Flag Day - a demurral
In deference to the coercive power of "patriotism", I will avoid the harshest words I could use and just say that I am at best 'ambivalent' about things like Flag Day.
I grew up in a time of great patriotism. I feel, or at least remember through a haze of nostalgia, the enthusiasm for the war effort of the 40s, and the deep emotion summoned up when Kate Smith started to sing "God Bless America" in 1938 "as the storm clouds gather far across the sea", as Irving Berlin's song's intro put it. I pledged allegiance (before "under God" was added), saved and recycled cans and tinfoil, helped in our Victory Garden, and solicited the purchase of War Bonds -- I won a prize for that in the 9th grade. And I still remember the words "Any bonds today? Bonds of Freedom, that's what I'm selling in the USA. Scrape up the most you can, here comes the Freedom Man, asking you to buy a share of freedom today." (Thank you, Irving Berlin, for that song, too.)
Yep. When I was a child, I thought as a child.
Then I saw the films of the firebombing of Tokyo, the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, observed an audience applauding at newsreel footage of a burning Japanese soldier running out of a cave and falling, in flames, after a flamethrower attack on the island of Iwo Jima. I read American Indian history and learned that Jacksonian democracy included ignoring the Supreme Court and stealing Cherokee land for its gold, and then sending that civilized people on its long Trail of Tears. (I expected Nazis to act like Nazis. But Americans?) Slavery. Jim Crow. Lynching. Palmer raids. Using the army to shoot strikers - and WW I veterans. And later I experienced McCarthy. And Mississippi.
In between, I lived for a while on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in eastern Utah and saw people who felt defeated, and surrounded by their conquerors. One friend, a veteran, told me how much he had liked being stationed in Japan, among other short, nonwhite people who didn't dump on him because he was a Ute. One night when I was with his father, an alcoholic, the father spent the night drinking and shouting out military drill orders, reliving the glory days when he was a cadet officer at a government boarding school for Indian boys, and crying and sobbing in frustration because that was the best it had ever got for him as regards "achievement". They were of a brilliantly intelligent family living in a semi-desert area where the Utes had few economic resources, and little scope or hope. Not long after I went back east, my veteran friend died in an automobile accident, driving drunk. The passengers who died with him included a teenage cousin, another very bright and dead-ended young guy. Empire is a gift that keeps on hurting.
Then I observed the long postwar history of US militarism, invasions, subversions, and support of killer regimes and killer insurgents. The scale was and continues to be immense, but the essentials were unexceptional. That's what empires have always done, in one form or another.
Still, I'm not a disloyal USAnian. ("American" is such an imperious commandeering of a bi-continental term.) When I look at photos of the Civil War or photos and film of our 20th century warfare, I feel great empathic sorrow for all those who were chewed up in the pursuit of whatever idealistic or patriotic visions they had.
Then, in the 70s, when I worked for the Peoples Bicentennial Commission as the Midwest organizer/PR person, I carried the flags that the PBC used - the "Don't Tread On Me" flag that the "Tea Party" rightists have rediscovered, and the original 13 stars-in-a-circle Stars and Stripes. The flags went with the PBC slogans of Economic Democracy, Worker Self-Management, Own Your Own Job.
While the flag has become, de facto, an expression of empire and dominance, it's not a great idea to let extreme nationalists own it. I like to see it associated with leftist dissent. While I wouldn't ever display the flag all by itself, I'll show it when it's accompanied by signs like "A Living Wage is a Moral Value", "War Isn't Working" or "Support the Troops: Bring Them Home Now." (The first two are bumper stickers on my car.) And "End Corporate Personhood", my special love. On a bulletin board, I have two other bumper stickers that I like: "Get Corporations Off Welfare" and that oldie but goodie "I'd Rather Be Smashing Imperialism". Oh, and "Tax the Rich".
With messages like that, I'm willing to display the flag. "Winning it back" isn't enough if we don't radically change its connotations. (Though "winning it back" is misleading in that, in a sense, we never had it. It's always been a flag of empire: I live in "The Empire State".)
So, I think that for progressive Christians, the flag should be a subsidiary element. I see it pragmatically as another arena for creating a little cognitive dissonance and for challenging patriotic myths. While there were radical elements of the American Revolution, which we celebrated in the PBC, the Constitution went in a more conservative direction -- though the Bill of Rights helped to redress some of the balance, despite it's having been frequently violated. So when it comes to "sacredness", it's far from competitive with what "Modern-Ancient"/Dave Metz wrote about in his comment on Flag Day, "I don't".
