soviet Union. Its language has always been strategic.

But rarely, of course, are kindergarten children taught this. Instead, the history and phrases at the heart of the Pledge, like “one nation, under God” and “liberty and justice for all,” are treated as self-evident truths. They’re repeated long before they’re understood. Even for adults with a strong understanding of history, their meaning remains ambiguous. The phrases are aspirational, abstract, or, depending on your politics, outright distortions. The function of the Pledge is to bind people to its ideals, not to clarify them.

The Mechanics of the Propaganda: Glittering Generalities

This is the rhetorical power of glittering generalities, emotionally charged phrases that carry moral weight without clear definitions. They sound universally positive but are deliberately and powerfully vague, because we fill in the meaning ourselves. We assume we agree with what’s being said when, in fact, we may agree with nothing at all. And when you can get millions of people to declare loyalty without ever agreeing on what they’re loyal to or what that loyalty means, you’ve achieved the gold standard of propaganda.

Glittering generalities are everywhere. “We stand for freedom.” “Make America great again.” “I’m pro-life.” “This is about traditional values.” Each one triggers emotional resonance, but the audience is left to fill in the blanks. A 2025 study in the Journal of Pragmatics revealed more about how U.S. Americans interpret political slogans. It found that vague, emotionally charged phrases, like “Defund the Police” or “Free Palestine,” are interpreted completely differently depending on the listener’s beliefs and political identity. This semantic flexibility creates a false sense of agreement where none exists.

The effect is also neurological. Brain imaging research shows when people process emotionally charged political language, especially when it threatens their existing beliefs, the brain activates regions associated with emotion, conflict monitoring, and social identity, rather than areas linked to analytical reasoning. In other words, we feel a political statement’s alignment or misalignment with our identity, but we rarely analyze.

Shared Words, Divided Meanings

When we drill down into these phrases, the unity collapses. To one person, “freedom” might mean gun ownership. To another, access to reproductive healthcare. “Family values” might mean banning LGBTQ+ books, or it might mean guaranteed paid leave. These are radically different visions, camouflaged by shared language.

That is, of course, until the policy hits. Many of the most consequential policies in recent U.S. history have been sold through glittering generalities. Take the phrase “Right to Work.” On its surface, it sounds empowering, as if it protects workers' freedom to choose employment. In practice, however, these laws weaken collective bargaining and undermine the strength of unions. Similarly, “School Choice” evokes images of freedom and parental control, but the policies behind it often strip public schools of funding and exacerbate educational inequality.

And this isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon. In Germany, few phrases carry more emotional and political weight than: “Israel’s right to exist.” It appears in parliamentary speeches and media coverage, often described as Staatsräson, a “reason of state.” Under Germany’s new citizenship law, applicants must explicitly affirm this right, alongside a commitment to protecting Jewish life, fostering peaceful coexistence, and rejecting wars of aggression.

But what does “Israel’s right to exist” actually mean? The safety and self-determination of a people? Unconditional support for a particular government? The right to expand settlements or impose military rule over Palestinians? Its meaning is never clarified because it’s intended to have moral gravity, not clarity. The vagueness discourages scrutiny and shields it from challenge. It fuses identity, memory, and guilt into one inviolable claim. And increasingly, it defines the limits of permissible speech.

What Are We Really Saying?

This is what makes glittering generalities so effective, and so dangerous. They collapse complexity into morality. They create the illusion of consensus while flattening dissent. And they often function less as expressions of shared values than as tools of enforcement against anyone who dares to ask, “What exactly are we agreeing to?”

This doesn’t mean all glittering generalities are inherently dangerous. In moments of collective grief, remembrance, or mobilization, abstract terms like “unity,” “dignity,” or “hope” offer symbolic language for shared experience. They can hold space for meaning too raw to name. The problem is when they go unexamined, especially when used to sell war, suppress organizing, or strip rights in the name of vague ideals.

To understand just how flexible these phrases are, consider the Pledge itself: “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

This could be read as:

A patriotic affirmation of divine authority, national unity, and moral strength. Liberty means gun rights and free markets. Justice means law and order. To refuse to say the Pledge is to disrespect the nation.

But another interpretation could be:

An unfinished promise to extend civil rights to those still excluded. Liberty means bodily autonomy and equal opportunity. Justice means dismantling systemic inequality. To say the Pledge is to demand that these ideals finally be realized.

Both interpretations use the exact same words. Both feel true to the people who believe them.

So what happens when we strip the Pledge of its shiny veneer and read it literally?

“I personally promise my loyal support and commitment to this piece of cloth in front of me that symbolizes the country of the United States of America and also its particular form of government which exists within this country. I believe this country exists under the authority of a supreme being or higher power based on the general idea of the divine in monotheistic religion, cannot be split or divided, and contains freedom, fairness, and lawful treatment for every person, without exception.”

When stated literally, the Pledge loses its glow and no longer offers comfort. Instead, it becomes a series of assumptions: that belief in God is universal; that the nation is indivisible, despite its fractures; that liberty and justice exist for all, despite overwhelming evidence otherwise.

Its power was never in its accuracy. It was in what we were willing to believe it meant. Unless we’re prepared to question the phrases that stir us most, we will remain captive to the slogans that most deeply shape us.

Image used with full commercial rights by the author.