I was interested to read Anonymous’ measured response to my criticism of the flag pins. Anonymous remarks that I pack “an awful lot more baggage into that shiny lapel pin than is deserved,” and goes on to write, “I see a lot more maple leafs flying in Canada than I see old glorys flying in the U.S., and yet this rampant Canadian patriotism is given a pass.” Both points deserve a response.
I’ll start with the second point. But before I do, I should point out that my failure to denounce rampant Canadian patriotism has nothing to do with my criticism of rampant American patriotism—which is what I was writing about. I also failed to denounce Australian, French, Japanese, Greek, Venezuelan, Croatian, Swiss, Portuguese, and Scots nationalism. That doesn’t make those nationalisms any less real. (I apologize in advance to who feel insulted because their patria is on this list, and also to those who feel left out because theirs isn’t.)
I am not convinced that there are more Canadian flags cluttering up the Great White North than there are Stars and Stripes in the U.S. I see American flags everywhere I go: not just on government buildings, but also on sweatshirts, baseball caps, bumperstickers, lunchboxes, subway cars, city buses, taxicabs, car dealerships (both used and new, foreign and domestic), and in front of suburban houses.
Counting up flags is not a reliable way to gauge the nature or depth of patriotism, nor is it a particularly good way to enter into the mentality of a people. We have to understand what the flag stands for. I would guess that, per capita, Switzerland in 1940 had almost as many flags as Germany. (The Swiss are a flag-loving people.) I don’t suspect that anyone in 1940 would have been frightened by the ubiquitous white cross, while a good many people had excellent reasons to fear the swastika.
Whether Canadians are more or less inclined to fly a flag than are Americans, then, sidesteps a crucial point: the meaning of the flag. Even if we were to concede that Canadians are as (or more) likely than their American cousins to display the national flag, the significance of these flags is different.
That is particularly true internationally. American backpackers stitch Canadian flags on their gear for good reason: it’s to give them a safe but plausible identity overseas. Americans have enemies; Canadians, by and large, don’t. (Unless you count the Parti Quebecois, of course.) Why not? Well, because the U.S. is a big power that throws its weight around, refuses to abide by international law (or, for that matter, its own laws where international matters are concerned), and assumes that everyone else aspires to American-ness. These sorts of things tend to rankle.
But let’s make our way back to the lapel pin, the subject that launched all this. The international response to the American flag has, I admit, little to do with the reasons for which Presidential candidates choose to stick flag pins on their suit jackets. Let’s think about why they choose to do so.
The flag lapel pin is a piece of jewelry, but it has a different function from most jewelry. It doesn’t say, “Gee, this red-white-blue motif really brings out the color of my eyes.” It cannot plausibly be taken as a declaration of the wearer’s fine aesthetic sensibility. Nor does it do what lots of jewelry is meant to do: show off the wearer’s fat bank account.
No. The flag lapel pin is about sending a message. But what is that message, exactly? It cannot be anything quite as straightforward as “I love my country.” We are entitled to presume that a person running for President feels some affection for his or her country, lapel pin or no.
So why wear it? Because the lapel pin is not a mere bauble; it is a talisman, a shield and a cudgel. It is a talisman in the sense that it magically invokes all that is attractive about the United States—without loading the candidate down with any real promises. As Humpty Dumpty might have put it, “When I wear a flag, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
It is a shield because it protects (or aims to protect) its wearer from accusations of lackluster commitment to the national cause. (It doesn’t always work very well, though, particularly for Democrats.)
It is a cudgel, because by saying, “Wearing this pin is a manifestation of my love for my country,” it suggests that not wearing a pin must a manifestation of not loving my country. The candidate who does not wear the pin is an anti-Humpty: “When I choose not to wear a pin, it means just what my opponents choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
In American politics, patriotism has often been a tool of cynical people who use it to advance their partisan agendas. It is an awesomely effective instrument. Remember the Patriot Act? There was nothing “patriotic” about that act, if by patriotism we understand a commitment to liberty and to justice—but the mere use of the label helped ensure massive popular support for it. Even the famously independent Senator Paul Wellstone felt compelled to vote for it, despite his realization that it was a bad bill. Decades earlier, McCarthyism succeeded in part because of clever patriotic marketing: what better instrument to silence dissenters than to label them “Un-American”?
Am I loading this little bit of enamel with too much baggage? I don’t think so. The lapel pin is a reminder of the mystical potency of patriotism. It is not a gauge of its wearer’s virtue or virtues; it is not an innocent scrap of metal.
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