We really need to get off our violence kick. And soon. I like what Billy Talen has written about that. He's the performance artist known as Rev. Billy of the Church of Life After Shopping (formerly the Church of Stop Shopping). Rev. Billy is running as Green for mayor of NYC. Yesterday he wrote: "At this point in our history, gradualism is corruption".
I suspect we don't have a lot of time for real change before really bad change overtakes us. And, despite my cheerful disposition, I'm not optimistic.
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Comments
Count me a dissenter
While many good points have been made on both sides of the issue, I also demurred.
I am a disabled US Army veteran, and while I have never been blindly nationalistic, I have served my country out of respect for those freedoms that she does indeed strive to protect.
But as I grow older (or perhaps just more contentious) I find myself more and more unwilling to overlook my country's faults. Furthemore, as a follower of Jesus, I cannot therefore swear fealty to any country or any leadership other than Christ.
As I cannot envision Jesus waving the American flag, neither can I....
Pax,
R
I understand and do not understand
Roger,
I understand your views, and accept them in the personal validity from which they arise. What I do not understand is how the idea of flying the flag in churches got into this discussion. It certainly wasn't my intent. I fly it only in my front yard, and that to honor the nation which has, since it's founding 3 centuries ago, been a beacon of hope for millions, has inspired creation of a number of new nations. What it stands for may in fact be just one more factor in what has taken place on the streets of many nations in the past couple of decades, the streets of Tehran being just the latest.
I, too, could not see Jesus carrying the American, or any flag. Yet in Maryland if you do not fly the flag in church you lose your state tax exemption. Hard to believe? Yes, but it's true. I have had to personally put one in place. Sad but true.
Rich
Exactly!
"As I cannot envision Jesus waving the American flag, neither can I...."
Perfectly stated.
The Flag
There was a time, perhaps when I was more idealistic and less pragmatic, that I would have agreed. Now though I realize we have to focus on what the flag and our country could stand for. We have always been an ever evolving work in progress.
I would submit that if we really want to forward progressive ideals and values we have to respect the flag, not get crazy about it, just respect it, and show ourselves to be as patriotic as the next American. I have a button that says "Peace is patriotic". It is important that people know you can be for peace and still be patriotic.
As the Beatles once said, "If you go around carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow".I think it is important for progressive political activists to demonstrate that we love our country as much as other patriots and respecting things like Flag Day or the 4th of July is a way to do that.
re: The Flag
I don't see any real conflict, Jim, between what you just wrote and what I wrote, or what Matt wrote.
By all means, let's focus on what flag and country "could" stand for. Your "Peace is patriotic" button is part of a reframing of patriotism that fits in with the various slogans that I would want as part of any flag display.
On second thought, though, we do have one signficant difference of opinion -- it's about the USA as "an ever evolving work in progress". I'd say "yes" to "a work in progress" if all that was meant by the phrase was "incomplete". But I have difficulties with the optimistic view that the nation's evolution is a form of progress. Some things have changed for the better but many, perhaps the most determinative ones, may well have changed for the worse. You know the litany of woes.
For one example, regarding torture, see Noam Chomsky's piece in the current Z Magazine, under the category heading of Historical Amnesia: The Torture Memos - Torture has been routine practice from the early days of the Republic
And so it goes.
How we view Flag Day depends on how we view the flag
I've been reading this debate on the flag with interest, and I it all depends on how we view the flag and how we view our country. I'm with Jim on this issue, but I see where Bill is coming from. I liked what Bill wrote:
While the flag has become, de facto, an expression of empire and dominance, it's not a great idea to let extreme nationalists own it. I like to see it associated with leftist dissent. While I wouldn't ever display the flag all by itself, I'll show it when it's accompanied by signs like "A Living Wage is a Moral Value", "War Isn't Working" or "Support the Troops: Bring Them Home Now."
I've never viewed the flag or our country purely on militaristic terms. America is not perfect. But then neither is any other country. There is a dark side in American history of slavery, of Jim Crow, of the genocide of Native Americans, of Robber Barons and foolish Imperialistic adventures in countries like Cuba and the Philippines.
But there is also a rich tradition of dissent among reformers and radicals in the U.S. Though they were not perfect, I admire the Founding Fathers. I admire Thomas Paine's Common Sense and Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, George Washington were men I admire.
