Look Who's Waving the Flag Now
EMERY, NOEMIE
Look Who's Waving the Flag Now As Democrats rediscover patriotism, the anti-American left sulks. BY NOEMIE EMERY The events of September 11 in New York and at the Pentagon fell like an axe...
...Stevenson was beaten by Ike, and four years later, by the more red-blooded appeal of Kennedy...
...In his indispensable Our Country, Michael Barone traces its origins back to the Adlai Stevenson campaign of 1956...
...and he read much less than did his future rival, John Kennedy...
...As John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, firmly stated, "We deplore the assault, and we stand fully behind the leadership in this time of national crisis...
...Other journalists who received angry letters have not lost their jobs, and were criticized less for their critiques of Bush—who was justly described as not having been good in his early public appearances—than for the sneering tones in which they had often described him, which now seemed less than funny...
...But to the horde of independent minds that clustered around him, his losses had given him the appeal of a martyr, if not of a saint...
...And so, something new is beginning to happen: The softer fringe of the attitude party is starting to peel itself off...
...At the time, the building was the tomb of nearly 200 people...
...As the Washington Times reported, "By far the largest campus gathering since the attacks was a September 17th memorial service for the victims that drew 12,000 students...
...Belligerent militancy...
...When the two Presidents Bush, many cabinet members, mayors and governors and members of Congress urged Americans not to harass the MusProfessors still rant, but fewer students are listening...
...Fortunately, he had the good sense to see this, and quickly apologized, saying, correctly, "I was simply being at the moment an incredibly insensitive and unfeeling jerk...
...Let us closely examine our small reign of terror and see what has really gone on...
...What a nice touch this last is...
...In her recent book Inventing Herself, Elaine Showalter gives us this glowing account of the young Susan Sontag: "The ordinary details of American life . . . drove her crazy...
...This schism is of long standing...
...As the flags bloomed like flowers, I found they tapped emotions," George Packer admitted...
...It was followed the next day by an almost equally large 'Rally for America.' On September 24, pro-U.S...
...As Barone writes, "What was attractive to them was not his platform, but his attitude—his irony, his skepticism, his critical detachment from the roaring course of American life...
...he is still on the air...
...Even Berkeley itself, once protest central, appears to have had second thoughts...
...The war has revealed the deep split in the party between the patriotic and the patronizing, between the large body of elected officials (and those who vote for them) and the noisy group of chattering asses who are elected by no one, and spend their time talking...
...demonstrators rallied again, shouting 'USA, USA,' perhaps the first time that chant had been heard in the heart of American dissidence...
...If this means an alliance with labor on some things, then so be it, as labor may soon stand with him...
...Similarly, Packer would state in his Sunday piece for the Times, "My wariness of the flag was [not] just a matter of political values...
...but in 1968 the losing primary campaign of Eugene McCarthy, a man still more educated, more remote, and more cold-blooded than Stevenson, established the model of the outsider as the emotional template for a generation of liberals who defined themselves by their opposition to middle-class values and tastes...
...selves largely by attitude, which is adversarial...
...The New York Times is not irredeemable...
...It was also a matter of culture and class...
...In Congress, domestic liberals are discovering their inner hawk...
...So far, this time, not a single flag has been burned...
...On Sunday, September 30, the New York Times ran three different attacks on Old Glory as being somehow oppressive and sinister...
...One doubts this is what Senator Schumer—or any elected liberal in New York politics— was thinking...
...It was of course no surprise that days after the attack by the terrorists Sontag was one of the first to denounce this country as "stupid," and to complain that one of the sources of trouble was that America had too much power in the world...
...Bush has drawn praise, mainly from Democrats, for the restraint and precision with which he is planning his moves...
...And one day, it may dawn on the chattering class...
...lims among them...
...Conservatives discovered that there are other conservatives who think the worst thing about war is that it spends money, and tends to grow government...
...he was seen as having rejoiced at the deaths of his countrymen...
...A healthy skepticism about the uses of power is always in order, but a smartass contempt for one's country and one's fellow citizens is something quite different...
...A cheesy late-night TV comedian lost two of his sponsors...
...In the magazine, George Packer explained why the flag wasn't displayed in his liberal household: "Display wasn't just politically suspect, it was simply bad taste, sentimental, primitive, sometimes aggressive...
...They distrust their country, detest conservatives, but detest most of all the tastes of the masses whose interests they claim to protect...
...Stevenson was not brighter than Eisenhower, just more ironic...
...And on page one of the opinion section, Blaine Harden explored the dark side of patriotism, of which "the flag, as much as any symbol, embodies the paradox . . . constitutional rights, which supposedly form the core of patriotism's appeal, suddenly lost ground to fear...
