Flags
In our current turbulent times I started reading John Holt’s speeches and articles that he wrote while traveling around the country as a visiting professor or guest lecturer at various education events during the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Though always politically aware, these pieces of John’s writing seemed interesting but dated to most of those I shared them with. However, now that our country is embroiled in so many political controversies, I have noticed that some of these unpublished essays and speeches are relevant to today.
For instance, this week some protestors in Los Angeles are waving Mexican flags to demonstrate their rightful pride of their culture that is being demeaned by our government in words and deeds, particularly mass deportations that net innocent citizens too. Some who support the protestors nonetheless wish they would use the American flag to defang the obvious ploy the Republican government is using, especially on social media: noting that the “insurgents” are flying foreign flags and therefore need to be incarcerated or deported as anti-American trouble makers. As John notes in this piece, “In short, in every possible way, we must try to remind people what this country and its flag once stood for and ought to, and may stand for once again.”
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This last winter I spoke to a group of teachers at a meeting. Before the meeting began, one of the people there asked us all to stand up and give the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. This was the first time in a great many years that I had been asked to do this, or had done it. Caught unprepared, I stood up with everyone else and except for keeping silent at the words “under God,” as I always do, I said the rest of the pledge. (PF: The pledge was introduced in 1892 and those words were added to the pledge in 1954.) Then the meeting began, and I talked about whatever it was that I was supposed to be talking about. But, I was very much conscious of strong and puzzling feelings. I decided that the next time I was asked or required to give the Pledge of Allegiance before the meeting, the first thing I would talk about is that Pledge, and what it has come to mean.
What is most important about my feeling is that I felt threatened. I felt the way a kid feels when some bigger kid has his arm twisted up against his back and is telling him to say “uncle.” Come to think it, there is a rather sinister pun here. We seem to be in the business of demanding that everyone say Uncle.
I began thinking of the kind of symbol that the flag has become, and what the Pledge of Allegiance to it means. There popped out of my memory the recollection of watching TV some years before late at night, and of seeing the station close for the day. The last thing we saw and heard was a picture of the American flag waving in the wind and the Star Spangled Banner playing. But, what images did they show us to accompany these? Anything of the beauties of the country? Or of any of the people who have helped to make it great? Or of any of the people now living in it? No, none of these. Throughout the playing of the anthem, what we saw through the semi-transparent waving flag was an endless parade of our armed forces, tanks, jet planes, marching men, battleships, and rockets. It was a horrifying exhibit, and I felt, as I often do, bitterly envious of the many people in the world whose flag does not conjure up pictures of destructive military force. I thought, as I often do, what fun it might be to live in a country whose national bird was, say, the chickadee.
It’s time we took the flag away from our fascists and made it once again the property and symbol of people who still love this country. The words may surprise you—love this country? And yet the fact is that there are many things about it that you do love. Strange as it may seem, you are the only real patriots this country has left. In the first place, you really do love the land in its beauty. This is not true of most of our professional flag wavers. The so-called and self-styled conservatives and patriots in this country see the land only as a source of wealth to be exploited in any and every way possible for their personal profit. If they see a chance to make a quick buck by destroying its resources or its beauty, they don’t hesitate for a second. If there was enough money to be made from it, they wouldn’t mind in the least in turning the land into one giant factory, one super shopping center and parking lot.
You should also recognize that the vision of a decent and human society that you love and quite rightly feel our government and institutions have betrayed is in itself an American vision. Where, after all, did you get it? Where did you learn to think that justice, human dignity, freedom, and equality were important? These are American ideals. Not uniquely American, but American. They’re as much a part of America as the Pentagon.
There was a time when this country and its flag were a symbol for a kind of hope of human brotherhood. There is no reason why, in spite of our government and the military-industrial complex and our foreign policy, that it could not be again. I think we would make a terrible mistake to let this symbol fall into the hands of people who are opposed to everything it once stood for. I think we have to take it back. James Kunen, in his book (very much worth reading) The Strawberry Statement, makes this point. We ought to carry hundreds or thousands of American flags at every peace or civil rights or whatever kind of radical demonstration. We ought in every possible way to associate the flag with other symbols of peace and brotherhood—the anti-nuclear symbol, the new symbol of revolt, the clasped hands symbols of racial equality and friendship, or any other we can find. Not least of all the flower. Just this morning, I passed a car bearing a couple of flower symbols I had not seen before. The petals were red and white striped and the circle in the center had white stars on a blue field. This seems to me a perfect combination of symbols and of ideals.
It is the worst kind of tactical and psychological error to try to combat the people who are debasing and corrupting our country and the flag, by trying to demean the flag itself. No, we ought to carry our own flag, display it in every way we can, especially in conjunction with other symbols we believe in. We might even make big signs saying things like, “The flag belongs to us,” or “Peace and brotherhood,” or “This does not mean murder and hatred,” or similar words to this effect.
In short, in every possible way, we must try to remind people what this country and its flag once stood for and ought to, and may stand for once again.
