Ooh, this is good stuff, from the letters page on AndrewSullivan.com:

Contrary to one of your other reader letters, the pledge in schools is not an “expression of their religious views” or even an expression of patriotic views in general. The pledge is ritualized in schools (and forced in many states) precisely because these children do not understand or hold these views. If they did, then they would freely and informally express them and no one would consider it important to have a ritualized coerced pledge. The pledge in schools is pure and simply an authoritarian exercise in indoctrination and an attempt instill both allegiance to the nation (not democratic principles) and allegiance to the authority of the dominant monotheistic conception of God.

In other words, the school pledge is an extremely un-American ritual that is identical in every way to the kinds of blind indoctrination that we despise in other authoritarian societies.

Of course, getting supporters of the pledge to deny their position is un-American is half the fun.