There do seem to be plenty of parallels; enough for me to feel confident that the mechanism is the same. I wonder though if these systems were implemented acci

There do seem to be plenty of parallels; enough for me to feel confident that the mechanism is the same. I wonder though if these systems were implemented accidentally or in a cool calculating way. The religion one seems like something that could bootstrap itself from true belief (if you honestly think that you have life figure out, chances are you are going to tell your kids), but the pledge one seems more calculated to me. There just really is no reason to have young children pledging allegiance to a flag and its government.