If you're old enough to remember the tumultuous protests of the Vietnam War era, you probably remember the ideological battle that played out on bumpers.
Pro-war supporters placed bumper stickers on their cars reading “America: Love it or Leave it,” to which anti-war supporters responded, “America: Change it or Lose it.”
The term “patriotism” means many things to many people, but there is one thing that should be obvious to anyone lucky enough to be a citizen of this country: no political party has absolute control of this country.
For Republicans, that should have been made uncomfortably clear during last week's Democratic National Convention, when the party of traditionally unmanageable cats became a single-celled organism waving flags and chanting “Born in the USA.”
“I want everyone here and everyone watching to proudly claim their patriotism,” said Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA officer who served in Iraq. “You are here because you love your country. Don’t give an inch to the imposters who wrap themselves in the flag but spit in the face of the freedoms it represents.”
Wrapping oneself in the flag is often a metaphor. Former President Trump literally grabs it by the flagpole.
The Democrats' unconditional embrace of patriotism baffled Republicans, who have long sought to claim the flag and freedom as their own.
“I find these American flags a little alarming,” said CNN political analyst (and Times contributor) Scott Jennings, a longtime adviser to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who rarely misses an opportunity to insult Democrats. “Normally, you burn these things, but tonight you’re waving them.”
The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan was also upset by what happened at the Democratic National Convention. “They stole traditional Republican themes (faith, patriotism) and claimed them as their own,” she wrote, although she confessed that Springsteen's performance made her cry.
Republicans have abandoned the values they traditionally stood for. In the past, the Republican Party could be defined by its commitment to a strong national defense, free-market capitalism, lower taxes and limited government.
It is now Trump's party, the party of whatever narcissistic whim the former president is currently indulging. That necessarily means that Republicans have no coherent ideology.
For example, Trump boasted that he appointed three of the ultraconservative Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, and as a candidate in 2016 and during his presidency, he promised to sign a national abortion ban. But now that he understands that stripping women of a fundamental right hurts him and other Republican candidates politically (and will continue to do so), he has backtracked.
He has been a vocal critic of immigrants seeking a better life in the United States and has fostered paranoia about those crossing the southern border. But when a bipartisan immigration enforcement bill finally came through last year, he demanded that Republicans withdraw their support. Why? So he could continue attacking Democrats on immigration.
Loving your country means loving it with all its virtues. But more than that, loving your country means being able to honestly deal with its history and hold contradictory views about it in your head: America is a country founded on freedom, and The United States is a country founded on slavery. The flag is a beloved symbol of the United States. and Americans have a constitutional right to burn it if they so choose.
That’s what the Supreme Court ruled in 1989. And even the prickly conservative Justice Antonin Scalia agreed. “If it were up to me, I’d put in jail every weirdo with sandals and a scruffy beard who burns the American flag,” Scalia said. “But I’m not the king.”
On Monday, the man who would be king wrongly suggested that Democrats burned flags during their convention.
“They’re burning American flags all over the place and the fake news doesn’t want to show it,” Trump said. (There was a widely reported case of pro-Palestinian protesters outside the convention burning American and Israeli flags.) Anyone who burns a flag should spend a year in prison, he said.
“They say, ‘Sir, that’s not constitutional,’” he said. “We will make it constitutional.”
Following the September 11 attacks, patriotic fervor gripped every corner of the United States. Flag sales skyrocketed. In the months following the attacks, it was not uncommon to see American flags flying everywhere: on cars, homes, commercial buildings and construction cranes.
Even in liberal strongholds, Americans who had rejected the flag suddenly waved it. Left-wing baby boomers who came of age during the Vietnam and civil rights era, who were rightly skeptical of performative patriotism, embraced the flag like never before.
It was a rare moment of national unity. But soon after, President George W. Bush's ill-fated war in Iraq shattered the feeling of unity.
During his first campaign for the White House, President Obama decided to stop wearing a flag lapel pin as a mild protest against the invasion of Iraq. Republicans, already bent on “othering” him, were furious.
“My attitude is that I care less about what you wear on your lapel than what you wear in your heart,” Obama said at the time. “You demonstrate your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those who serve. You demonstrate your patriotism by being true to our values and ideals.”
It was true then, it is true today, and it will be true forever.