The American flag to me is reformers like Susan B. Anthony, Robert La Follette, Bayard Rustin, and Jane Addams. It is radicals like Emma Goldman, Max Eastman, Stokely Carmichael, and Malcolm X. It is Mark Twain, Grace Paley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It is Thoreau's On Civil Disobedience. We look at the speeches of dissenters from Harvey Milk to Eugene Debs to W.E.B. DuBois to Martin Luther King Jr. and they all were trying to get America to live up to its highest values.
Bill is right to point out America's faults. I hate the imperialism and racism and the corruption of corporate interests as much as Bill does. But I still would proudly salute the flag because of American dissenters who have made our country a better nation. To me, they are the real America.
Angelo
The meanings of the flag
That's fine, Angelo, as regards your personal set of meanings. And I like that set. That set of meanings overlaps with mine.
BUT: the more public meaning doesn't include Emma Goldman or Malcolm X or any of the other reformers and dissidents we both like. (In a Nation magazine "political personality" quiz, I scored an Emma Goldman rating. And I took the assassination of Malcolm X in a more personal way than that of MLK Jr.] So when we display the flag, it would seem to be best to do it in some sort of association with our dissident heros and heroines, and with at least one or another of our dissenting views. That way, we aren't blatantly reinforcing the ultra-nationalist and imperialist meanings of the flag. And we're making a statement not only to our domestic audiences but, potentially, to international audiences which are likely to have much more ambivalent or hostile responses to the showing of our country's flag.
Also: in talking about the USA's "faults", perhaps we take too superficial a view. Are they flaws in a basically good system? Or do the good ideals that we like to honor, for all the mitigating effects they have, mainly provide a cover for what is from its foundations a not-so-good system? From my study and experience, I have to conclude that Empire is an essential operational principal throughout our history. The City On The Hill is a lovely idea. But I see Babylon and Rome.
For example, the Constitution protected slavery in order to create strength through unity. (Through the 3/5 of a person provision, it gave slave states enough extra seats in the House to assure them of disproportionate power. It would have been more in the slaves' interests not to have counted them at all as persons upon whose numbers the size of a state's Congressional delegation depended.)
Perhaps a weaker nation would have been better in the long run. (The Articles of Confederation may have been too easily maligned: the Anti-Federalists look pretty good to me in retrospect.)
And maybe Lincoln was wrong in putting The Union first. (His role as the Christ-like figure in our national Civil Religion serves to highlight for me the competition between civil religion and other religion. I'd say that fundamentally it's quite an antagonistic competition between ethical systems that aren't really compatible.)
And given our respective current roles in the world, doesn't Canada look like a more humane and less dangerous nation than the USA? Was our Revolution such a necessary enterprise, after all?
My skepticism about national power has good Biblical precedents. Consider the story of Samuel and Saul. When the people asked for a king, Samuel berated them. He pointed out that they would become like other nations, and be exploited by their monarchs. As 1 Samuel chapter 8 has it, it wasn't just Samuel who was angry:
"The Lord said to Samuel, 'Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them....Now then, listen to their voice; only - you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.' So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king."
And there followed a list of a "train of abuses" that could well fit into a future Declaration of Independence.
Granted, another strain in the Bible celebrates the kings. Despite Biblical excoriations of various bad kings, we still have the royal psalms, in which the king, in his coronation, is "begotten" that day by the Lord. And the Biblical narratives move on from there to Christ the King, the king against worldly kingdoms, which seems to link right back to Samuel and the words against kings.
More on that later, perhaps.
the Flag, the American system and American ideas
Thanks Bill for the insightful comments. I think we both agree to what we want the flag to mean, as I think Jim and Matt and others. While I do not think the majority of people within this country view the flag as imperialistic, I do think it does often bring out ultra-nationalistic feelings among Americans. I remember during the 1980s how Reagan exploited the flag and how the elder Bush used the Pledge of Allegiance as an issue in the 1988 elections against Dukakis. I remember being exasperated at all that fake patriotism, and I can understand how you would not want to be associated with that either. Conservatives have not just co-opted the flag, but they've also co-opted the image of Christianity and of patriotism, and I think it's about time that Progressives reclaim them.
On the flag issue, I agree with you that we have to take back the flag from ultra-nationalists and bring the flag more towards the tradition of dissent and the working class. You may be right that the flag is not usually associated with radicals like Malcolm X or Emma Goldman, but it has been associated with other people from the left like Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. One way in which we could reclaim the flag and patriotism is through the arts. In the 1930s, Thomas Hart Benton, a New Deal Democrat, painted the lives of the farmers, workers, sharecroppers, and the average Americans. I think it was Woodie Guthrie who wrote "This Land Is Your Land" and wrote songs about Americans struggling in the 1930s. Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, and John Mellencamp, all fairly liberal, have continued in that tradition of writing songs about farmers and the working class. They are all artists to the left of the political spectrum who used their art to link America (and by implication the flag) to working class and progressive concerns.