...Stevenson was the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle-class American culture," Barone writes—"the prototype of the liberal Democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting...
...He urged his members to collect funds to aid victims' families...
...Radicalism may have been chic, but patriotism clearly had no cachet whatsoever: "My family would sooner have upholstered the furniture in orange corduroy than show the colors on Memorial Day...
...The weekly comedy shows festooned with canned laughter, the treacly Hit Parade, the hysterical narratings of baseball games and prize fights . . . were an endless torment.' Later, she would attach the same feelings of exasperation to television—unless it was French...
...Most Democrats now get this...
...columnist Thomas Friedman is now a full-throated hawk and patriot...
...and didn't care much who got himself killed in Virginia...
...BY NOEMIE EMERY The events of September 11 in New York and at the Pentagon fell like an axe across old political groupings, threatening alliances of many years standing, as people realized, perhaps for the first time, how strange their bedfellows were...
...When the prayer services at Yankee Stadium and the National Cathedral in Washington were loaded with and conducted by people of every religion and every ethnic group known to man...
...The first group define themselves by their policies...
...some students are learning...
...The flag was waved mainly by working-class people for whom loyalty to the family, the tribe, and nation hadn't been eroded by the pressure of middle-class ambition and self-conscious sophistication...
...It is unthinkable that Franklin Roosevelt would have ever said those things, or that those thoughts would have ever crossed his mind...
...led her to grind her teeth, twirl her hair, bite her nails, overeat...
...Ethnic exclusivity...
...Especially popular culture...
...None of this was the view of the Democratic political classes, which were out waving flags with the best of them...
...At the same time, George W. Bush is becoming a president rather like Truman and Kennedy, an energetic defender of national interests, who knows that domestic divides must take second place to his primary purpose of leading a nation and a world at war...
...It is, as well, of course, the world's greatest Jewish city—who can doubt this was not a part of the message here...
...As any New Yorker knows, New York isn't really American...
...they love their own country, and argue with conservatives about the best ways to bring the good life to more people...
...The worst post-attack display of this type of class hatred came in New York magazine...
...The night of the attacks about 500 students staged a spontaneous candlelight vigil . . . the largest anti-retaliation demonstration drew 2,500 students out of a campus total of more than 32,000...
...Some will admit, though they won't fly flags themselves, that they rather like seeing the others...
...Professors still rant, but fewer students are listening...
...Even Berkeley itself, once protest central, appears to have had second thoughts...
...If those lunatics want to fly a plane into the Pentagon, let Bush put up his magic shield...
...Dionne gives his fellow "progressives" permission to back the war effort, distrustful as they may be of its leadership...
...The second group may share these policy views, but they define themNoemie Emery is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Stevenson had run in 1952 as a traditional Democrat, upbeat and chipper...
...Michael Wolf lashed out at the "redneck" states and their president, and praised his city for being as un-American as humanly possible...
...On the op-ed page, there was Maureen Dowd accusing George W. Bush of "playing the flag card" to curb free expression...
...The Timesmen never quite reached these heights of expression, but they still seemed to be searching for something to blame on the country...
...Two small-town journalists lost their jobs after alienating large numbers of readers...
...In the long war for the soul of national Democrats, the tide seems to be swinging back in the direction of Truman and Kennedy—veterans, patriots, and ardent Cold Warriors who had no patience at all with moral equivalence...
...The culture itself, from which all else flowed, had begun to seem sinister...
...But when he lost, he began to think he was too good for the country, a theory his more intense fans would readily agree with...
...Just when did this happen...
...Silencing dissent...
...The Democrats are purging themselves of the virus of nihilism, and the hard left is isolating itself...
...Journalists have failed to worship the ground on which Sontag walks...
...They sought from the seemingly diffident Stevenson not so much changes of public policy, but a validation of their own cultural stance...
...A history professor at the University of New Mexico was disciplined after he said to one of his classes, "Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon has my vote...
...To me, those flags didn't represent flabby complacence, but alertness, grief, resolve, even love...
...When a woman assured him that all thinking people were for him, he responded, 'Yes, but I need to win a majority...
...Tentatively, slowly, some are allowing themselves now to feel warm toward their country, embarrassed though they may be by these primordial feelings...
...After the attacks, as Harden informs us, "a nationalistic undertow that is culturally conformist, ethnically exclusive, and belligerently militaristic began to silence dissent, spread fear among immigrants, and lock up people without explanation...
...When anti-globalization activists tried to switch tracks into anti-American rallies, they found themselves deserted by their most powerful allies...
...Liberals found that there are other liberals who think the worst thing about war is . . . the flag...
...In the same magazine, one Mark Jacobson said he was "conflicted" about raising the flag...
Vol. 7 • October 2001 • No. 5
