The Idolatry of Nationalism

I have spent the last many days mulling over the screaming match we have had as a nation about Colin Kapernick and those who have emulated his protest during the national anthem at a pre-season NFL game. I have incredibly mixed feelings about this because of my background and my education…those who know me will not be surprised that this is yet another “both-and” subject in my reckoning.

I’ll start with where I stand as the daughter of a US Army retiree who wanted a military and government service career of her own. My dad, like millions of men and women before and after him of every color, race, and creed in this nation, served his time in the military and went to war. He spent all but six weeks of the first year of my life in Vietnam; he was lucky to be able to change his deployment date from February of 1969 to May of 1969 so he could be present for my birth. He came back from Vietnam and spent another 11 years in uniform, then just over 20 years in the civil service with the Department of Defense. He risked his life for the freedoms that the flag of the United States represents and for the ideals of this country as presented in the Constitution. I get annoyed when people don’t take “The Star Spangled Banner” or the Pledge of Allegiance seriously: take off your hats, stand at attention facing the flag, and render honor. You don’t have to sing the song (there are people who shouldn’t sing the song, but that’s another post entirely) or even say the pledge, but at least be respectful.

My father also taught me that the two most honorable people in the world are the person who goes to war in service of an ideal and the person who protests when that ideal is not reality for everyone.

That wisdom from my father is why the protests do not bother me, at least not in the evolved form of taking a knee that seems to have become the norm since the NFL season began. I understand the protest and Kapernick is right in his protest, if not in his initial action, just as Tommy Smith and John Carlos were right to stand up against discrimination and segregation at the 1968 Olympics. We who swim in the ocean of White Privilege need to have our consciences poked and prodded constantly because the American ideals represented by the flag are not yet a reality for every person who lives in this great country. We who swim in the ocean of White Privilege don’t get to tell anyone else how and when they can make their voices heard. We don’t get to say, “Stand up!” or, “Sit down!” to those who are forcing us to see where we have yet to give every child an equal chance at success, every woman the same pay as the man doing the same job, every person pulled over for a traffic infraction the same chance of getting a ticket instead of an arrest record or worse, a bullet. What we should be doing is joining our brothers and sisters not just in their protests but in the work that we need to do to make what is already a great nation an even greater nation.

Unfortunately, we have made an idol out of our flag and out of our country. Those who do the work of creating an even greater nation by raising difficult issues get painted with the brush of anti-Americanism because they call out “failings,” as though we’re perfect the way we are. Any issue raised in a way that is perceived as derogatory to the flag or the country can be ignored because those who denigrate the flag or the country clearly don’t love either enough to be taken seriously. As long as everyone roars appropriately for “the home of the brave” and sings lustily along with Lee Greenwood that, “I’m proud to be an American,” we can turn a blind eye to the very real problems with our imperfect yet still great union.

We forget, I think, that the basis of our nation is a willingness to look at what’s wrong, stand up to the power that has it wrong, and change what’s wrong for what’s better. Sometimes it takes a very long time to right the wrong, but we usually get there.

The Revolutionary War hardly solved all the problems in the colonies—slavery nearly undid the new nation before it could get organized (read here for how the offensive “three-fifths compromise got us to function)—but it did free us from the tyranny of an inherited monarchy. The Constitution itself reminds us that we’re imperfect because the authors included a mechanism by which it could be changed and then those authors spearheaded the drive to include what we now know as The Bill of Rights. The First Amendment gives us all the right to speak freely, though, as we often need to be reminded, not to be free from the consequences of our speech. It also gives us freedom of conscience in the form of the right to practice religion (or not) unimpeded by government overwatch and media that can devolve to Fox News and Breitbart and still call itself “news.” All good things come with some bad side effects.

We fought the British again in 1812-1815 and as we have been reminded recently, the British actively recruited escaped slaves and free Black men who were disaffected with their status in American society. “The land of the free” line that ends each verse of Francis Scott Key’s poem is more subtle than “hireling and slave” and “when freemen shall stand” in the third and fourth verses, but in context with the whole, the line stings. Add in that Key owned slaves and advocated for resettling freed slaves in Africa…why is this the song we sing to show honor and respect to our flag again? It took another war to settle slavery and we're still feeling the effects today.

I had classmates in high school who reminded us that they did not come to America. America came to their ancestors at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1845. American citizenship did not confer equality, however; 100 years after annexation of Spanish/Mexican territory, Mendez v. Westminster gave the California Supreme Court the opportunity to rule that separate is not equal in schools and that segregating children into separate schools based on their ethnicity is unconstitutional, though the Supreme Court upheld a federal court ruling concurring with the state's verdict on different grounds.

Slavery would be the precipitating issue of the Civil War. Don’t let anyone tell you that the issue was States’ Rights; the right the states that formed the Confederacy wanted was to continue to allow slavery. That bloody war echoes today in the very different reactions people have to the Confederate Stars and Bars. For the record, I agree with those who find it offensive as a symbol of oppression and treachery…and I say this a a descendant of a slave-owning family that includes a Confederate general in its heritage. I think it should be reserved for use in appropriate historical displays about the Civil War; it should not be displayed in cemeteries or used in state flags, nor should it be displayed on license plates, any other government-issued item, or property belonging to any level of government unless that property is directly related to the Civil War, e.g., Gettysburg National Battlefield. I can’t stop people from displaying it on private property—the First Amendment allows it. America really is a great country.

We fought WWI and WWII against tyrants. African-American soldiers who fought in both of those wars to assure the freedom of others could not claim that same freedom when they returned to segregated Jim Crow America. German-Americans were harassed and in at least one instance hanged on suspicion of disloyalty during WW!, mostly by their own neighbors in response to patriotic fervor run amok; volunteers to serve in the military were turned away for fear that they might have ulterior motives to return to Germany and turn traitor. We declared “never again” after the Holocaust but didn’t let our own Japanese-American citizens out of internment camps until after Japan had surrendered at the end of WWII. The 442nd Infantry Regiment, made up mostly of Japanese-American volunteers, fought with great distinction in Europe while military intelligence units relied on the contributions of Japanese-Americans of their knowledge of Japanese language and culture in the Pacific Islands as the war drew to a close. It took us 43 years to get around to compensating the American citizens we imprisoned based solely on their ethnicity and race out of completely unfounded fear that they might collaborate with our enemy. Even when the country treated entire groups horribly, members of those groups stepped up to fight for ideals not yet realized because despite the unfulfilled dreams, America was great enough to hold out a promise not available anywhere else.

The only way we can continue to strive for the ideals upon which America was founded is to stop idolizing the country and the symbols that stand for it. America is great. It will be greater still when we are closer to the dreams of our Founding Fathers, expanded by hundreds of millions of people through the centuries, that all people are created equal. We become greater when we 1) recognize the truth inherent in the protests of those who do what we consider to be outrageous things in order to get our attention; 2) listen to the suggestions and ideas of those who are protesting about how to make the situation better; and 3) act with humility to fix things, be it our attitudes, our words, or the systems in which we live.