Put Out No Flags
Rothschild, Matthew
Put Out No Flags BY MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD Patriotism is like religion; those who believe in it view the rest of us as sinners, condemned to purgatory— or at least to an uncozy predicament in the here...
...Unfortunately, we'd succeed only in suffocating ourselves...
...From this, they conclude that our identities are entwined with these institutions and, to some extent at least, owe them an obligation...
...Of course, the leftist choir could sing its own stanzas—and good stanzas they are, about civil liberties and voting rights, freedom drives and labor struggles—but these would be drowned out in the deafening coda of U.S.A., U.S.A...
...Now some political colleagues ask us to forget all that, to lay it aside, or to attribute it to a sinister sibling, nationalism...
...they're all great countries," Milton Mayer used to say, knowing that such sentiments lead to Verdun and Nuremberg, Dresden and My Lai...
...It's the Brussels-sprout theory of personality...
...soldiers who fell in the fetid conflict of Vietnam...
...This is sheer folly...
...The United States can kill two million Indochinese, but Americans concern themselves only with the less than 60,000 U.S...
...we can admit it...
...citizens and not a whit for inhabitants of other countries...
...Our obligations should be to ourselves and our fellow living beings, not to some bloodless concoction of bygone rulers...
...No matter the duplicity involved, if we want to effect political change and gain the support of our unenlightened fellow citizens, we should wrap ourselves in the flag...
...Something's not right about that, and that something is patriotism...
...Communitarians secretly and at times unconsciously pray for authprity and order...
...you've got to eat what's put in front of you...
...Trying to extricate the virtues of patriMatthew Rothschild is managing editor of The Progressive...
...they distrust individuals, and so they erect institutions to contain them...
...Or if it can, you won't be left with a porcupine...
...It can't be done...
...otism from the vise of nationalism is like trying to pluck the quills from a porcupine...
...This is reification of the highest order...
...The only way to survive, they say, is to get on that wave...
...Me, too...
...Family, community, and country are accidents of birth, over which the individual has no control...
...Our more philosophical friends tug us from the opposite direction...
...No day passes without our being bombarded by some patriotic message or symbol...
...To enforce a patriotic duty or to sanctify a patriotic love from this happenstance is to distort the concept of identity and obligation...
...Yet it's not just a home-grown affliction...
...Rejoice, ye sinners...
...And our loyalties should not stop at the border...
...Free will and individual liberty are forsaken in this repressive philosophy, which denies the individual the right to create and develop his or her own identity...
...Patriotism is the most primitive of passions," Jorge Luis Borges has observed...
...It is too dangerous a concept to be toyed with...
...We can tally the dead from all the wars that came and went and from the next, the last Great War that waits only for the checkered flag...
...And so, we are told, we must be more patriotic than our right-wing neighbors...
...Somehow, when bearded blue-eyed Chuck Norris gushes on the cover of Parade magazine, I'm a Nut about Patriotism (as he did on December 29, 1985—you can look it up), my adrenalin level does not rise, my chest does not swell with pride, and I don't leap to my feet and chant, Me, too, Chuck...
...Fear not...
...Many good-hearted souls survey the political horizon and despair...
...They utter starchy, upright phrases about individuals not existing in a vacuum but in a social framework of family, community, and country...
...They infect people with a feeling of superiority, of bellicose pride, that translates into war slogans easy as apple pie...
...When the Left, the radicals, the superliberals join the patriotic chorus, it reinforces the message that America is on the side of virtue...
...The nation is but the grandest of such artifices...
...We who are outside the fold tend to respond with the blush and shudder of the guilty or, if far gone, with the uncertain swagger of the schoolyard rebel...
...Each time the National Anthem spews out its cacophony or Ronald Reagan clears his throat and wipes his brow, we run for cover or put up our dukes...
...This is an old Hollywood gag: It wasn't me, it was my brother...
...The notion that one owes an obligation to one's country is absurd...
...Still, we are implored to embrace patriotism...
...Our identities should be of our own making, not imposed by an ancient cartographer...
...Once we recognize this, we won't fall into the good old American trap of caring solely for U.S...
...But, hey, we're among friends...
...But for all intents and purposes, patriotism and nationalism are identical twins...
...They tell us that the concept of patriotism—as distinct from nationalism—transports us from petty individualistic concerns to an awareness of a greater, more noble identity that is communal...
...They see a rolling conservative tide, with Ronald Reagan riding its crest...
...And by playing the silly game of capture the flag, we only capture ourselves...
...Always a dutiful and willing servant, patriotism has carried the body bags for every modern ruler from Napoleon to Hitler, Stalin to Pol Pot...
...those who believe in it view the rest of us as sinners, condemned to purgatory— or at least to an uncozy predicament in the here and now...
...It is, of course, hopeless to expect Norris, Reagan, and other house-and-garden-variety flagwavers to admit that patriotism is to blame for most of the violent, crude, and sanguinary events of this century and many centuries past...
...It's been around for thousands of years, and these days the sentiment is transmitted in the home, the classroom, the assembly hall, the athletic field, as well as on the radio waves and television screens...
...Nothing justifies a salute to patriotism...
...It's a great country...
...It's a tough bug to shake, but that doesn't mean we should celebrate the disease...
...Like the defenders of family, church, and community, the champions of the modern nation state want us to believe that inanimate objects-mere social sandboxes—deserve to command our respect, love, and loyalty...
...This patriotism thing is a hoax...
Vol. 50 • July 1986 • No. 7
