Some years ago now, when I was a child, just beginning public school in the 40’s, we all began the school day the same way.
We all stood ... and repeated out loud ...
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands ... “
(N.B., this was later added to with “... one Nation under God, ...).
And, yet today, we have seen and heard the news of the need to “Save our Democracy” ...
Does no one read Plato’s “The Republic” anymore, especially
Part Nine - Imperfect Societies - with their various forms of government and their transitions?
As a spoiler - following the “Democratic Character” of “versatile but lacking in principle” comes “Tyranny”.
Down by the Riverside
(A South Carolina Slave Community)
Charles W. Joyner
University of Illinois Press
ISBN 0-252-01058-2
1984
From page 4:
” ... I am acutely conscious, here on the Waccamaw, that
the river and the forest are the same river and forest
that silently witnessed events that took place long ago.
It was here, on the Waccamaw, in the shade of some of these
very same trees, that Spaniards and Africans are said to have planted in 1526 the first Old World settlement in what is now the United States - Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon’s ill-fated San Miguel de Gualdape. It was here on the Gualdape, as the Spanish named the river, that Africans were first brought to this country as slaves, and it was here that first slave revolt in what is now the United States took place. ...”
"... Later, as head of the communications section of the navy general staff, he would play an instrumental part in designing the "Red" and subsequently the "Purple" machines that were to be used for enciphering Japan's most secret diplomatic traffic."
Layton, et al., And I Was There, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, NY, 1985, page 50.
So far as known today, the distribution of "Purple" machines: the Brits got three, CAST got one, ... Pearl Harbor got none.