You wrote, "So when we display the flag, it would seem to be best to do it in some sort of association with our dissident heroes and heroines, and with at least one or another of our dissenting views." I agree. One of the things that we have to do is to teach the average American how much the work of radicals and dissenters have improved our society through their agitation for change. Howard Zinn's books and Ken Burns documentaries have both done a great job of that. Spike Lee's movie on Malcolm X gave a lot of good exposure to a generation that wasn't around when Malcolm X was alive. I think through the works like these, perhaps one of these days people will see Malcolm X and Emma Goldman when they look at the flag.
I respect what you're saying about how our system is often used for imperialistic and ultranationalistic purposes. I do think we have a difference on how we we want to change that. You wrote "...do the good ideals that we like to honor, for all the mitigating effects they have, mainly provide a cover for what is from its foundations a not-so-good system? This is one of the things I've learned over the past year and a half about the two different strands of the Left, the difference between liberal reformers and radicals. Both see the same problems in the political and economic system and both agitate for change. But the liberal reformer basicly sees the system as sound in spite of its flaws, and fights to reform the system. Radicals see the system as irredeemably bad and want to change the system. By temperment, I'm closer to being a liberal reformer. If the Nation political personality quiz is correct, you're more of a radical (you'll have to send me a link to that quiz).
I consider myself a liberal reformer because I see the faults of America as flaws in a basicly good system. I think the Constitution is basicly sound. You're right to criticize the Constitution for the 3/5 rule towards African Americans, and how that set up a House dominated by Southern states. But the main argument used by the South to protect slavery, and later Jim Crow, is the States Rights argument. State and local governments are just as likely to be tyrannical and take away rights as the Federal Government. John Adams made the argument that a strong Federal Government is necessary to protect individual rights. As an example of this, after the Civil War, the Federal government worked for the rights of the freed African American population in the South. When Reconstruction ended and the Federal troops were withdrawn from the South, state and local governments took away the legal rights of African Americans and set up Jim Crow laws to oppress the minority population.
The Articles of Confederation was based on a series of sovereign independent states only loosely in confederation with the other states and it was a disaster. The Constitution was created because so many people were dissatisfied with the Articles. Within the Constitution, many felt there were provisions that could end slavery. Benjamin Franklin believed the welfare clause of the Constitution allowed federal intervention to end slavery; John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln believed the war powers of the executive office allowed for similar federal intervention for abolition.
Though I consider myself more reformer than radical, I think both groups need each other. Liberal reformers like Harvey Milk, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert LaFollette, Franklin Roosevelt all tried to work within the system to try to make change. But they needed the agitation of the radical activists on the streets, like Larry Kramer, Stokely Carmichael, Emma Goldman, Betty Friedan, or Malcolm X to push the liberals and to agitate the public on the dire situtions. There is always that friction between liberals who want more gradual changes and radicals who see a need for more immediate and drastic changes.
There are times, like the 1930s and today, where there is an opportunity for great and long lasting progressive change. This is a time when we need radical agitation to push Obama and the Democrats for greater change. It's good that progressives are pushing for single-payer health care as an alternative to Obama's public insurance plan. It's good that progressives are pushing for greater changes in the banking and financial system. It's good that progressives are pushing to end the wars in Iraq and Afganistan. Maybe as they agitate and protest, they could wave the American flag with placards for immigrant rights or single payer health care, associate the flag with dissent. Apply a very good idea of yours.
Angelo
I'm with you on this one
Without disrespect to the many who will disagree, I'm afraid I'm with you on this one. Patriotic nationalism verges on idolatry all too often, and though the flag certainly has a valid place, we as Christians must be very, very careful about what message it sends when we fly it. And we must never, ever forget that the Kingdom of which we are citizens has as its symbol not a flag, but a cross: not a patriotic banner of empire, but a reminder of the survival of our hope despite empire's efforts to destroy it.
You make a great point about using the flag to create cognitive dissonance. And you are right -- it can be a subsidiary element. But if and when we as Christians choose to fly a flag, we must do it with a specific purpose and recognize the dangers of employing such a volatile symbol.