The Flag Fetish

An article in Sunday’s New York Times reports on conservative hostility to Obama. He doesn’t wear a flag pin, they complain, and he doesn’t put his hand over his heart during the National Anthem.

I remember when Americans weren’t obsessed with outward shows of patriotism. People only flew flags at their homes on Flag Day or the 4th of July. Now every day is Flag Day, and private homes can be hard to distinguish from government offices. I’ve fantasized about knocking on doors and asking for a packet of stamps.

We didn’t fly flags in the past because our country is so large that there’s no question where you are. You don’t have to look for the nearest flag to make sure you haven’t wandered out of Luxembourg into Belgium.

Many Republicans consider John McCain's military service the best evidence of patriotism. My male ancestors fought in most of the wars the United States waged. (When they did not, it was because they were too young or too old.) My Dutch ancestors fought for independence in the Revolution. Their descendants fought as Union officers in the Civil War; there is a monument to the brigade of my great-great grandfather and his half-brother at Chickamauga battlefield in Tennessee. (My great-great grandfather died young as a result of his Civil War service, plunging the family into economic distress.) The brothers also fought in the Spanish-American war. Their descendants fought in World War I, and a few are in the military now.

The flag fetish strikes me as a case of Protesting Too Much. If you’re confident in your possession of something, you don’t have to wear it on your sleeve, your gable, your bumper, or your T-shirt. In fact, the latter used to be considered disrespectful, a kind of desecration. Then Ralph Lauren made it into a commodity, and people forgot that wearing a flag stretched across your belly might not be a sign of respect.

Americans live surrounded by other Americans; there’s no need for a show of defiance. We are not like the English and the French, who fought one another for centuries, still have cultural misunderstandings, and can see each other’s countries on a clear day. So why this bravado and insecurity, which, I think, lie beneath gratuitous, context-free displays of patriotic devotion? 

Wearing a flag pin doesn’t make you a patriot any more than wearing a cross makes you a good [i.e., compassionate] Christian.