"My Country, Right or Wrong"

Some famous guy said that, but I don't remember who.  Another famous guy, I believe it was Robert E. Lee, was offered a commission by both the Union and Confederate armies.  He decided that his loyalty to his state, which I believe was Virginia, took precedence over his loyalty to the United States.  I can see his point because Virginia was Virginia before the United States was the United States, but the same cannot be said about Illinois and Michigan.

I once read on Wiki or someplace that the Pledge of Allegiance was controversial when it was first proposed, which I believe was around the 1930s.  That surprised me because I always assumed it came out of the Civil War because of the "indivisible" part.  In the early version, pledgees were supposed to hold up their right hand with the palm wide open.  I can see how that would give the Pledge a bad name with the rise of Hitler a few years later.  Truth be known, Hitler didn't invent the NAZI salute, he copied it from the ancient Romans, which is probably what the supporters of the Pledge were thinking.  Nevertheless, they changed it to the hand over the heart salute to pacify the people who weren't so sure about the Pledge in the first place.  Logically, we should be pledging allegiance to the Constitution instead of the flag, but little kids in kindergarten or first grade don't know much about the Constitution and everybody knows what a flag is.

Another famous guy said that patriotism means being loyal to the President only so far as the President is loyal to the Constitution.  That's what I was taught in elementary school.  I don't remember studying American History in high school, but we got plenty of it at old Sawyer Elementary.  My sister once told me, "In elementary school they taught us that America was always right, in high school they taught us that America was sometimes right and sometimes wrong, and in college they taught us that America was always wrong."

I agree that open borders will never pass in today's political climate, I just threw it out there because I can't think of any other alternatives.  I think we can agree that the present system is not working, about half the people think it's too strict and the other half think it's too loose.  Can either of my esteemed colleagues think of something else that might work?  I like the idea of Trump's Wall in theory, but it probably won't pass, and might not even work if it did pass.  I seem to remember reading that, at Ellis Island, they made the ships wait at anchor in the harbor and brought them in one at a time when they were ready for the next one.  I was thinking of something like that with the Wall but, the more I think about it, if the asylum seekers felt safe waiting for months on the Mexican side, they wouldn't be seeking asylum in the first place.

Here's another link from the "mysterious app":
https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAzg72l?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare