We See the Blowhard Biting the End of His Pen

Quote: "We hear the axe. We see the flame of burning cabins and hear the cry of the savage." Francis Bellamy, author of the Pledge of Allegiance

Figure of Speech: enargia (en AR gia), the before-your-very-eyes figure.

In 1892, Bellamy, the ordained minister who wrote the Pledge and forgot to put "under God" in it, published it in The Youth's Companion along with an "address" that celebrates Columbus's arrival in America. To spice things up, Bellamy uses enargia, the special effects of rhetoric. Instead of saying, "Our ancestors cleared the forest and suffered at the hands of understandably pissed-off natives," Bellamy offers striking detail that makes the audience feel it's right there with the settlers.

Ancient rhetoricians really believed in enargia (it means "vividness" in Greek). They thought it acted as a psychotropic drug to produce mass hallucination among susceptible crowds.

And people say rhetoric's uncool.

Snappy Answer: "Why didn't someone rescue that poor savage?"

Comments

[tom bell]

Francis Bellamy, the ordained minister and national socialist who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance did not put "under God" in it, but he did put "under God" and various other religious references in The Youth's Companion "address" that contained the Pledge. The Pledge is merely a part of a larger address. If he had realized that everyone was going to forget everything but the pledge, then he probably would have put "under God" in that part too. Your readers would enjoy knowing that his pledge was the origin of the stiff-armed salute of the National Socialist German Workers Party (see the discoveries of the historian Dr. Rex Curry, author of "Pledge of Allegiance Secrets"). It was not an ancient Greek or Roman salute, although that remains a popular debunked myth. As you said, ancient rhetoricians really believed in enargia (it means "vividness" in Greek). They thought it acted as a psychotropic drug to produce mass hallucination among susceptible crowds. The Pledge itself could be described that way, as Bellamy wanted the forced robotic chanting/brainwashing to spread socialism worldwide, and as noted above, he met with great success and millions of deaths under Stalin, Mao and Hitler.