So it is, in fact, not at all “just like” holding up your hand while being sworn in as witness, rather it’s quite a bit different from it. Got it.
And I refuse the gesture because it’s not my flag.
Some of my best friends are Kiwis! Bastard…
It’s actually for both. From the Flag Code:
b. Conduct during playing — During rendition of the national anthem—
1. when the flag is displayed —
A. all present except those in uniform should stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart;
B. men not in uniform should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold the headdress at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart; and
C. individuals in uniform should give the military salute at the first note of the anthem and maintain that position until the last note; and
2. when the flag is not displayed, all present should face toward the music and act in the same manner they would if the flag were displayed.Lucky bastard…
When was that established? More than likely most folks who do it at events do so because everyone else does.
Went to school in the sixties. Was never taught that.
I’m from Massachusetts (one of the original 13 unlike all those square states) and we were not taught to put our hand over our hearts when saying the pledge.
There was a lot of that “hand saluting” going around back then.
Who the hell even says the Pledge of Allegiance, anyway? I don’t think I’ve said it since elementary school. I can’t remember if we said it in junior high. We definitely didn’t say it in high school. So that would make the last time I said it 1990.* I must be one goddamned un-American terrorist.
*We’re learning numbers in my Farsi class and as I result I learned that the girl who usually sits next to me was born in 1990.
dies of old age
She’s going to invoke Sarah Palin?
Yeah, supposedly all you have to do is draw a pentagram on the ground and then wave a dead polar bear over it and poof Palin appears in a puff of smoke.
Representative of the Rest of the World here:
The hand-on-heart thing is weird to us. At best, it’s quaint and a bit over the top, and at worst, it’s creepy and insincere.
For courts of law and the like, you may have to place your hand on a Bible (Actually even then, it’s voluntary as you can “affirm” instead if you like). For the rest of the formal civic duty-type stuff, standing to attention will suffice.
Hand-on-the-heart to merely standing to attention is as a used car dealer’s or born again Christian’s double-handed handshake is to a regular single-handed one.
Congratulations! We must have missed that election. 
[HIJACK]I see you’re in Ann Arbor. Are you taking Farsi at UM? I took Farsi there about a million years ago. Who’s teaching it now?[/HIJACK]
Differnet countries just have different rules of etiquette when it comes to honoring the country and its symbols. I don’t think there’s anything deeper than that.
Except that a significant number of Americans (or American talking heads) think it’s actually significant that Obama gives the shocker or whatever while reciting the pledge…
Yup! My teacher is Behrad Aghaebi. I think he’s fairly new, though, as he’s always comparing Ann Arbor to Austin, where he used to work.
It is significant, because Obama is an American, and so by not doing that sort of thing, he’s violating American cultural norms, and if you were raised, like I and a lot of other Americans were, to believe that saluting the flag that way was a sign of respect that Americans are supposed to show to the United States and its flag, then by not doing it, he’s either expressing disrespect or showing that he’s ignorant of something he should have learned as a kid.
The majority of posts to this thread seem to indicate that it’s not a cultural norm at all, regardless of what the all-but-meaningless US Code says.
He’s a United States Senator, and he’s running for President. I think that’s a pretty fair indication that he’s pretty respectful of his country…
…which brings up back to the OP. He doesn’t put his hand on his heart. So fucking what? Do you really think America or its flag are somehow diminished by that? Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t say the pledge of allegiance at all. Does that mean they hate America?